Awakenings

“What the hell are you—”

“Move!”

The vehemence made both Seamus and Leinth flinch. Neve, startled and mostly limp in her cousin’s arms, peered over the once-druid’s shoulder toward the end of the bridge. There was something out there, something that made dread and sickness coil together in her belly to spawn something utterly awful.

Are those eyes? Something gleamed in that fog, faint and almost ephemeral, almost undiscernible in the darkness. Neve’s fingers tangled in the sleeve of Phelan’s jacket. A small figure emerged from the fog, then another, then a third.

Their baleful, hate-filled gazes made her blood turn cold.

Seamus saw her looking, turned, swore.

“I’ll hold them,” he said, drawing the blade he wore in a scabbard against his spine. “Get back inside your wards.”

“Fuck that,” Phelan said, spinning. He set Neve carefully on her feet and grabbed for Seamus’s sleeve. “We just found you. You’re not throwing your life away that easily.”

“He’s right,” Leinth said as she pulled Neve’s arm over her shoulders. “Can’t you feel it? Those things…what drives them…”

If it was enough to make Leinth shudder, any sane person should have run screaming.

Apparently, Seamus Vaughan was no longer entirely sane.

He shot his cousin a steely glare. “Get them out of here,” he growled. “I’ll hold them and join you.”

“Leinth, take Neve and get clear. Warn the others.” Phelan picked up his staff, fingers flexing around the carved wood. “I’ve faced these bastards before, Seamus,” Phelan said. “I’m not going to leave you here alone.”

Neve’s heart seized in her chest and when she looked at Leinth, she saw similar indecision in the other woman’s expression.

“We have to warn them,” Neve whispered.

“Idiots,” Leinth said, tears sparkling against her lashes in the darkness. She wrapped her arm around Neve’s waist and hauled her toward the end of the bridge and the wardlines beyond. “Fucking idiots.”

Seamus just stared at them, looking forlorn and lost for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered at last. “I didn’t realize. I didn’t…I couldn’t imagine.”

Phelan shook his head. “You knew the mantle you’d settled on my shoulders,” he said. “I’m shocked that you can’t imagine it.”

Seamus closed his eyes, exhaling a sigh. Neve reached for his hand and squeezed it hard.

“We’ll find a way,” she whispered. “I promise you, deartháir mór, we’ll find a way to win you from them.”

He gave her a grim smile, gazing at her through his lashes. “It’s a nice thought, Neve.”

“We’ll make it happen,” she said stubbornly. “You know us, we’ll find a way.”

He only nodded, seeming distracted for a moment as he gazed into the shadows of the ravine, at the branches like ink against the snow and sky. Neve’s hand tightened around his and he sighed softly, looking like he was about to say something.

“Seamus!”

He went rigid at the sound of Leinth’s voice, his eyes springing wide, breath catching in his throat. “Phelan,” he rasped, “when you said she was alive—“

“I told you she was here,” Phelan said. “Probably pissed as hell at me, too, since I had her guarding the fucking gates.”

Seamus’s breath came in ragged gasps as he sucked in two deep ones before he turned toward the sound of Leinth’s voice. “Mo ghrá daor,” he said in a bare whisper, moving away from his sister and his cousin, turning the face the ball of rage and pain moving quickly in his direction.

She slapped him. “That’s for letting me think you were dead.”

He rubbed at his stinging cheek. “I thought they killed you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know you’d lived until Phelan told me.”

“That’s no excuse,” she said, voice shaking. Tears sparkled in the dim light. “I can’t believe she didn’t lord it over you.”

“She was the one who told me.” Seamus took her face in his hands and kissed her hard, wrapping one arm around her waist and drawing her tightly against his chest. “Nothing could have stopped me from escaping then if I’d known, mo ghrá daor. I swear it.”

Phelan sighed quietly, giving Neve a gentle squeeze as they watched Leinth return her lover’s kiss, his embrace.

“We should go,” he murmured to his cousin. “I don’t like feeling like a voyeur.”

