Prologue

Three minutes to five. In three minutes it will all begin, Morgan Rowlands thought, wrapping her hands around her heavy mug of steaming tea. She swallowed hard, refusing to start crying until later, when she knew she wouldn't be able to help it. "Cool the fire," she whispered, circling her left hand widdershins, counterclockwise, over her tea. She took an experimental sip, trying to wash down the lump in her throat.

She gazed out the plate-glass window of the small tea shop in Aberystwyth, Wales, where she and Hunter Niall had agreed to meet. It was darkening outside, though it was barely five o'clock. After living in Ireland for three years, Morgan was used to the early darkness from heavy clouds, but she sometimes missed the stark cold and thick, glittering snow of upstate New York, where she had grown up.

Heavy raindrops began to smack against the window. Morgan took a deep breath, the weather outside reflecting her emotions inside. Usually she welcomed the rain as the main reason that Ireland and Wales both were so incredibly lush and green. Tonight it seemed dreary, dismal, depressing because of what she was about to do-break up with the person she loved most in the world, her muirn beatha dan. Her soul mate.

Her stomach was tight, her hands tense on the table. Hunter. Oh, Goddess, Hunter. It had been almost four months since they'd been able to meet in the airport in Toronto- for only six hours. And three months before that, in Germany. They'd had two whole days together then.

Morgan shook her head, consciously releasing her breath in a long, controlled sigh. Relax. If I relax and let thoughts go, the Goddess shows me where to go. If I relax and let things be, all of life is clear to see.

She closed her eyes and deliberately uncoiled every muscle, from her head on down to her icy toes in her damp boots. Soon a soothing sense of warmth expanded inside her, and she felt some of the tension leave her body

The brass bell over the shop door jangled and was followed almost instantly by a blast of frigid air. Morgan opened her eyes in time to have her light blocked by a tall, heart-breakingly familiar figure. Despite everything, her heart expanded with joy and a smile rose to her face. She stood as he came closer, his angular face lighting up when he saw her. He smiled, and the sight of his open, welcoming expression sliced right through her.

"Hey, Morgan. Sorry I'm late," Hunter said, his English accent blunted by fatigue.

She took him in her arms, holding him tightly, not caring that his long tweed overcoat was soaked with icy rain. Hunter leaned down, Morgan went on tiptoe, and their mouths met perfectly in the middle, the way they always did. When they separated, Morgan stroked a finger down his cheek. "Long time no see," she said, her voice catching. Hunter's eyes instantly narrowed-even aside from his powers of sensing emotion as a blood witch, he knew Morgan more intimately than anyone. Morgan cleared her throat and sat down. Still watching her, Hunter sat also, his coat sprin-kling raindrops onto the linoleum floor around his chair. He swept his old-fashioned tweed cap off his head and ran a hand through his fine, white-blond hair.

Morgan drank in his appearance, her gaze roaming over every detail. His face was pale with winter, his eyes as icy green as the Irish Sea not three blocks away. His hair was longer than Morgan had ever seen it and looked choppy, uneven.

"It's good to see you," Hunter said, smiling at the obvious understatement. Under the table he edged his knee over until it rested against hers.

"You too," Morgan said. Did her anguish already show on her face? She felt as if the pain of her decision must surround her like an aura, visible to anyone who knew her. "I got tea for two-want some?"

"Please," he said, and Morgan poured the spare mug full of tea.

Hunter stood up and dropped his wet coat over the back of his chair. He took a sip of tea, stretched, and rolled his shoulders. Morgan knew he had just come in from Norway.

What to say? How to say it? She had rehearsed this scene for the last two weeks, but now that she was here, going through with it felt like revolting against her very being. And in a sense, it was true. To end a relationship with her muirn beatha dan was fighting destiny.

It had been four years since she had first met Hunter, Morgan mused. She absently turned her silver claddagh ring, on the ring finger of her right hand. Hunter had given her this ring when she was seventeen, he nineteen. Now he was twenty-three and a man, tall and broad-shouldered-no longer a lanky teenager, the "boy genius" witch hired as the youngest Seeker for the International Council of Witches.

