Page 70 of Celtic Love and Legends (Lords of Eire)

She could hear voices.

Voices and footsteps on hard surfaces and somewhere in the distance. Something was beeping.

Destry was fading in and out of consciousness, sleeping on and off, before she finally became lucid.

Her eyes slowly opened.

She was in a room with white walls and a big window to her left. Blinking, she looked around a little more and could see that it was a hospital room. When she tried to move, a shooting pain in her shoulder stopped her.

She gasped.

“Des?”

Aisling was suddenly in her field of vision, looking very concerned. When she realized that Destry’s eyes were open, she gasped herself.

“Oh my God,” she said, putting her hands on Destry’s arm. “You’re awake. Holy shit!”

With that, she scooted over to the door and urgently flagged down a nurse. A young woman in scrubs and with braided blonde hair listened to Aisling’s excited chatter before pulling a pair of sterile gloves out of the box on the wall as she entered the room.

“So,” the nurse said. “You decided to wake up? That’s fantastic. How do you feel?”

She had a thick Irish accent. Destry shifted on the bed, trying to figure out where all of the pain was coming from. “I don’t know,” she mumbled thickly. “What happened?”

“A cave-in,” Aisling said anxiously, standing at the bottom of the bed. “Do you remember going to that ancient mound? Running away and not telling me where you were going?”

Destry thought on that, but her mind was full of cobwebs. “Ancient mound?” she repeated. “What mound? Where in the hell are we?”

“Ireland,” Aisling said. “Remember we came to Ireland?”

Destry nodded, very weakly. “Of course I do,” she said. “Ancient mound… you mean the one in the country? Dowth?”

“That one,” Aisling said, coming around the side of the bed as the nurse checked all the monitors. “The one where you heard the voices. You went back there.”

“I did?”

Aisling nodded. “Conor found you, but there was a cave-in,” she said. “The whole thing just collapsed. We had to dig you out.”

The cobwebs were starting to peel away. “Conor,” Destry said as if she didn’t recognize the name, but suddenly, her eyes widened. “ Conor! Where is he?”

“He went to get a cup of coffee,” Aisling said. “He’s been with you every second, Des. Since this whole thing happened, he hasn’t left your side. Not even at night. He almost got into a fistfight with the doctor when he tried to kick Conor out on the first night.”

“First night?”

“You’ve been out for about six days.”

Destry lay there and tried to settle her whirling mind. Her memory was starting to come back like an avalanche, and she remembered Dowth, the time travel, Padraigan, her boys, and Ciannachta. She remembered every single thing, but here she was in a modern hospital with no memory of how she got here.

Nothing made sense at the moment.

“Six days,” she repeated, stunned. “What are you talking about? What am I doing here?”

“The cave-in knocked you out,” Aisling said. “You had some internal damage. The doctors had to go in and remove your gallbladder. You don’t remember any of this? Not even going to the mound?”

Instinctively, Destry put her hand on her belly, feeling the pain from the wound on her right side, about mid-torso.

Right where she had been stabbed.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered to herself, closing her eyes as she realized something was off. Something was very off. “I don’t know what I remember. I’ve been out for six days?”

“Yes,” Aisling said. “That’s a long time, but with the surgery and everything, I guess your body had a lot to heal from.”

“Christ! Is she awake?”

Destry turned to see Conor standing in the doorway, looking much the same as he did the first time she’d ever seen him—a newsboy cap on his red head, and wearing a sweater and jeans. He had a cup of coffee in his hand, but that ended up on the table as he rushed to the bed, sitting in the chair next to it and putting his arms around Destry.

“Oh my God,” he said, kissing her several times. “You’re awake. You’ve been out so long, I was afraid you weren’t going to wake up at all.”

He was tearing up. Destry put her arms around his neck, as much as she could with the pain on her right side, and held him tightly. “You’re here,” she said. “Thank God you’re here. What in the hell is happening?”

Conor didn’t answer her right away. He simply kissed her a few more times, thrilled and relieved, as Aisling watched with surprise from the other side of the bed.