Neve snorted humorlessly. “I’m afraid if we let him out of our sight, he’s just going to vanish.”

“He won’t,” Phelan said. “He’s here for a reason.”

“Did he tell you what it was?”

“He doesn’t even know.”

Neve shivered, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. It almost felt like they were being watched, though she knew that wasn’t possible. She glanced toward the end of the bridge, toward camp, then back behind them. An unseasonable mist rose beyond the end of the bridge, near the arboretum and the pathway to the barrows.

“Phelan, look.”

He glanced back and swore, sweeping her up into his arms. “Seamus, Leinth, ward lines, now!”

Seamus jerked as if he were a puppet on strings, staring at Phelan. “What?”

“Bloody Grays,” Phelan snapped. “They were Vammatar’s puppets and now they’re back.”

He pushed past his cousin and headed for camp and the safety of the wards.

“What are you waiting for? Move!”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Thom said. “So I ended up out here. Paul saw something and I—we, really—thought it would be better to let you sleep until we knew whether or not there was an actual threat. We let Cameron and Neve sleep, too.”

“And Phelan?” I asked, planting my hands on my hips. “Did you let him sleep, too?”

Thom cleared his throat uncomfortably. “No. No, he and Seamus went to go talk.”

My heart stopped. “Seamus?”

“Christos,” Thordin swore. “Your voice, Marin, keep it down.”

“Why in god’s name would I do that?” I spat.

Thordin’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment and he crowded close, leaving J.T. and Sif nearer to the French-accented man and the rest of the Hunt’s breathren. “He leads them, but I don’t think they call him by that name. He told Phelan not to use that name.”

“Oh, to hell with that.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Where’d they go?”

I have to wake Neve. She needs to know. She needs to see him—to see her brother.

Damn it all, he was the fucking Taliesin before Phelan. Does he know more about all of this than he got to tell his cousin? My lips thinned. “Why didn’t you wake Neve?”

“It’s complicated,” Thom said, his voice quiet, gently reasonable. I wanted to punch him in the jaw. He of all people knew better. I gave him a baleful look and shook my head.

“That’s a bad answer and you know it, Thom.”

“Fine, here’ s a worse answer.” He took my face between his cold hands and leaned close enough that we were practically sharing one breath between us. “I wanted to keep you and our son safe and I refuse to apologize for doing that. I’m not sorry.”

I wanted to slap him—to be so angry I couldn’t see straight, to say things that I’d regret later. The words died on my tongue and I couldn’t hang onto the rage no matter how hard I tried.

Sometimes, I hated the fact that I loved him and that he loved me more than anything else in the world.

He kissed me and I let him, rage evaporating like fog.

They’d lit torches and stuck them into the snow. Lanterns hung from poles strapped into lance-cups, swaying in the breeze and with the nervous and agitated shifting of horses. Men and women in cloaks capes stood near, some still astride their mounts, others standing in the snow with my husband and friends. Thom and the others had brought out some bottles of alcohol, whiskey and bourbon and god knows what else gleaming amber in the flickering light. They were sharing it around with the riders who’d dismounted with at least one bottle making the rounds among the men and women still on horseback.

It was a tall man in a black cloak who saw Leinth and I first, his eyes growing wide. “Mon Dieu!” he sputtered, passing a bottle of bourbon into the chest of one of his companions. “The Warrior Queen and belle déesse de mon general!”

Beside me, Leinth sucked in a slow, deep breath. “They can see her soul, Marin,” she whispered. “They see the Silver General, Mistress of the Imbolg. They see her alive in you. She’s near the surface.”

“I know,” I muttered, stomach twisting uncomfortably. It seemed that was one past life that bled into my present one more often than any of us would have thought or believed. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.

Then again, maybe it is.

My fingers tightened around Leinth’s hand and she took another deep breath.

Thom saw us half a second later.

“Mar, I didn’t think you were up. Leinth, I thought you were watching the gate.”

“Your wife decided it would be best to join you out here.” She glanced toward the man who’d seen us. “What did you say before?”

