Even when I was young and content and thought life would bring good things for me and mine, I didn’t believe in miracles. Magic, maybe, of the kind wrought by the fey. But that wasn’t the same. Magic could seem to deliver the remarkable, the impossible, the stuff of wild dreams, but such gifts all too often came with hidden tricks, nasty surprises, the drop of poison in the golden chalice, the venomous lining in the silken garment. A real miracle, such as the survival of a dear old friend whom one had believed long dead, was truly wondrous.

Close on thirteen years. That was how long it had been since I’d last seen him, when he’d waved Cass and me farewell and headed off on one of his scholarly expeditions, the one that had ended up saving his life. When disaster had struck us and our fellow conspirators, Flannan had been far away in Mide, working in some monastic scriptorium and, in effect, out of Mathuin’s reach. Not that the chieftain of Laois wouldn’t be able to track someone across Mide and Ulaid and Dalriada if he chose to—I still lived in fear that one day he would find me. But he wouldn’t remove a man by force from within a house of prayer. Not if that house lay within King Lorcan’s borders. Lorcan of Mide was married to the High King’s daughter.

Those thirteen years had marked both of us. Flannan’s dimpled smile came less often than it once had, and his green eyes were not as limpid as they had been in the younger man. His hair bore traces of gray. But he was still himself. Flannan, my friend. Flannan, who had introduced me to the man who became my husband. Flannan, whom I had known since I was a child growing up in the south. His return was indeed a miracle.

For a while, after he’d been made welcome by Oran and Flidais and had settled into the men’s quarters at Cahercorcan, we simply enjoyed the remarkable gift of finding each other again. Our talk was of the good times past: the way Flannan had introduced me to Cass, his friend and fellow scribe; the long arguments the two of them used to have over obscure points of law or calligraphy; the fierce debates we three had conducted in lowered voices as it became more and more apparent that the new chieftain of Laois was both cruel and unjust.

Flannan had heard of Cass’s death, and Brennan’s. He had not known whether I had survived. I gave him the bare bones of the story. That I had been in Mathuin’s prison, though not because of the plot that had seen Cass punished so terribly. It had been later, after I’d fled south near-unhinged by grief, then, after a time so dark I could not bear to think about it, had come back to confront my demons. I’d faced up to Mathuin. Or tried to. I’d sought a hearing and spoken up for the women he’d wronged. For my pains, I’d been laughed at and thrown into the lockup.