“Um…” Aisling said after witnessing the fifth or sixth kiss. “Like, what’s going on here? You guys are really happy to see one another, eh?”

Conor started laughing, but Destry wouldn’t let him go. She just wanted to kiss him.

“Hey,” he whispered between kisses. “Aisling doesn’t know about us, so maybe we’d better ease up for now.”

Instead of letting him go, Destry turned to her friend. “We’re madly in love,” she told her. “Couldn’t you figure that out when he drove all the way out to Dowth to find me?”

Aisling looked at her strangely for a moment before shaking her head and turning back to the chair she’d been sitting on.

“No offense to Conor, but you think that’s a good idea?” she said. “I mean, you were jilted at the altar three weeks ago. You really think you’re ready for love so fast?”

Destry looked at Conor, an expression of pure adoration on her face. “I can’t remember when I haven’t loved him,” she said. “I had to come all the way to Ireland just to find my soul mate, but now that I’ve found him, I’m never leaving him.”

Conor grinned and kissed her gently on the cheek as Aisling rolled her eyes and picked up the book she’d been reading.

“Great,” she said. “Well, regardless of what you two are going to do with your newfound love, I’m keeping with the itinerary. Once Des is up and moving, the next place we’re going to is east of Drogheda, an archaeological dig of an ancient kingdom.”

She started flipping through the pages, looking for something in the back section, as Destry remained focused on Conor, her hand on his cheek. She took advantage of the fact that Aisling was occupied with the book to find out what Conor knew of their situation.

“Do you remember what… happened?” she whispered.

He nodded faintly. “You mean a thousand years in the past?

“Yes.”

“So you remember too?”

“Yes, but it feels like a dream.”

“Can you still speak Gaelic?”

“ Is feidir liom .” Yes, I can .

“Then it was no dream.” Conor paused. “Did Aisling tell you what happened when we came back?”

“A cave-in?”

“There was,” he said. “Des, I’ve had six days to figure out what happened, and as near as I can tell, no time passed from the moment I found you in the tunnel at Dowth and the cave-in that expelled me but nearly buried you. According to Aisling, it happened almost immediately after I went in to get you out of the tunnel. But I think the cave-in was caused when Padraigan cast her spell and sent us back.”

Destry laid her head back against the pillow. “I don’t remember any of that,” she said. “I remember some guy attacking me, but after that… nothing. What happened?”

Conor sighed. “A lot,” he said. “I’ll tell you more when we’re alone.”

He meant Aisling. Destry understood that, so she nodded. “But you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Destry put her hand down to her torso. “Aisling said I had an operation.”

He nodded. “You did,” he said. “The doctors said the cave-in damaged your abdomen. They said a sharp end of a rock must have punctured you.”

“It was a knife.”

“I know,” he said softly. He was gazing deeply into her bright blue eyes, seeing how bewildered she was. “It really happened, Des, all of it. I had to bring you back here—and Padraigan had to cast a spell to send us back through the time portal to save your life. If we’d remained in Ciannachta, you would have died.”

Hearing the details of how she ended up here, Destry started to tear up. “Oh, God,” she muttered. “I took you away from your destiny.”

“That’s not true.”

“You came back because of me!”

“I came back for you.”

“What are you two mumbling about over there?” Aisling said.

“Nothing,” Destry said, wiping her tears. “What’s that book about?”

Aisling evidently didn’t think it was too important to pursue what they’d been whispering about. She was looking at the back of the book.

“It’s a guidebook for ancient sites,” she said. “But it has a lot of history in it. We’re supposed to go to the dig at the ancient kingdom at Ciannachta, which was really ancient Drogheda. Ciannachta has one of the biggest archaeological digs in Ireland because it was a city at the center of a tenth-century power struggle.”

As soon as Aisling mentioned Ciannachta, she had Destry’s attention. Destry had seen their itinerary before they ever came to Ireland, and she remembered the Drogheda dig, but not the Ciannachta name. It suddenly occurred to her that the two were one and the same, with Ciannachta being the ancient name for Drogheda.

She was staring at Aisling with a rather startled look as Conor spoke.

“I know of Ciannachta,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was on your tour schedule.”

