Son of the Shadows (Sevenwaters, #2)

by Juliet Marillier

“Liadan.” Bran’s voice was quite soft. I turned around slowly. He was very close, not two paces away, It was the first time I had heard him use my name. “I thought you were gone,” he said.

Bran went very still; and then his arms came around me quite cautiously, as if he had never done this before and was not at all sure how one went about it. We stood there awhile, and the feeling was good, so good, like a homecoming after long troubles. Until I felt this touch, I did not know how much I had longed for it. Until I held him, I did not realize he was just the right height to put his arms comfortably around my shoulders, for me to rest my brow in the hollow of his neck, where the blood pulsed under the skin—a perfect fit.

There will come one who is neither of Britain nor of Erin, and at the same time is both. This child will bear the mark of the raven, and it is through that intervention that the Islands will be saved and the balance restored.’

And what she wanted most of all was to take the path of that river, to be borne along on its current, away from the lake, as she had once done long ago. For, she had said, smiling, that very waterway had deposited her, quite by chance, in the hands of a red-haired Briton, and had not he become her true love and her heart’s delight?

“I need no evidence,” he said quietly, his voice now under precarious control. “Liadan would not lie to me. I would trust her with my life. You cannot poison what is between us with your foul words. She is my light in the darkness, and Johnny is my pathway ahead.”