And she was no longer the naive, love-struck high schooler who had just discovered her legacy as a blood witch and was struggling to learn to control her incredible powers. She'd come a long way in the few years since the summer after her junior year of high school, when she'd first learned there were actually a few surviving members of her mother's coven, Belwicket. She'd been spending the summer studying in Scotland when they came to her, finally able to reveal themselves after the dark wave was defeated and- more importantly- Ciaran MacEwan was stripped of his powers. They'd told her how they'd survived the destruction of their coven by escaping to Scotland, where they'd been hiding for decades. When they'd heard of Morgan's existence, they'd come to enlist her help in rebuilding the coven that had shaped their families for hundreds of years. And she'd been doing just that since moving to Ireland a year after her graduation from high school, and loving every moment-except for the fact that being in Cobh meant being apart from Hunter.

Hunter reached across the table and took her hand. Morgan felt desperate, torn, yet she knew what she had to do, what had to happen. She had gone over this a thousand times. It was the only decision that made sense.

"What's the matter?" he asked gently. "What's wrong?" Morgan looked at him, this person who was both intimately familiar and oddly mysterious. There had been a time when she'd seen him every single day, when she'd been close enough to know if he'd cut himself shaving or had a sleepless night. Now he had the thin pink line of a healed wound on the curve of his jaw, and Morgan had no idea where or when or how he had gotten it.

She shook her head, knowing she couldn't be a coward, knowing that in the end, with the way things were, they had to pursue their separate destinies. In a minute she would tell him. As soon as she could talk without crying.

As if making a conscious decision to let it go for a moment, Hunter ran his hand through his hair again and looked into Morgan's eyes. "So I spoke to Alwyn about her engagement," he said, refilling his mug from the pot on the table.

"Yes, she seems happy," Morgan said. "But you-"

"I told her about my concerns," Hunter jumped in. "She's barely nineteen. I talked to her about waiting, but what do I know? I'm only her brother." He gave the wry smile that Morgan knew so well.

"He's a Wyndenkell, at least," Morgan said with a straight face. "We can all thank the Goddess for that."

Hunter grinned. "Uncle Beck is so pleased." Hunter's uncle, Beck Eventide, had raised Hunter, his younger brother, Linden, and Alwyn after their parents had disappeared when Hunter was eight. Hunter was sure that Uncle Beck had always blamed Hunter's father, a Woodbane, for his troubles.

"Anything but a Woodbane," Morgan managed to tease. She herself was a full-blood Woodbane and knew firsthand the kind of prejudice most Wiccans had against her ancestral clan. "Right," said Hunter, his eyes still on her.

They were silent for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. Then Hunter finally said, "Please tell me what's wrong. You feel weird."

He knows me too well, Morgan thought. Hunter was feeling her uneasiness, her sadness, her regret.

"Are you ill?"

Morgan shook her head and tucked a few bangs behind one ear. "No-I'm okay. It's just-I needed to see you. To talk to you."

"It's always too long between times," Hunter said. "Sometimes I go crazy with it."

Morgan looked into his eyes, saw the flare of passion and longing that made her throat close and her stomach flutter.

"Me too," Morgan said, seizing the opening. "But even though it's making us crazy, we seem to be able to see each other less and less."

"Too true," Hunter said, rubbing his hand over his chin and the days' worth of stubble there. "This has not been a good year for us."

"Well, it's been good for us separately," Morgan said. "You're practically running the New Charter yourself, setting up offices all over the world, working with the others on guidelines. What you're doing is incredibly important. It's going to change how witches interact with each other, with their communities…." She shook her head. The old council was now barely more than a symbolic tradition. Too many witches had objected to its increasingly autonomous and even secretive programs to search out witches who were misusing magickal power. In response to that, Hunter and a handful of other witches had created the New Charter. It was less a policing organization than a support system to rehabilitate errant witches without having their powers stripped. It now included improving witches' standings in their communities, education, public relations, help with historical research. Wicca was being pulled into the twenty-first century, thanks in large part to Hunter.

"There's no way you could stop now," Morgan said. "And me… Belwicket is becoming more and more important to me. I really see my future as being there. It supports the work I want to do with healing, and maybe someday I could become high priestess-a Riordan leading Belwicket again."

Morgan's birth mother, Maeve Riordan, had died when Morgan was a baby. If she had lived, she would have been high priestess of her clan's ancestral coven, Belwicket, just as her mother, Mackenna, had, and her mother before her.