Aisling nodded, still reading. “We were supposed to go right after we visited Dowth,” she said. Then she lowered the book and looked at Destry. “You know, we were supposed to fly out of here in two days. I had to call the airlines and reschedule until next week because the doctors said you shouldn’t fly right now.”

Destry shook her head. “You can still go home,” she said. “But me… I’m staying.”

Aisling looked at Conor, knowing he was the reason for Destry’s desire to remain, and shrugged. She turned back to the book.

“Whatever you want to do,” she said. “But I’m going to finish this tour. It says in the book that Ciannachta was the prelude to Drogheda. The power struggle in the tenth century was between family factions, evidently, but one faction won out, and Ciannachta became a weirdly progressive city with a type of welfare system for its citizens, among other things. The king was called Mattock the Enlightened, and he ruled for about seventy years, making him one of the longest-ruling high kings in Ireland’s history. The reason for the archeological dig is because it’s one of the most revered cities in Ireland, and the castle is well preserved. They’ve got enormous kitchens and a big weapons collection. Hey, that’s cool. I’d like to see that.”

As Aisling continued reading aloud about Ciannachta before moving on to another area they were supposed to visit, Destry turned her head away from her friend and put her hand over her face.

Conor could see that she was sobbing silently, and he knew why.

Mattock the Enlightened.

That manipulative, sweet little boy they’d left behind had done something great.

It was astonishing.

“I haven’t had the courage to read about Ciannachta since we came back,” Conor said quietly, holding her hand and whispering against her fingers. “I’ve been too concerned about you. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Aisling is reading about it right now, does it?”

Destry shook her head, still weeping over the success of their eldest boy. “There are no coincidences in our life,” she whispered. “Everything that has happened to us has happened for a reason.”

Conor kissed her hand as she struggled with her composure. “Padraigan told me that she thought I was the king of prophecy,” he said. “As it turns out, it was my son. I guess he just needed me to get the ball rolling.”

Destry wiped her eyes. “You did great things, Conor. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“I set an example, at least,” he said. “Before we left, I told Padraigan and Auley to take care of the boys. We know they were in good hands, so I’m really not surprised to hear that he was a good king.”

“Maybe Auley and Padraigan finally got married, after all.”

“You knew about the romance, did you?”

“I’ve got eyes, Conor. I could see what was going on.”

“I hope they got married, too.”

“I miss them all.”

“Me too,” Conor said. “But most importantly, we fulfilled a destiny. You and I did something that shaped the fate of a kingdom. A country, even. Not everybody can say that.”

Destry looked at him, her eyes red and watery, but the expression on her face was one of joy. “I never knew it was my calling,” she said. “I feel like every experience in my life lined up for this particular moment in time. But it still seems surreal, you know?”

“I know,” he said. Then he slipped a hand onto her tender belly. “Oh, and by the way—the doctor says the pregnancy is fine. He says it’s really early, but he doesn’t think there was any damage.”

Destry chuckled. “I forgot to even ask if I had imagined that.”

“You didn’t.”

“Then how are we going to explain that to Aisling?” she said. “Or to my parents? If this baby goes full term, it’ll still look like it’s about six weeks early.”

Conor shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I suppose.”

“Are we ever going to tell anyone about our adventure?”

“Would they believe us?”

“Probably not,” Destry said. “We can use a test subject and see, though.”

Conor looked over at Aisling, who was seriously studying the guidebook. “She’ll never believe it.”

“Let me try.”

“You’re going to tell her about time travel, witches, wizards, magic, and Vikings?”

“Now that you say it out loud, it does sound a little strange.”

“A little?”

“A lot .”

Conor chuckled at her, but in the end, he was right. Aisling listened to the wild story of magic, time travel, and Ireland and refused to believe any of it. But she did return to America, and to their mutual friends, with a tale of a great adventure in Ireland and a new love for Destry. A new love that wasn’t so new, after all. A love that had been Destry’s destiny in this lifetime and many others. Two souls that had found each other once again.

The high king and his queen that not even the nether realm could separate.

Love, for Conor and Etain, was truly immortal.

* THE END? *