Page 67

“Well?”

After a long, deep breath, he speaks. “In the times we’ve traveled back to, my limp hasn’t happened yet.”

I’m sure in Sionnach’s mind, that’s an answer, or as close as he ever gets to one without prodding. If I can count on anything, it’s his stinginess with information. Before I beg St. Patrick himself for patience, Sionnach continues.

“I took a musket ball to the knee.”

My insides crumble. Not bullet—musket ball. Truths about Sionnach continue to explode in my face like spray from an incoming wave. I’m still digesting the fact that he’s been around in some form for two hundred years.

“I left Ma and Da to make money in Dublin city. I told you our farm was small, an enterprise that eventually stopped putting enough food on the table.” His grunt bounces around the car. “Guess I was born a fool and stayed a fool.”

I find my voice. “Why a fool?”

“A lad my age who ‘seeks his fortune’—” He frowns as he exaggerates the phrase.

From the light of the dashboard, I watch his knuckles whiten on the wheel.

“Either turns soldier or spy.” He bites his bottom lip. “Both get shot at.”

“You were a spy?” What other choice would a fox make? Goosebumps rise across my skin. “When?”

“Just after my twenty-eighth birthday.”

“Sionnach!”

His mouth curls into a rueful smile. “Och. You’ll not be letting anything pass, eh?”

“Nope.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Good. Keeping secrets is a mouthful of dry biscuit you can’t swallow.”

I cross my arms. “Swallow.”

He treats me to an exaggerated gulp. “Ever heard of a shite called Cornwallis?”

“Of course, our Revolutionary War nemesis.”

“The very one.”

“As in surrendered at Yorktown?”

He chuckles. “Forgot I’ve a scholar on my hands.”

I have no clue how to react. My stomach is crumpled paper. Sion is referring to the late 1700s. How am I ever going to wrap my head around him being alive so long ago?

“So, you know the tosser came here after leaving America with his tail between his legs to smash anything Catholic for his nutter of a king?” His eyes slide in my direction for a second, and then he keeps going. “Being a good Catholic sort myself, I worked as the eyes for a certain Father Colm. He trained priests under the nose of the English. He’d do a bit of schooling for the candidates hisself, then the good father smuggled his lads off to Spain to finish. They’d return as full priests dedicated to preserve the faith in Ireland.”

We traveled back to the 1500s to find Matthew Kennedy. Before Sion was born. Before he became a spy for this Father Colm, and before he was shot. Therefore, no limp. Despite pieces of the timeline making sense, it doesn’t even scratch the surface to explain who or what is driving the car.

“But you don’t limp at the soulfall tower or in the Veil forest by the leaning stone.”

He fiddles with the curls over his ears, avoiding my stare. “The Veil is generous with making a person whole when they’re inside its influence.”

My throat turns so dry, words come out in a raw croak. “What are you, Sionnach?” I wave my hands in the air between us to head off his stock answer. “And don’t tell me a Veil guide or time traveler.”

He stares ahead as minutes tick by and then eases the car onto the side of the road so he can face me. “I’m a man who is both young and old, charged with responsibility.” When I open my mouth to comment, he lays three fingers across my lips. “And you are a woman sent to reverse my failures and heal time.”

Slowly, his fingers slide downward, separating my bottom lip from my top before he draws a line under my chin to the hollow at the base of my neck. My body is the foam at the top of a receding wave. “Favor me with a thing, Eala.”