Tír na nÓg Trilogy, Book II: The Rising Dark

Tess Gets Embarrassed

She should've told Tess, at least, but Emery ended up being too conflicted to say anything to anyone. If she mentioned her dream to Tess, she reasoned, Tess would tell Cathbad, and of course he'd tell Cullen, and then Cullen would freak out and try to restrict her or turn around and head back to Dun-Dealgan—no, best to tell no one about Charlie until she could figure out what it'd meant, if it had meant anything at all. But then, she was sure it had. The dream had been too real; she'd woken from it still wrapped in the warmth from Charlie's body, his words still in her ear. And wasn't it true of dreams that, when you were in them, you didn't know it? So how could Charlie have told her it was a dream? Because it wasn't just a dream. That was the only possible answer. Charlie had needed to deliver a message to her, and he'd done it the only way he probably could. Surely that witch wouldn't have let him come to her, so he'd found a way to meet her in a dream.

How he'd known about Fear Doirich, she had no idea, and what he'd meant by the right answer and no one caring but her was just as mysterious. But one thing was clear: Charlie didn't want Cullen interfering. Emery wasn't sure how to feel about that, either. She was consistently flustered with or angry at Cullen, but she'd never thought he was a bad person, exactly. If she'd thought he was evil, she wouldn't have stayed with him. The way Charlie had spoken of him, though, with such disdain--and he hadn't even needed to speak Cullen's name for Emery to recognize his hatred of him.

To be fair, Charlie hadn't liked Cullen in their other world, either, and for good reason. And the way everything had ended, with Charlie getting kidnapped and potentially being tortured while she headed off to Dun-Dealgan with Cullen--well, it was no surprise Charlie was bitter. But the way he'd sounded, Emery was afraid she'd have to either lie to or go against Cullen in order to help Charlie, and she wasn't completely comfortable with that notion. She'd defied him before, but it'd been for her own selfish reasons, not to help someone that disliked him.

Then, though, there were parts of the dream that hadn't been real, which made her wonder at the validity of all of it. Certainly the dead bodies hadn't been real because she'd woken up to a lively, sunny camp that morning. Tess hadn't been in the tent, which had freaked Emery out at first, but she'd quickly found her up and moving around outside Cathbad's tent, trying to help him pack it up. When she'd asked Tess why she hadn't come back, Tess had smiled absently to herself, claimed she'd just fallen asleep talking to the druid. Emery had only raised her eyebrows. While she had zero interest in the druid beyond his usefulness and their friendship, she resented him at the moment. She resented his need to tell Cullen everything, and she resented that he was taking Tess's attention away from her.

All these thoughts and more crowded Emery's mind as her horse plodded along amongst the others, the bright blue sky and chirping birds incongruous with her mood.

"Why have you been so quiet?" Tess asked. "You're not mad at me, are you?"

Emery gave her friend a weak smile. "No, no. I'm definitely not mad at you."

"Oh, good. Because I feel bad for leaving you last night."

"You shouldn't." Emery looked at the riders ahead of them, the Red Branch with Cullen at their front, towering above all the others on Dub Sainglend, the back of his head thick with an auburn knot, the lobes of his ears visible against the shaved sides of his scalp. Emery's thoughts went to Charlie's voice at her ear--don't let him stop you.

"See, you've got that look again!" Tess half-laughed. "Should I be worried? What are you thinking about?"

"I don't know," Emery replied in honesty. "I'm just . . . not sure about a lot of things."

"We'll get through this, together, Em. I'm here, all right?"

How truthful was she being, really? "Has Cat told you anything else about Charlie?"