“About you?” His accent was French, timeworn but still recognizable. “You are our general’s lady, the Huntmaster’s goddess.”

She looked at me for a moment before her eyes hardened and her gaze darted toward Thordin. “Where is he?” she snapped.

“Leinth, I—”

“Shut up unless you’re going to tell me the truth,” she snarled, shaking free of my hand and rounding on Sif and J.T. “Which way?”

Sif wordlessly pointed toward the ravine and that was all it took. Leinth took off in that direction at a dead run.

I looked at my husband and said, “Something tells me you have a lot of explaining to do.”

At least he had the grace to look guilty about it.

I woke with a start, gasping as I lay on my stomach in the snow. I was cold and wet now and it was hard to know how long I’d been out, or how many visions I’d had but couldn’t remember. Shivering, I dragged myself to my knees and crawled forward. My fingers curled around the hilt of Thom’s sword, breath rasping in my throat.

“Marin?”

I looked up to see Leinth standing over me, frowning in the light of a lantern she clutched too tightly. I sucked in another breath and got my feet back under me. “Leinth. What are you doing out here?”

“Watching the gates. I thought you were asleep.”

“You don’t have the watch tonight,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Your husband didn’t say anything, then.”

I just stared at her for a long moment until she sighed and looked away. “Of course not. Bloody men.” She glared toward the gate for a moment before she looked back to me. “They’ve gone back to camp once to get some alcohol—Phelan probably told them to do as much, lest our guests get unruly.”

“Guests,” I echoed, peering past her. I couldn’t see anything thanks to the glare of the lantern. “Who’s here, Leinth? What’s here?”

“The bloody Wild Hunt,” she growled. She nodded to the blade in my hand. “With any luck, you’ll not need that. If we do, then all hope’s gone. They’d wipe us off the map as soon as they’d look at us.”

My heart began to beat a little faster. The Wild Hunt. The legendary band…

Oh, shit.

I swallowed hard, throat burning and sour. “How long ago did they get here?”

“Half an hour, maybe three quarters of an hour.” Leinth shrugged. “They told me to stay at the gate, didn’t invite me to join them. I wanted to when they came.”

I could just barely see Rory now that my eyes had started to adjust again. He held a flickering tongue of fire above his palm, light dancing across his face and casting shadows in strange places.  He glanced toward us and gave me a tight smile that I could just barely see in the light of his tiny flame.

“Who’s out there with them?” I asked softly.

“Your husband, Thordin, Phelan, Jameson, and Sif.”

I nodded firmly. “Right. Let’s go see what’s going on.”

I took her by the hand and marched toward the gate.

“Don’t be a fool.”

                The muscles of his shoulders bunched, his fingers tightening around the leather of his reins. He didn’t turn to face me immediately, just stood there, copper-brown hair shining in the dying sunshine. His mount was loaded for a long journey and I suspected that it would be a mistake to let him leave with so much unsaid.

                “I have to do my duty,” he said, his tone clipped and words firm, though I could hear the tremor of regret and anger beneath them. Anger at who, I wondered—his brother or his father?

                “If you ride away today, Seamus, you’ll never see them again. You know that.”

                “The better question would be how do you know that?” He turned toward me, expression blank except for the rage that flamed in his eyes. “How do you know that, Brighid of the Imbolg? Who told you that secret?”

                “I hear the whispers,” I said. “I see the signs. I am not a druid, but I’m not blind, either. Seamus, you know that this is a mistake.”

                “Of course it’s a mistake. All of this is a mistake.” He swallowed hard, jaw tightening. “But my father will not be dissuaded and I will not force my brother to set aside the woman he loves to walk into an obvious trap.”

                “Then why are you walking into that same trap?”

                “Because sometimes, you have to make a noble sacrifice for the good of the many and ignore the desires of a few.”  He reached a gloved hand out to me, took me by the chin and kissed me hard.  A shiver of excitement and desire raced through me, fading quickly. Lovers only, and only for the briefest of times. It would never last—I didn’t love him. I wasn’t sure I could love anyone, especially not the way his brother loved his lady, not the way my father had loved my mother. But he’d found comfort in me for a time and I knew that was worth more to him than all the silver in our homeland.

