Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

body.
    And she had no idea what to do about it.
    “What did you tell her?” Niall asked.
    Forcing herself to look away from Eirik, Ciara shook her head. It was not her secret to share, though she was sure once they stopped kissing, Laird Talorc would do so.
    Niall’s face showed a sudden comprehension. “Our lady is carrying again.”
    Ciara nodded just slightly.
    “How did you know?” Eirik asked, his voice drawing her gaze back to him and his eyes trapping it once again.
    “By scent,” Niall answered for her.
    But the dragon shook his head. “No. You just realized the truth. If Ciara shared this Chrechte gift of yours, you would have known by now.”
    Ciara almost laughed again, the assumption that her new clan would have learned all her secrets by now morbidly funny to her. Eirik knew more of her secrets because he’d shared in one of them.
    “She spends more time with our lady,” Guaire argued on Niall’s behalf.
    But Eirik’s expression said he did not accept the argument. “It is something more.”
    Ciara refused to answer the implied question. “If you did not know the news, why did everyone go silent?” she asked instead.
    “You laughed,” Guaire repeated.
    “So?”
    “You never laugh.”
    “Not unless you are entertaining the children and then it is rare enough,” Niall added.
    Heat suffused Ciara’s cheeks. “I laugh.”
    But she didn’t. She knew it. Laughter came from joy and joy came from allowing herself to feel.
    “My wife carrying is reason enough to laugh,” Laird Talorc said, deep satisfaction lacing his voice.
    “Indeed it is,” Eirik acknowledged with an unreadable look at Ciara, before turning to bang their laird on the back in congratulations.
    Within moments the simple latemeal had turned into a celebration. One of the soldiers pulled out a flute and began playing. Another joined in with a bladder pipe and another with a drum. Noisy laughter filled the hall as some jumped up from their tables to engage in a spontaneous dance.
    Eirik and three of his Éan joined the other soldiers and began dancing a warrior’s entertainment unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was a dance, but a mock fight as well, dirks sharpened to such an edge they could have split a baby’s hair were thrust and tossed and caught with such assurance, Ciara could not help clapping along with the rest of the clan.
    The sound of the Éan soldiers’ hardened leather soles stomping on the wooden floor blended with the music, the synchronized movements of their feet adding to the amazing intricacy of the warrior’s dance.
    Ciara had never seen the like and was sure none of the other Sinclairs had, either.
    Abigail’s toneless laughter joined the others and Ciara smiled, an unfamiliar feeling settling in her belly.
    She was happy.
    Unable to remember the last time she had felt this carefree, terror filled her. Like love, happiness came at a cost and in her life that cost had always been pain.
    Terrified at the realization of how close she had allowed herself to grow to the Sinclairs, Ciara jumped to her feet, intent on escape. Those around her misunderstood and thought she meant to join the dancing, the men moving into the formation of a jig.
    Ciara looked wildly around her, but upon seeing the terrible joy on the faces of her adopted family knew she could not leave. She let herself be pulled onto the floor and danced for the first time since her mother’s death.
    It was another hour before she was able to slip out of the great hall unnoticed by the other revelers. Sneaking outside the stone building, Ciara hurried to Abigail’s garden.
    She stopped in front of the patch of rosemary that she and the laird’s wife had planted not long after Ciara arrived at the Sinclair holding. Abigail had told her it was for remembrance, so that Ciara’s memories of her mother could be associated with a fragrant herb rather than blood and death.
    Ciara had been too polite to tell the gentle woman who used to be English that she was mad if she thought it would work, but over the years…this patch of rosemary had helped.
    “We had no gardens like this in the forest. It was not safe to do so.”
    Ciara jumped and spun around at the sound of Eirik’s voice. “I did not hear you arrive.”
    Moonlight glistened off long black hair that shimmered with crimson when the sun shone while his amber eyesglowed with that look that made her feel weak at the knees. Other ravens’ hair glinted blue; it must be