"Is that what you'll be happy doing?" Hunter asked.

"It seems to be my destiny," Morgan responded, her fingers absently rubbing the cuff of his sweater. Just as you are, she thought. What did it mean to face two destinies that led in opposite directions? "And yes, it makes me happy. It's incredibly fulfilling, being part of the coven that my birth mother would have led. Even though we're now on the other side of Ireland from the original one, the whole experience is full of my family's history, my relatives, people I never had a chance to know. But it means I stay there, commit myself to staying in Cobh, commit myself to making my life there for the foreseeable future."

"Uh-huh," Hunter said, a wariness coming into his eyes.

Now that she had gotten this far, Morgan forced herself to press on. "So I'm there. And you're… everywhere. All over. Meanwhile we're seeing each other every four months for six hours. In an airport." She looked around. "Or a tea shop."

"You're leading up to something," Hunter said dryly.

Over the last four years she and Hunter had talked about the distance between them many times. Each conversation had been horrible and heartbreaking, but they had never managed to resolve anything. They were soul mates; they were meant to love each other. But how could they do that when they were usually a continent apart? And how could that change when each of them was dedicated, and rightfully so, to their life's work?

Morgan didn't see any way to make it work. Not without one of them giving up their chosen path. She could give up Belwicket and follow Hunter around the world while he worked for the New Charter. But she feared that the joy of being with him would be tempered by her frustration of not pursuing her own dream and her guilt that she was letting down her coven-and even her birth mother, whom she'd never known. And then what good would she be to Hunter? She didn't want to make his life miserable. And if she asked him to give up the New Charter and stay with her in Ireland, he would be in the same position-thrilled to be with her, torn that he couldn't be true to a meaningful calling of his own. She couldn't ask him to do that.

Breaking up-for good-seemed like the fairest thing for both of them. She wanted Hunter to be happy above all else. If she set him free, he would have the best chance of that. Even though the idea of never holding him, kissing him, laughing with him, even just sitting and looking at him again seemed almost like a living death, still, Morgan believed it was for the best, ultimately. There seemed to be no way for them to be together; they had to do the best they could on their own.

Back at home Colm Byrne, a member of Belwicket, had confessed he was in love with her. She liked him and he was a great guy, but he wasn't her muirn beatha dan. There was no way he would ever touch what she felt for Hunter, and she wasn't breaking up with Hunter to be with Colm or anyone else, for that matter. This wasn't about that. This was about freeing herself and Hunter to give all of themselves to their work and freeing them from the pain of constantly longing for these achingly brief reunions.

"Hunter-I just can't go on like this. We can't go on like this." Her throat tightened and she released his hand. "We need to-just end it. Us."

Hunter blinked. "I don't understand," he said. "We can't end us. Us is a fact of life."

"But not for the lives we're living now." Morgan couldn't even look at him.

"Morgan, breaking up isn't the answer. We love each other too much. You're my muirn beatha dan-we're soul mates."

That did it. A single tear escaped Morgan's eye and rolled down her cheek. She sniffled.

"I know," she said in frustration. "But trying to be together isn't working either. We never see each other, our lives are going in two different directions-how can we have a future? Trying to pretend there is one is bogging us both down. If we really, really say this is it, then we'll both be free to do what we want, without even pretending that we have to take the other one into consideration."

Hunter was silent, looking first at Morgan, then around at the little tea shop, then out the black window with the rain streaking down.

"Is that what you want?" he asked slowly. "For us to go our own separate ways without even pretending we have to think of each other?"

"It's what we're already doing," Morgan said, feeling as if she was going to break apart from grief. "I'm not saying we don't love each other. We do-we always will. I just can't take hoping or wishing for something different. It's not going to be different." That was when her voice broke. She leaned her head against her hand and took some deep breaths.

Hunter's finger absently traced a pattern on the tabletop, and after a moment Morgan recognized it as a rune. The rune for strength. "So we'll make lives without each other, we'll commit to other people, we won't ever be lovers again."

His quiet, deliberate words felt like nails piercing her heart, her mind. Goddess, just get me through this. Get me through this, she thought. Morgan nodded, blinking in an unsuccessful attempt to keep more tears from coming to her eyes.

