“No.”

“So, I’ll bet you twenty he bangs the goddess. Or she bangs him. I’ve got a feeling she’ll take the lead there.”

Doyle thought of the prissy purple prose. “I’ll wager that. She can do better.”

He picked up the book; she went back to taking notes.

At the end of the hour, Riley held out her hand, palm up. “Pay me.”

“He could’ve been lying. I nailed the moon goddess in the castle on the hill.”

“Pay up.”

Resigned, Doyle dug twenty out of his pocket.

“If we had more journals, I’d go double or nothing the sister goddesses did their own bouncing during the celebration.” Riley stuffed the bill in her pocket. “It follows. We started there, too, on the island. Our bloodlines. It all started there. And more than a millennium later—by my surmise—we’re working our way back there. We’re able to do that because of that bloodline, because each of us has something more, a kind of gift.”

“I was cursed. It wasn’t a gift.”

“I’m sorry.” Sympathy and briskness mixed in her tone. “I’m sorry for what happened to your brother, and to you. But putting the emotion of it aside, that aspect of you, the curse of immortality is part of the whole. Every one of us brings something special to the table, and together it makes the meal.”

His face, his eyes hardened and chilled. His voice flashed, iced fire. “You’re saying that my brother was meant to die so I could be cursed?”

She might have answered temper with temper if she hadn’t clearly heard the guilt and grief tangled in it. “I’m not, and there’s no point getting pissed. I’m saying that even if you’d saved him, you’d have been cursed. If the witch had never lured him, there would have been some other connection, altercation. You said yourself you’d searched for Nerezza, for the stars, for hundreds of years. No luck. But you hook up with us, and in a couple months we have two of the stars, and we’ve kicked her ass twice. It was always going to be up to us.”

“And what was he then, my brother, in your surmising? No more than a pawn to lure the knight?”

“He was your brother.” Her tone rolled over the keen edge of his. She didn’t flinch from it. “Why something evil chose him is impossible to say. I’m saying something else chose you, and the rest of us. The journal, for me, adds more weight to that.”

Though she kept her eyes level with the barely banked fury in his, she paused a moment. Now her tone gentled a little. “I’m the last one who’d ever devalue the bond of family. It’s everything. I’m just trying to get a sense of the really big picture, and logic the crap out of it to try to move us forward.”

“Logic’s the least of it though, isn’t it?” He rose again. “I need the air.”

After he strode out, she hissed out a breath. “I’m a freaking scientist,” she uttered in frustration, then picked up her notes and went out to find Sasha—and lunch.

Since everyone appeared to have scattered, she made her way to the kitchen, hunted up the makings for a sandwich.

As she layered turkey with ham, considered her choice of cheeses, Sasha came in with a new task chart.

“I figured lunch as a free-for-all today,” Sasha began, “as everyone’s settling in. I’ve got you down for it tomorrow, unless we head out somewhere.”

“Works. You want one of these?”

Sasha glanced at the enormous sandwich in the making. “I think much less. Bran spent some time talking to his family in Sligo, and he’s going to work in the tower. Annika wanted to help him, and Sawyer went out to start scouting the best place to set up target practice.”

Sasha set the canvas chart, suitably artistic as well as practical, on a ledge.

“So you’ve got some time?” Riley asked her.

“I can, if you need something.”

“Doyle and I worked our way through that journal. I’ve got notes. Bran’s ancestor—kind of a pompous boor—did it with Arianrhod.”

“Did what with— Oh. Oooh,” Sasha repeated, lengthening the word.

“Exactly. You get the implication.”

“That it’s possible Bran’s descended from her? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“Logic.” Vindicated, Riley poked a finger in the air. “What I didn’t add, logically speaking, to Doyle, as he was getting pissy, is we’ve got two Irishmen who live in the same place—a few hundred years apart, but the same place.”

“Doyle could be from the same line.” Nodding, Sasha put the kettle on for tea. “It follows, doesn’t it?”

“Down the line for me. Let me give you some highlights from the journal.”

While she did, Sasha sliced an apple, some cheese, added some crackers, and settled down with tea.

“It may have been right off this coast,” Sasha stated. “It may be again.”

“I’ve got some details on what it looks like—sketchy, ha-ha. And what the palace looks like, what the goddesses—Arianrhod in particular—look like. If you were to draw them from my notes . . . ”

“Maybe I’d see more. I can try. And the queen was a baby, so the birth was literal.”

“He presented his gift—the songbirds—to the goddesses, and was himself presented to the infant queen.” Riley flipped through her notes. “‘A fair bairn with golden hair and eyes of blue, deep lakes, already wise. And on her shoulder, bared for all to see, the royal mark. The star of destiny.’”