                “Seamus,” I whispered.

                “I have to go,” he said. “There’s no choice. Go. Go back to your brother, go back to your people. Finn of the Fianna waits for you. I know that you don’t think you know how to love but you do, ceann cóir. You do. You are more blessed than cursed. Mark my words and know them to be true.

                “Good-bye, Brighid.  The gods smile on you and so do I.”

                He pulled himself up into the saddle and was gone before I could say another word in protest. I watched as he rode away, cresting the hill and heading down toward the sea.

                “No luck?” Phelan asked softly from somewhere behind me.

                I shook my head, feeling stinging tears well up in my eyes. “No luck. He’s stubborn. More stubborn than his brother.” I turned away. Phelan grabbed my arm.

                “What did you say to him?” he asked. I knew then that he’d only come at the end, only heard his cousin’s good-bye. I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.

                “Nothing that mattered,” I said and walked away.

Thom pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, holding me close, holding me tight. “It’ll be all right,” he whispered, a bare hint of desperation buried beneath the certainty in his voice. I reached down and squeezed one of his hands.

“Of course,” I murmured, staring blankly across the barrow ground. The grass had grown high over the years. The tree that J.T. and I had planted at the dawn of the second year had spread its branches wide, shading the space. The building and the rubble from its destruction so long ago had been erased by time and weather. Wildflowers had sprouted there, mixed with the grass. My eyes drifted toward the stones lined up against the edge of the barrows, painstakingly etched with the names of the fallen, the names of the lost. Too many. Far, far too many.

“You don’t believe me.”

 “It’s not that.” I swallowed hard, looking up over my shoulder at him. “Please. You know it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“You can’t leave him here all alone, Thom. We can’t do that.”

“I already made my choice. Jay and your brother and I talked. The decision’s made. When the time comes, if the time comes, you and I go together.”

“That’s not your choice to make.”

“I swore that I’d never leave you,” he said, arms tightening around me. “I mean to keep that promise.”

“But our son—”

“You know as well as I do that he’ll be fine.”

Hot tears welled up in my eyes. “What if he’s not, Thom? What if we’re wrong?”

“They’ll take care of him.” He pressed another kiss to my neck, then my ear. “You know that. Don’t start doubting now, Mar. We’ve come this far. Somehow, you taught me to believe again. We both know in our hearts what’s meant to be and what’s going to happen. Don’t lose faith now.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, the tears splashing down my cheeks. “I love you,” I whispered.

“I love you more. I’ll love you forever.”

I pressed myself into his arms and wept.

I woke alone and knew instantly that things weren’t right.

Thom’s place beside me was long cold and the weight of something unseen pressed down against my heart, against my thoughts as I sat up in bed. No. Something wasn’t right. All wasn’t well.

It was dark and far, far too quiet.

I slipped from the bed and dressed quickly—jeans, sweater, boots, coat. My heartbeat sounded too loud in my ears, the sound of every movement deafening in the strange silence.

Everyone else was asleep, it seemed-everyone except for Thom, except for me.

A glimmer of silver and steel caught my eye. Thom’s sword, right where he always left it. I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat.

This could be very good or very bad.

I picked up his word and stepped out into the still, eerie blackness. Nothing stirred. Nothing moved. I sucked in a breath and headed out for the wall. Somehow, I knew.

I needed to get to the wall.

No one tended the fires as I ducked though the tents—unusual in and of itself. That could have meant any number of things, but something in my gut told me it wasn’t just that someone had forgotten about them. I moved faster, blood pounding in my ears, throat tightening.

Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.

I started to run once I hit the snow, illuminated a pale blue by the meager light of the sky.

Dawn was a long way off, but I could see torches glowing beyond the open gate.

Oh gods, the gate is open. The gate is open and there’s someone out there and where are Thom and the people who are supposed to be on the watch what’s going on why didn’t anyone wake me up—

I slipped in the snow and went sprawling, Thom’s blade skittering across the pack and out of reach. I might have cried out—I don’t remember.