"That's what you want." His voice was very neutral, and Morgan, knowing him so well, knew that meant huge emotions were battling inside him.

"That's what we have already," she whispered. "This is not being lovers. I don't know what this is."

"All right," Hunter said. "All right. So you want me to settle down, is that it? In Cobh? Make a garden with you? Get a cat?" His voice didn't sound harsh-more despairing, as if he were truly trying to understand.

"That's not what I'm saying," Morgan said, barely audibly. "I want you to do what you want to do, what you need to do. I want you to be happy, to be fulfilled. I'm saying that I know that won't be with me in Cobh, with a garden and a cat." She brushed the sleeve of her sweater over her eyes.

Hunter was quiet. Morgan pulled the long ends of her sweater sleeves over her hands and leaned her face against them. Once this was over, she would breathe again. She would go back to the bed-and-breakfast, get in the shower, and cry.

"What if… things were different?" Hunter said at last.

Morgan drew a pained breath. "But things aren't different."

"Things are up to you and me," Hunter said. "You act like this is beyond our control. But we can make choices. We can change our priorities."

"What are you talking about?" Morgan wiped her eyes, then forced herself to take a sip of tea. It was thin and bitter.

Quickly Hunter reached across the table and took her hands in his, his grip like stone. "I think we need to change our priorities. Both of us."

"To what?" How could he manage to always keep her so off-kilter, even after four years?

"To each other," Hunter said.

Morgan stared at him, speechless.

"Morgan," Hunter went on, lowering his voice and leaning closer to her,"I've been doing a lot of thinking, too. I love what I'm doing with the New Charter, but I've realized it just doesn't mean much without you there to share it with me. I know we're two very different people. We have different dreams, different goals. Our backgrounds are very different, our families… But you know we belong together. / know we belong together-I always have. You're my soul mate-my muirn beatha dan."

Morgan started crying silently. Oh, Goddess, she loved him so much. "I knew when I met you that you were the one for me," Hunter said, his voice reaching only her ears. "I knew it when I disliked you, when I didn't trust you, when I feared your power and your inability to control it. I knew it when you learned Ciaran MacEwan was your father. I knew it when you were in love with my bastard half brother, Cal. I've always known it: you are the one for me."

"I don't understand. What are you saying?" It was frightening, how much she still wanted to hope they could be together. It was such a painful hope. She felt his hands holding hers like a vise-as strong as the hold he had on her heart.

"You came here to break up with me forever," Hunter answered. "I won't stop you, if that's what you want. I want you to be happy. But if there's any way you think you can be happy with me, as opposed to without me, then I'm asking you to try."

"But how? We've been over this." Morgan said, completely confused.

"No, not this," said Hunter. "This definitely needs to change. But I can change. I can change whatever I need to if it means that you'll be with me."

Morgan could do nothing but stare. "With you in what way?"

Hunter turned her hand over and traced the carvings of her claddagh ring. "In every way. As my partner, the mother of my children. Every way there is. I need you. You're my life, wherever you are, whatever you're doing."

Morgan quit breathing.

"Look, the one constant in our lives is our love," he said. "It seems like we're squandering our most precious gift- having a soul mate. If we let that slip away, nothing else will make sense." Morgan gaped at him, a splinter of sunlight seeming to enter her heart. Oh, Goddess, please. Please.

He went on. "I can phase out the field work I'm doing for the New Charter. There's any number of things I can do based out of Cobh. We could live together, make a life together, wake up with each other more often than not with each other. I want to see you grow old, I want us to grow old together. I want to have a family with you. There can be cats involved, if you like."

Could this possibly be true? Could this really be happening? After her despair of the last two weeks the sudden, overwhelming joy Morgan felt seemed almost scary.

"I still have Dagda," was all that Morgan could think of to say. Her once-tiny gray kitten was now a hulking sixteen- pounder who had developed a distinct fondness for Irish mice. "But-can you do this? Do you really mean it?"

Hunter grinned. It was the most beautiful thing that Morgan had ever seen. He moved his chair till they were close, side by side. His arm went around her waist, and she leaned against his warmth, his comfort, his promise. The faded half life she had resigned herself to had just burst into brilliant colors. It was almost too much. It was everything.

