She still didn’t know how he’d died. The former Sire had said only that his body had been found torn to pieces, as if how it happened didn’t matter, and now that Sire was dead too.

Hæra would never know the truth, but something of her father had returned to her. Here on land, of all places.

He’d been able to do this because he’d eaten that sea captain, the one he’d spoken of so fondly. Alban had said that, in battling and consuming his chosen human, he’d truly become himself. In fact, he’d spoken far more generously of humans than the rest of their kind did; Hæra had overheard her mother chastising him for that. Beathag had warned him not to “fall under a human’s spell,” as if such a thing was possible, as if⁠—

“Remarkable, right?”

The soft voice startled Hæra out of her memories. Madeleine, standing next to her, gazed into one of the pits. There were eight in total, called the “houses.” Flagstones supported and surrounded them. Side recesses showed more stones from ancient, collapsed roofs; evidence suggested the buildings had been rather sophisticated for the time. Around them all, the tourists looked down from rolling knolls of grass.

“We’ve come a long way,” Madeleine said.

Their jacketed arms touched. Hæra’s heart thumped. This was the first time Madeleine had stood so close to her of her own accord.

“Think about it,” Madeleine continued. “They sat around stone fire pits and burned seaweed for fuel. Now, ask me how central heating works, and I couldn’t tell you.”

Everyone Hæra knew used radiators, but to be fair, she didn’t know how those worked either. “I don’t think people are so different now.”

The ancient house had beds, a gathering place, containers, a privy. It wasn’t wholly unlike the stone cottage she’d first lived in with Jonathan, or even the more modern quarters they shared now.

“Not in some ways,” Madeleine acknowledged. “But our fight’s always been to improve on what we’ve got. Thousands of years after these people lived, I have a hand-held device that can tell me nearly everything I want to know.” She held up her mobile. “It’s not always a good thing, but we don’t like to remain stagnant.”

Clouds passed overhead, rendering the color of Madeleine’s eyes as changeable as the sea. The sea never remained stagnant either.

The Each-uisge were different, though. In all its history, had the herd ever changed its customs? For how long had mares been forced to subject themselves to a violent mating cycle and the interminably long pregnancies that followed? For how long had males been forbidden to take partners if they failed the Stormhorse trial? Hæra had been told that these were facts of existence itself, unchanging and unchangeable.