Cate Tiernan - Night's Child

Three minutes to five. In three minutes it will all begin, Morgan Rowlands thought, wrapping her hands around her heavy mug of steaming tea. She swallowed hard, refusing to start crying until later, when she knew she wouldn't be able to help it. "Cool the fire," she whispered, circling her left hand widdershins, counterclockwise, over her tea. She took an experimental sip, trying to wash down the lump in her throat.

She gazed out the plate-glass window of the small tea shop in Aberystwyth, Wales, where she and Hunter Niall had agreed to meet. It was darkening outside, though it was barely five o'clock. After living in Ireland for three years, Morgan was used to the early darkness from heavy clouds, but she sometimes missed the stark cold and thick, glittering snow of upstate New York, where she had grown up.

Heavy raindrops began to smack against the window. Morgan took a deep breath, the weather outside reflecting her emotions inside. Usually she welcomed the rain as the main reason that Ireland and Wales both were so incredibly lush and green. Tonight it seemed dreary, dismal, depressing because of what she was about to do-break up with the person she loved most in the world, her muirn beatha dan. Her soul mate.

Her stomach was tight, her hands tense on the table. Hunter. Oh, Goddess, Hunter. It had been almost four months since they'd been able to meet in the airport in Toronto- for only six hours. And three months before that, in Germany. They'd had two whole days together then.

Morgan shook her head, consciously releasing her breath in a long, controlled sigh. Relax. If I relax and let thoughts go, the Goddess shows me where to go. If I relax and let things be, all of life is clear to see.

She closed her eyes and deliberately uncoiled every muscle, from her head on down to her icy toes in her damp boots. Soon a soothing sense of warmth expanded inside her, and she felt some of the tension leave her body

The brass bell over the shop door jangled and was followed almost instantly by a blast of frigid air. Morgan opened her eyes in time to have her light blocked by a tall, heart-breakingly familiar figure. Despite everything, her heart expanded with joy and a smile rose to her face. She stood as he came closer, his angular face lighting up when he saw her. He smiled, and the sight of his open, welcoming expression sliced right through her.

"Hey, Morgan. Sorry I'm late," Hunter said, his English accent blunted by fatigue.

She took him in her arms, holding him tightly, not caring that his long tweed overcoat was soaked with icy rain. Hunter leaned down, Morgan went on tiptoe, and their mouths met perfectly in the middle, the way they always did. When they separated, Morgan stroked a finger down his cheek. "Long time no see," she said, her voice catching. Hunter's eyes instantly narrowed-even aside from his powers of sensing emotion as a blood witch, he knew Morgan more intimately than anyone. Morgan cleared her throat and sat down. Still watching her, Hunter sat also, his coat sprin-kling raindrops onto the linoleum floor around his chair. He swept his old-fashioned tweed cap off his head and ran a hand through his fine, white-blond hair.

Morgan drank in his appearance, her gaze roaming over every detail. His face was pale with winter, his eyes as icy green as the Irish Sea not three blocks away. His hair was longer than Morgan had ever seen it and looked choppy, uneven.

"It's good to see you," Hunter said, smiling at the obvious understatement. Under the table he edged his knee over until it rested against hers.

"You too," Morgan said. Did her anguish already show on her face? She felt as if the pain of her decision must surround her like an aura, visible to anyone who knew her. "I got tea for two-want some?"

"Please," he said, and Morgan poured the spare mug full of tea.

Hunter stood up and dropped his wet coat over the back of his chair. He took a sip of tea, stretched, and rolled his shoulders. Morgan knew he had just come in from Norway.

What to say? How to say it? She had rehearsed this scene for the last two weeks, but now that she was here, going through with it felt like revolting against her very being. And in a sense, it was true. To end a relationship with her muirn beatha dan was fighting destiny.

It had been four years since she had first met Hunter, Morgan mused. She absently turned her silver claddagh ring, on the ring finger of her right hand. Hunter had given her this ring when she was seventeen, he nineteen. Now he was twenty-three and a man, tall and broad-shouldered-no longer a lanky teenager, the "boy genius" witch hired as the youngest Seeker for the International Council of Witches.

And she was no longer the naive, love-struck high schooler who had just discovered her legacy as a blood witch and was struggling to learn to control her incredible powers. She'd come a long way in the few years since the summer after her junior year of high school, when she'd first learned there were actually a few surviving members of her mother's coven, Belwicket. She'd been spending the summer studying in Scotland when they came to her, finally able to reveal themselves after the dark wave was defeated and- more importantly- Ciaran MacEwan was stripped of his powers. They'd told her how they'd survived the destruction of their coven by escaping to Scotland, where they'd been hiding for decades. When they'd heard of Morgan's existence, they'd come to enlist her help in rebuilding the coven that had shaped their families for hundreds of years. And she'd been doing just that since moving to Ireland a year after her graduation from high school, and loving every moment-except for the fact that being in Cobh meant being apart from Hunter.

Hunter reached across the table and took her hand. Morgan felt desperate, torn, yet she knew what she had to do, what had to happen. She had gone over this a thousand times. It was the only decision that made sense.

"What's the matter?" he asked gently. "What's wrong?" Morgan looked at him, this person who was both intimately familiar and oddly mysterious. There had been a time when she'd seen him every single day, when she'd been close enough to know if he'd cut himself shaving or had a sleepless night. Now he had the thin pink line of a healed wound on the curve of his jaw, and Morgan had no idea where or when or how he had gotten it.

She shook her head, knowing she couldn't be a coward, knowing that in the end, with the way things were, they had to pursue their separate destinies. In a minute she would tell him. As soon as she could talk without crying.

As if making a conscious decision to let it go for a moment, Hunter ran his hand through his hair again and looked into Morgan's eyes. "So I spoke to Alwyn about her engagement," he said, refilling his mug from the pot on the table.

"Yes, she seems happy," Morgan said. "But you-"

"I told her about my concerns," Hunter jumped in. "She's barely nineteen. I talked to her about waiting, but what do I know? I'm only her brother." He gave the wry smile that Morgan knew so well.

"He's a Wyndenkell, at least," Morgan said with a straight face. "We can all thank the Goddess for that."

Hunter grinned. "Uncle Beck is so pleased." Hunter's uncle, Beck Eventide, had raised Hunter, his younger brother, Linden, and Alwyn after their parents had disappeared when Hunter was eight. Hunter was sure that Uncle Beck had always blamed Hunter's father, a Woodbane, for his troubles.

"Anything but a Woodbane," Morgan managed to tease. She herself was a full-blood Woodbane and knew firsthand the kind of prejudice most Wiccans had against her ancestral clan. "Right," said Hunter, his eyes still on her.