"Do you want to be with me, Morgan?" he said softly. "You're my heart's love, my heart's ease. Will you join me in handfasting-will you be my wife?"

"Oh, yes. Yes," Morgan whispered, then rested her head against his shoulder.

Dawn. Dawn is the most magickal time of day, followed of course by sunset, Morgan thought dreamily. She stretched her feet toward Hunter's warmth and let sheer happiness, hopefulness, and contentment wash over her like a wave of comfort. From her bed Morgan could see a small rectangle of sky, pale gray, streaked with pink. It was the dawn of a whole new life, Morgan exulted. The life where she and Hunter would always be together. They would have a hand- fasting, she thought with a shiver of mixed awe and delight. They might have children. Goddess, Goddess, had anyone ever been so happy? Her eyes drifted closed, a smile still on her face.

"Sweet," Hunter whispered, kissing her ear. Morgan reluctantly opened her eyes, then frowned as she realized Hunter was out of bed and already dressed.

"What are you doing?" she demanded sleepily. "Come back here." Hunter laughed and kissed a line of warmth beneath her ear.

"My last New Charter meeting, over in Wexford," he explained. "I'm taking the eight-oh-five ferry. I'll do my meeting, tell them to get a replacement, and be back by dinnertime at the latest. We can go get some of that fried stuff you love, all right?"

"All right," Morgan said, stretching luxuriously.

She saw a familiar roguish gleam in his eyes as he watched her stretch, then curl up again under the covers. He looked at his watch, and she laughed. "You don't have time," she told him.

"Love you," he said, grinning, opening the door.

"Love you, too," Morgan replied. "Forever."

Morgan felt as if she'd closed her eyes for only a moment when she was awoken by a loud banging. Frowning, she looked at her watch. Eight-twenty. So Hunter had been gone only half an hour. What was all that noise? She sat up. The lash of rain made her look over at the window. It was pouring outside, thundering and lightning. So odd after the clear dawn.

Downstairs, people were shouting and running, and doors were banging. What could possibly be the matter? A fire? There was no alarm. Had the roof sprung a leak? That wouldn't cause this much commotion.

In a minute Morgan had pulled on her jeans and sweater and shoved her feet into her boots. She put her head out the doorway and sniffed. No smell of fire. She cast her senses, sending her consciousness out around her. She picked up only choppy, confused feelings-panic, fear. She grabbed her coat and trotted downstairs.

"Help!" someone was shouting. "Help! If you've got a boat, we need it! Every able-bodied seaman! Get to the harbor!"

A man in a burly coat brushed past Morgan and ran out the door, following the man who had shouted the alarm.

"What's going on?" Morgan asked the desk clerk. The woman's lined face was drawn taut with worry, her black hair making her face look even paler. "What's happened?"

Outside the front door two more men ran past, their hats pulled low against the driving rain. Morgan heard one shout, "Get to the harbor!"

"The ferry," said the woman, starting to tie a scarf around her head. "The ferry's gone down in the storm."

The icy rain felt like needles pelting her face as Morgan tore down the cobbled road toward the harbor. The three blocks seemed to take half an hour to run, and with every second an endless stream of thoughts raced through Morgan's head. Please let Hunter have been late, for once in his life. Please let it be a different ferry. Please let no one be hurt Please let Hunter be late. He's missed the ferry, he's missed the ferry, he's missed the ferry….

Down at the harbor the driving rain obscured vision, and at first Morgan could see only people running around and men starting the engines in their fishing boats. Then the local fire truck screamed up, looking ridiculously small and inadequate for this disaster. Morgan grabbed an older man's arm, hard, and hung on. "What happened?" she shouted, the wind tearing her voice away.

"The ferry went down!" he shouted back, trying to tug his arm free so he could go help.

"Which ferry?" An icy hand was slowly closing around Morgan's heart. She forced herself to have hope.

The man stared at her. "The only ferry! The eight-oh-five to Wexford!" Then he yanked his arm free, and Morgan watched numbly as he ran down a pier and jumped onto a fishing boat that was just pulling out into the choppy, white-capped waves.

This isn't happening. I'm going to wake up any minute. I know I'll wake up soon. Slowly Morgan turned in a circle, the rough wet stones beneath her feet making her feel off balance. Silently she begged for Hunter to come running toward her, a bag in his hand, having missed the ferry because he'd stopped to get a muffin, or tea, or anything. She cast out her senses. Nothing. She sent a witch message. Hunter, Hunter, come to me, come to me, I'm here, waiting. Nothing.

