Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

but Ciara had found herself unable to tell the human woman such.
    She’d merely spoken her thanks and come down the next morning wearing a similar outfit to the one she’d worn every day since. Abigail had made herself a matching tartan and bodice, showing the world they were family, if not by blood.
    Ciara pulled out the Donegal plaid and laid it on her bed, then unfolded it to reveal the sword within. With emeralds the same deep green of those on her dirk and the size of her thumb decorating the hilt, it was easily more than half as tall as she was.
    It had been her brother’s, and their father’s before that, and their grandfather’s before that. She did not know how long it had been in their family, but the heavy bronze shone with years of care.
    The raised images of a conriocht , a dragon and a griffin surrounded the grip. The conriocht was in the center, with a smaller emerald than the ones on the hilt above the beast’s head. The dragon clutched an amber stone in his claws and the griffin had a deep blue sapphire under a forepaw.
    The sword was heavy and solid, a fitting sword for a king, she’d always thought.
    Ciara’s knees turned to water and she sank to the floor beside the bed.
    A sword fit for a king.
    But surely if he was descendant of the original Faol kings, Ciara’s father would have been laird. He had not been a leader, though. He’d been loyal to the laird before Rowland and transferred that loyalty to the laird that did so much to hurt the Donegal clan.
    Her father had been long dead by the time Barr had taken over as acting laird of the Donegal clan at the order of Scotland’s king.
    And Galen had already been firmly under Wirp and Luag’s influence.
    Barr had rescued their clan from the leadership of an evil but powerful Chrechte, but not in time to save her brother. Barr had done his best to save Ciara though, and she would always be grateful.
    She ran her hand over the conriocht on the sword. Whenhad the last true conriocht walked the earth? Had it been one of her ancestors? Had he been a good man, or corrupted by his lust for power like Rowland? How long ago had the wolves lost their sacred stone?
    And how? Apparently, the Éan still had their stone, so how could the wolves have lost something so precious?
    Had it been taken by the Éan, like her brother claimed? Or the other people of the Chrechte, the Paindeal…those that shared their nature with the big cats of prey.
    The elders always said the stories of the Paindeal were myth, but then the Faol that did not hunt them had believed the Éan a myth these many generations.
    Ciara grasped the sword, her hand butt up against the hilt. Oddly, the metal felt hot against her skin, though her bedchamber was still cool from the night’s drop in temperature. It would not warm until later in the day when the sun moved to this side of the keep.
    The sword should be cool as well.
    Only its handle grew even warmer against Ciara’s palm. And it could have been a trick of the light, though she was not sure how…but the emeralds on the hilt seemed to glow .
    Ciara closed her eyes against this indication of Chrechte magic and a childhood in which she’d been kept in the dark about the truth of her ancestors.
    Not only had her father wished she were a son, but he had hidden her family’s history from her. Certainty that he had shared it all with Galen only made the ache in her heart hurt worse.
    Because for all that Galen loved her, he had kept these secrets from her as well. He had not thought she was important enough to know the truth of her lineage.
    Silent tears trickled down her cheeks as Ciara wished for the connection to her past they’d seen fit to hide from her.
    Suddenly, she was no longer sitting on the floor of her bedchamber, but standing deep in a cave lit by several torches sticking out from the smooth stone walls. An old woman wearing nothing but a leather loincloth crouched on the ground in the center of the cave.
    Her wrinkled body was marked with crude tattoos similar, but more simplified, to the ones the Chrechte marked themselves with to indicate their first shift, matings and positions of leadership. The plain outline of a wolf was tattooed over her heart. Though she was a woman, her arm was marked with a band like that of a pack alpha. Only hers did not have a wolf on it, but the symbol for the Creator, God.
    Was she the spiritual leader then? A kelle , like the old stories told about, women who were both