Page 21 of Queen of the Shadow

She stared at him, really seeing his unusual beauty and height and breadth of shoulder as she thought of the ease with which he’d accomplished the vault feat. Suddenly she understood.

“You are Lugh’s son,” Scáthach said.

He turned from railing at Tabiti to face Scáthach. His voice was clipped. “Yes.”

Scáthach nodded. “I know what it is to be the child of a god.”

Cuchulainn’s shoulders relaxed, and he wiped the sweat from his face. “No one taught me to swim because they assumed—” He paused, lifted his hands, and let them fall.

“Because they assumed you must already know howandmust be better at it than they could ever hope to be,” Scáthach finished for him.

He nodded. “Yes. Exactly.” His gaze went to Tabiti. “And if I asked to be taught how to do something they already believed I should know, they laughed as Imustbe jesting.”

Tabiti’s expression had sobered. “I apologize for my laughter. I’m one of your instructors and I know better than to jest about what my students know and don’t know.” She looked from Cuchulainn to Scáthach. “Queen of Shadow, with your permission I would like to teach Cuchulainn how to swim.”

“Permission granted,” Scáthach said.

As they drilled, Scáthach moved from pool to pool giving pointers to the floating students and paying close attention to when a student got too cold and needed to get out of the water and warm up by doing calisthenics by the fire she built.

She didn’t need to check on Cuchulainn. Tabiti had him in the center of the calmest of the Fairy Pools, floating on his back in minutes, and not long after, he was grinning as he stroked back and forth from one side of the pool to the other. Tabiti showed him how to dive from the rocks and swim underwater. He mastered each maneuver so quickly that he didn’t even have to leave the pool to warm himself before he joined the other students, who were floating with reeds in their mouths.

Scáthach called the end of the drills sooner than she would for a dry-land feat. The students, Uathach, and Tabiti stripped down and spread their wet clothes on the sun-heated rocks to dry, and then wrapped themselves in their blankets and clustered around the fire so their bodies would thaw.

Scáthach, who had opted not to get wet this training trip, joined Leannan on her rock. Scáthach leaned back and closed her eyes. She was pleased by the progress of her students and enjoyed the waning sunlight as she decided if tomorrow was as warm as today had been, they would pack up some of the smaller vaulting poles and drill using them to leap over the streams connecting the pools before moving on to the second step in the underwater feat.

“Ahem.”

Scáthach felt Leannan’s tail thump before she opened her eyes to squint up at Cuchulainn. He had a blanket wrapped around him. His hair was drying and it formed a tricolored halo around his head.

“Excuse me, Queen Scáthach.” He shifted his weight from side to side as he spoke.

“You may call me just Scáthach,” she said.

His lips turned up. “I don’t believe you arejustanything, Queen.”

She smiled.

He cleared his throat again and continued. “I wanted to thank you for earlier.”

“There’s no need to thank me. I am in a unique position to understand some of your experiences because I have had similar ones,” she said.

“Well, it is rare that I am understood. So, thank you,” he said. “May I ask you a question that deals with our similar parentage?”

Scáthach raised a brow, her curiosity piqued. “Certainly. Would you like to sit?”

He nodded and sat on the other side of Leannan, who stretched out between the two of them. The big deerhound lifted her head and huffed a welcome as he scratched under her chin and grinned warmly at her. “There’s a good girl, a fine, smart girl.”

When Cuchulainn shifted his attention from Leannan to Scáthach, his face was still alight with the warmth of the smile he had for the dog, and Scáthach was struck anew by his beauty. Relaxed and happy, Cuchulainn was divine in his visage, and she understood why the men of Ulster were eager for him to marry.

“I have heard that your mother, the goddess Béfionn, actually raised you,” he blurted, his cheeks reddening.

Scáthach showed no surprise at his question. “Yes, she raised me from the age of five.”

“And the other warriors say you still see her. She visits here and spends time with you.”

He hadn’t phrased it as a question, but when he said no more, Scáthach nodded and said, “Yes. Mother does visit as often as she’s able.”

His brow furrowed. “But does she come to you because she wants to see you—and you her? Or because she’s watching you and judging you?”