Page 39

We nodded together—any gesture we made wehadto do as one.

"But these two, they do not love each other," Macha said.

I looked at them more closely, I reached out with my spirit and touched their souls. "The passion between them, it's steeped in rage. It's almost like they've come together as little more than a release."

"I still hate her," Macha said.

I chuckled to myself. "But you can feel it, can't you? When they are together he's completely miserable."

"That's because his heart aches for another..."

"It's not love he feels," Anand said. "It's loss. It's the ache of his heart that calls us."

"But this woman, this other creature who is like him..."

"He doesn't love her," Macha said.

"I know," I said, grinning for all of us. "But I think we can use her... she can help him secure the revenge he seeks."

I didn't know how it happened—even as I considered this young warrior, the man who was also a wolf, I saw visions of his own memories. The love he lost. Most recently, a young lady—whose father had given her to another. But there was a pain deeper than that, still. It was buried beneath years of attempts to forget her, a thousand tales the warrior told in hopes of forgetting her...

"He's in love with a faerie," Macha said.

Anand laughed. "It's a good thing we're a shapeshifter..."

"It won't work," Macha said. "He won't be able to love us so long as his heart is still tied to the real faerie princess. If we appear as the faerie, he'll see through it..."

"We need a strategy," I said. "A way to unravel his past... to resolve his love lost with both the young lady to whom he'd hoped to marry and the faerie he'd met once before."

"I have a plan," Anand said. "But it isn't going to be easy..."

"But we must be certain," I said. "That thisisthe mortal we desire..."

"I agree," Macha said. "The Dagda said when a god or goddess loves, that love will last forever."

"Perhaps one whose heart has missed its chance at love so many times will fall more easily once love is finally in reach."

Anand and Macha seemed convinced that this warrior, this monster, this poet... that he was the one. I, as Babd, was less convinced. Not that I wasn't drawn to him. It wasn't even that I didn't find him attractive. I was as obsessed over this warrior as either of my sisters. And what they felt in our body I felt, too...

But the path we were following, the way we'd have to secure this man's love. Should he catch us in our scheme it was just as likely to spurn his affections as it would be to win them. But even as I tried to convince myself otherwise, even as I tried to talk myself out of it, the more I watched him, it was too late.

I loved him already. All of us did.