I don’t remember because my world suddenly spiraled down to one tiny point of light before visions swallowed me whole.

“No,” Neve said, her voice firm. “I don’t believe that. If the Ridden Druid managed to leave, then you can, too.”

“That’s not how it works, Neve.”

“To hell with how it works,” she snapped, eyes blazing. “To hell with that! You belong to us and the world, not the bloody Wild Hunt! Forsake it and stay.”

“I can’t.”

She drew a breath to protest but Phelan’s tightening grip forestalled what she was about to say. She threw a questioning glance in his direction and didn’t like the look she saw in his eye.

“How do we bargain you free?” Phelan asked quietly. “There must be some kind of loophole.”

“None that I’ve found,” Seamus said quietly. “But then after the first hundred years or so, I stopped trying to find one. I accepted what had become of me and tried to…temper…the Hunt.” He smiled a faint, weak smile. “It’s different from what it used to be. Mercifully.”

“Your influence?” Phelan asked, one corner of his mouth quirking upward.

Seamus inclined his head, smiling weakly. “You could say so. Of course, until recently it’s been difficult to operate. There’s very few places in the world where a pack of riders in cloaks wouldn’t be noticed before the conflagration.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?” Phelan murmured. “We’ve been calling it the end of the world.”

Seamus smiled faintly and shook his head. “You know as well as I do that it’s hardly the end. It’s just the end of the world as we all knew it, not that it was very familiar for most of our kith and kin.”

“It’s more familiar than you think.” Phelan’s lips thinned. “Teague is here, too. He has been for about ten years. I…barely left.”

Seamus’s eyes flicked toward his sister, who grimaced.

“Three years,” she whispered. “I’ve been back for three years.”

“How did—”

It was Neve who answered, a faint smile on her lips. “The edicts died with Father. We knew where we needed to be.

“Where we needed to be was here. It just took us a long time to realize that.”

“Much to our sorrow and regret,” Phelan said softly. “Though hopefully we’ll be able to make up for the lost time.”

“Two?” Neve’s voice shook as she stared at her brother, at the expression of wonder and bewilderment on his face. “Twins?”

He nodded, his eyes distant, shining in the dim. “Two,” he breathed. “Two, deirfiúr beag, mo dheirfiúr milis.”

Then he crushed her against his chest. Her eyes stung and she buried her face against his shoulder.

“Seamus,” she whispered. “Oh gods, Seamus.”

Phelan stood over them as they sat in the snow, brother rocking sister back and forth, back and forth as hot tears slid down her cheeks—tears of anger and pain, because by now her leg had begun to remind her of how badly she’d just abused it.

“You’re hurt,” he murmured at last, drawing back and drying her tears with the placket of his cloak. “I can feel it.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, her voice suddenly raw and rasping. Phelan offered her a hand up and she took it, climbing to her feet and leaning against her cousin. “Where have you been?”

Seamus shook his head. “Leading the Wild Hunt.”

“You said Albina sold you out to them,” Phelan said, his expression grim. “When?”

“Before the ink was dry on the treaty and the marriage contract.” Seamus rose slowly, shaking the snow from his dark cloak. “But she didn’t hand me over right away. She had to wait a time. If she hadn’t, it would have looked too suspicious.” His lips thinned for a moment and his eyes grew distant. “They made me their leader after the Ridden Druid slipped the noose and escaped, after I inadvertently killed their leader when I was brought into the Hunt. The druid…he’s the only one ever to have left the Hunt alive.”

“Seamus.” Neve had to swallow before she could find herself able to speak again. “How did it happen?”

“She’d planned it all along,” Seamus said, sounding sad. “Conspired. My only consolation is that it seems her plans didn’t come to full fruition.”

“How do we free you?” she whispered.

“You don’t,” he said. “There’s no escape for me now. I belong to them.” His eyes slid shut and he sighed. “I’ll always belong to them.”