Before he lost his nerve, he said, “I can never have what they have.”
“Who? Your cousins?”
He nodded. “Do not doubt that I wish Quin every happiness. The same for Neil and Kate and Skelly and any other McKenna who has found his or her soulmate. ’Tis not for all of us… not for me.”
“What isn’t? Being happy? Does this have something to do with Neil telling you to forget the McKenna prophecy? And then when Aislinn said none of Padraig’s brood had married, you said you understood.”
“Neil should have kept his opinion to himself.”
Ella didn’t say anything, just sat quietly as if waiting for him to explain. When he stubbornly refused to go on, she reached out to him, slid her hand over his. Her empathy traveled from his fingers to his arm to his heart, and all without her knowing of the impossibility of his dilemma.
Heaving a sigh, Tiernan knew something was happening between them that he couldn’t allow. He had to warn her off before they got too close to stop it. He had to drive her from him before something terrible happened to her.
“The prophecy goes back nearly a century,” he said, “and ever since, the descendants of Donal McKenna have been cursed. We can marry, just not the ones we love lest we be responsible for their deaths.”
“How would you be responsible?”
He told her about Donal and Sheelin and how the witch had cursed Donal’s descendants to lose their loved ones if they acted upon their feelings. He told her about some of the McKennas who had challenged the prophecy and lost.
In a soft voice, she said, “People do die—”
“You don’t believe me, then?”
“I think prophecies are what you make of them.”
Tiernan laughed. Bitter. Remembering. “I have personal knowledge, Ella, something I can’t deny no matter how hard I try.”
“Someone you loved died?” Her voice suddenly held a tight note that hadn’t been there before.
He nodded. “My aunt Megan. The woman my uncle fell madly in love with and married the moment he could have her and just as quickly lost her.”
Ella took a big breath and seemed to relax. “What happened to her?”
Suddenly the nightmare appeared to him full-blown on the back of his eyelids. He couldn’t look away. Even closing his eyes, he could see that horrible day as if it were happening now.
“Uncle Ross and Aunt Megan took me and my brothers to their home for the weekend. I was seven, then. Aunt Megan needed to go to the butcher shop and I wanted to go with her to get away from Cashel, my older brother. We were almost to the shop when Aunt Megan saw this auto and grew very nervous, said she recognized the driver.”
“Someone who made her afraid?”
He nodded. “Because of the Troubles.” He could hardly breathe as he explained. “Aunt Megan was originally from Belfast. Her da and brothers were part of the I.R.A.—part of the violence—and she thought this man was a unionist who’d lost one of his children in a bombing. Thought her brothers were responsible.” Empathetic even as a child, he’d felt her fear wrap him in waves, seen the dark vehicle shoot down the street straight toward them. “I remember the auto heading for us. I tripped and would have been hit if my aunt had not acted quickly, lifting me and throwing me out of the way….”
His voice faded as he saw it all happen again. A nightmare in living color.
“Then she was hit?” Ella asked, her voice soft.
Filled with the remorse that would never let up, Tiernan nodded. “I was sprawled on the pavement when the auto ran her down and then just sped away. That fast she was dead.” He could see her again, eyes open, lifeless, expression slack. “’Twas murder, nothing else.”
“How horrible. Did they get the man?”
His vision clearing, Tiernan looked at her. “The gardai didn’t believe me, put what I told them to the wild imaginings of a seven-year-old. I had no name to give them. No description other than the vehicle was black. I knew what I knew, but to them it was nothing. It all happened so fast. If she had not tried to save me—”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Tell that to a seven-year-old.”
He wasn’t seven anymore and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been to blame. Even at a young age, his psychic abilities had been primed. So why hadn’t that worked in his favor? If he’d at least been able to describe the man or had been able to tell the gardai the license plate number, perhaps there would have been justice for the poor woman. No matter how hard he’d tried to get beyond the trauma, he’d seen nothing that made a difference.
“So that’s why you’re so willing to investigate Harold Walks Tall’s death.”
“’Tis why I think every victim is owed some justice,” he admitted.
Ella squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, running his hand lightly up the inside of her arm. Beneath the thin cotton, the flesh felt odd. Tight. Uneven. And suddenly the cotton-covered flesh burned his fingers.
Flushing, she moved her arm away from him. “What about your uncle?” she asked. “Did he believe you?”
Returning his attention to the story, he murmured, “Nah-nah, he simply blamed himself, said it was the prophecy that killed his Megan and he should have known better than to take up with the woman he loved. He never got over it, all his life said it was his fault. He was right, Ella. There is no room for love in a McKenna’s life, not for anyone descended from Donal McKenna, that is.”
“Are you saying you’ve given up on life?” Ella’s forehead was furrowed and she tightened her grip on his hand.
“What would you have me do?”
He met her gaze and shut out the soft emotions she exuded for him. How had this happened? He’d meant to drive her away, not pull her closer.
“Fight for what’s important to you, McKenna. Do whatever you have to do to get what you want!”
“Is that what you’re willing to do, then, Thunder?” he returned. “To find the man responsible for your da’s death?” He challenged her with the one thing he knew would put her back up. It was time that he called in that chip. “You could find the villain if only you would call up the powers your da shared with you.”
“No!” Obviously upset, Ella flew to her feet. “And it’s not the same thing.”
“It doesn’t seem so very different to me. The intent, that is.” Tiernan rose, as well, and faced down the woman who had the power to make him momentarily forget himself. “You’ve already lost your da but fear to use the powers you inherited to get justice, which is what you want. I fear to love a woman because I can’t condemn her.” No matter how much he wanted Ella. “The evil has already happened in your life—your da is dead—so what do you have to lose?”
Her expression stricken, she gasped. “Myself!”
Swallowing, he touched her cheek and for a fleeting moment felt a stronger, deeper, more intense connection than he’d ever had with anyone.
Fighting it, he said, “Fearing being burned as a sorceress is understandable—”
Ella pushed away his hand. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to die, of course, but there are different kinds of deaths. If I try to follow in Father’s footsteps, I don’t know who I will be, what using those powers will make me.”