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fiercely at the thing and then stuff it into Morholt’s bag along with the rest of the booty he’d absconded with.
    That surprised Clare. She would have thought he’d treat that particular object a little more reverentially. But then she rememberedLlassar’s resistance when Boudicca had demanded he use Clare’s surreptitiously collected blood—along with the Iceni queen’s own—to craft a torc cursed with her mad vengeance.
    Llassar stood. Turning to his companions, he gestured down the beach to where a handful of ratty fishing vessels—barely more than animal hides stretched over wicker frames—lay upturned on the sand.
    “Bring me a fish sack,” he said to one of the men. “We’ll bag this one and put him in the boat. Mallora will want to see him.”
    Mallora? Who the heck is Mallora?
    “Why should the High Druidess have any interest in a common thief?” the other man asked, staring down at Morholt in disdain.
    High Druidess? Clare thought. I so don’t like the sound of that …
    “Mallora has foreseen this.” Llassar’s tone was grim. “And whatever else this one is,” he said, glaring down at Morholt, “he’s not common.”
    “No,” Clare agreed, “but he is a dumbass …”
    Suddenly, in that annoying way dreams had of shifting scenes, Clare found herself sitting beside a stream at night, in a place where she’d been before. With a young man she’d known in the past. Connal—handsome, green-eyed, Druid prince Connal—turned to Clare, his eyes reflecting the flames that had suddenly sprung up somewhere behind her.
    “The goddess Andrasta will paint her limbs with woad and wash her hair in blood and hitch twin ponies of smoke and shadow to her war chariot,” he said, his voice echoing and ethereal. “The fiery trail from her wheels will scorch the sky and the world will burn.”
    And as before, when he’d said the very same thing to her in real life, Clare heard herself reply with the words: “Uh … that’s a euphemism, right?”
    But this time Connal didn’t laugh. This time he just stared at her until Clare wrenched her own gaze away and willed herself to sink back into the deep, black, dreamless sleep that was her only escape route out of that place. And time.
     
    ALLIE McALLISTER WENT TO SLEEP that night to the sounds of Clare’s gentle snoring. In the pale blue glow that filtered in through the curtains of the B&B’s tall window, Allie could just make out Clare’s face turned toward her and mushed into a feather pillow. She wasn’t drooling, but Allie had a sneaking suspicion that she’d fallen asleep thinking about Milo. There was a curve of a smile on her lips.
    Allie felt a tiny, stinging twist of envy.
    Not that she wasn’t happy for Clare. She was. For Milo, too— she adored her cousin and thought the two of them made a delightfully weird pair. It was just that … she was kind of used to it being just her and Clare. The two of them together, standing united and defiant against a world not prepared to “get” either of them. And, of course, it still was. The two of them.
    The two of us … plus one.
    It felt uneven somehow.
    Also? It somehow felt as if Clare had suddenly acquired some sort of mysterious power that Allie had yet to manifest—or even figure out. Not only had Milo finally made a move, but during Clare’s shimmer trips to the past she’d also attracted the undivided attention of a super-hot (according to Clare, at least; Allie had never actually seen him in the flesh) Druid warrior prince. A super-hot Druid warrior prince who’d kissed her under a full moon on the eve of a battle with the Roman army.
    Sure, it had been dangerous for Clare in the past. And there’d been bloodshed and death and a bunch of other stuff that Allie’s best friend was still, despite her fairly bounce-back demeanour, having a few difficulties dealing with. It wasn’t obvious to anyone else, but sometimes Allie would see Clare’s gaze turn inward, as if she was replaying