Rain soaked her hair, and the harsh wind whipped strands of it across her face. Morgan stood at the edge of the concrete pier, a heavy, rusty chain making a bone-chilling scraping sound as the wind pushed it to and fro. She closed her eyes and let her hands fall open at her sides. With experience born of years of practice, she sank quickly into a meditative state, going beneath the now, the outside, time itself, going deep to where time and thought and energy and magick blended to become one.

Gomanach. Her whole being focused on Hunter's name, his eyes, his scent, the feel of his skin, his smile, his laugh, his anger, his passion. In seconds she relived years of memories with him — Hunter fighting Cal, herself throwing an athame at Hunter's neck, him toppling over the cliff to the cold river below. Hunter placing sigils of protection around her parents' house, his fair hair glinting in the moonlight. Hunter holding her, wrapping his coat around her after she had shape-shifted. She had lain weeping in his arms, feeling as if her bones had snapped their joints, her muscles ripped in half. His voice, murmuring soothing spells to take away her pain and fear. She and Hunter, making love for the first time, the wonder of it, the beauty, the shock of pain and discomfort as they joined their bodies and their hearts. His eyes, wide and green above her. Other snatches of memories flew past, image after image; a remembered laugh, an emotion; a scent; the phase of the moon; circles of magick; witches wearing robes; Hunter's glowing aura; Hunter arguing, angry; Hunter crying silently as Morgan broke down.

"An nail nathrac," Morgan whispered into the rain. "An di allaigh, nail nithben, holleigh rac bier…." And on the spell went, the strongest spell she could weave with no preparation. She called on the wind and the rain and the clouds. She opened her hands and the clouds lightened and began to part. She threw up her hands and the rain lessened, backing off as if chastised. Morgan didn't care if anyone was watching or not. Everything in her wrought a spell that would snatch Hunter back from the very brink of his grave. When she opened her eyes, the rain had slowed to a repentant drizzle; the seas had begun to calm. Morgan felt weak, nauseated, from working such powerful magick. Slowly she forced her legs to take her to the crowd of people huddling on the dock. Voices floated to her over the sounds of sobbing, like chunks of debris on water.

"Never seen nothing like it."

"Unnatural, that's what it was."

"Wave reached up and pulled them down."

"And then like that, the storm stopped."

Morgan froze when she saw the line of sheet-covered bodies on the ground. Men and women were crying, arguing, denying what had happened. Some ferry passengers had been saved, and they sat huddled, looking shocked and afraid.

Hunter wasn't among them. Nor among the dead, lying on the ground.

Morgan gathered every ounce of strength and power within her and sent it out in the world. If Hunter is alive, I will feel it. If any part of his spirit is there, I will feel it I will know. She stayed perfectly still, eyes closed, hands out. Her chest expanded and was aching with her effort. Never had she cast her senses, her powers with so much strength before. Never had everything in her striven to sense someone. She almost cried out with the strain of it, feeling as if she would fly apart. Hunter, are you alive? Where are you?

Suddenly Morgan dropped to her knees on the sharp cobblestones, feeling as if she'd been knocked to the ground. She saw the dock, the rain, the covered bodies, but the scene seemed muted, all sounds muffled, all objects leached of color. It was like the whole world had lost something, some element that made it clear and rich and full. And then she understood.

Oh my God. Oh my God. He's really gone. Hunter's gone.

She stared unseeingly at the churning, gray-green water. How could the sea dare to take the one she loved, her soul mate, her muirn beatha dan? Anguish poured out of her, and she howled, "Give him back!" She flung her arms wide, and then, to her astonishment, her silver claddagh ring- Hunter's ring-flew off her rain-slick finger and sailed through the air. Unbelieving, Morgan watched the silver shine dully in the thin gray sunlight, then drop into the sea without a sound. It disappeared in an instant, sinking quickly and silently into the opaque water.

Her ring, Hunter's ring. It, too, was now gone forever. No, no.

Her world collapsed around her in a furious whirl of gray despair. Hands out, Morgan fell forward onto her face, not caring if she ever got up again.