Awakenings

“I still can’t believe you hit him.”

“He’s a lying bastard and he lied to me,” Phelan snarled as we walked across the bridge toward the arboretum.  I was sandwiched between he and Thom as we headed for the meeting spot we’d arranged a day after Phelan had slugged Cariocecus.  Salvaging the alliance had been a near thing and Phelan hadn’t wanted to do it at all, but I’d talked him into it.

Strange how the tables turned.

Phelan was still convinced that Cariocecus was lying about his cousin Seamus being alive.  I wasn’t so sure—not after having talked to Neve about it, hearing the certainty mixed with hope and doubt in her voice.  She knew the evidence of her brother’s death had been circumstantial at best, only made solid by the fact that he’d never tried to contact them in all the centuries since.

Or had he tried and they’d just never recognized the attempts for what they were?

The others had agreed.  We needed to talk to Cariocecus and get to the bottom of this—if we could, if there was a “bottom of this” to get to in the first place.

I refrained from telling Phelan how ridiculous he sounded and just shook my head.  “We’ll figure out why he lied to you about it—you’re sure he’s lying?”

“He said my sister told him that Seamus was alive.  She wouldn’t do that, not even to save me.  She wouldn’t spin a lie like that.”

“Really,” Thom said, giving him a wall-eyed look.  “Not even to save your skin?”

“She wouldn’t,” Phelan said firmly.  “And if, by some miracle, it wasn’t a lie, why didn’t she tell us that Seamus was alive?”

“I’m sure she had her reasons,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets.  It was bitterly cold, but the sky was clear.  Thom had expressed a faint hope that the next big snow would hold off a for a few days so we could get some construction done back at camp.  He’d left that in Davon and Matt’s hands in his absence this morning.

Phelan skewered me with a sharp look.  “You believe him?”

“I don’t disbelieve him outright,” I said, meeting his gaze and lifting my chin slightly.  “Phelan, you of all people know that sometimes secrets are the only thing that keep a person alive.”

He swallowed twice and looked away, eyes darkening as his brow furrowed.  “It just doesn’t make sense,” he said after we’d walked another dozen feet.

“Neither does anything else,” I pointed out.  “We’re still just kind of rolling with the punches and hoping that everything turns out the way it’s supposed to.  Now we’re going to get the story and the answers that we all wanted from Cariocecus—as long as you can refrain from trying to break his nose again.”

“It was his jaw,” Phelan said, mild indignance coloring his voice, “and my fingers still hurt.”

“It serves you right,” Thom growled.  “Maybe you shouldn’t have hit him.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t lecture me about when to hit people,” Phelan said.

“I’m not going to listen to the two of you fight,” I said, glaring at each of them in turn.  “We just need to get through this meeting without killing each other and get the answers we want.  Right?  Right.  Now stop pouting, Phelan.”

“I’m not pouting,” he said.

I just gave him a look and he rolled his eyes, turning away again.  There wouldn’t be any real reasoning with him until we got to the bottom of this.

I was hoping that after this meeting, everything would be sorted and we could concentrate on bigger problems—like Menhit, surviving the winter, and the possibility that there’d be more Scandinavian bitch-goddesses of the Underworld coming after Phelan.

Again.

Phelan walked quietly out into the anemic light of dawn, out into the silence broken only by the sound of the wind whispering through the trees and the sound of his boots on the snow.  Marin and Thom waited for him back at the edge of camp, bundled against the chill of the wind and the snowflakes that drifted down from the ash-gray clouds above.

The vote had been a near thing, but they were taking Cariocecus’s offer of peace, though Phelan half wondered if the godling would balk at the terms set by his friends.

We’ll just have to see.

He leaned against his staff as he stopped in the place where Cariocecus had met him the day before and waited, staring at the trees, letting the snowflakes catch on his eyelashes and in his hair.  Cold or no, there was something revitalizing about the snow coming down on a winter morning—to him, at least.

“I’m almost surprised you came,” Cariocecus said a few moments later as he emerged from the trees ahead of Phelan, moving stiffly and wrapped in a dark cloak, the hood pushed back.  “I didn’t expect it to actually happen.”

“I’m a man of my word,” Phelan said evenly, looking the other man up and down.  “What would you have done if I hadn’t shown up?  Stormed the walls like some kind of marauding thug?”

Cariocecus shrugged slightly.  “I hadn’t decided.  I’m still slightly addled from blood loss and the shock of betrayal.”

Phelan didn’t miss the bare traces of sarcasm in his voice.  He just shook his head slightly.  “They’ll accept your offer of peace so long as you agree to their terms,” he said.

“Name them.”  Cariocecus crossed his arms, meeting Phelan’s hard gaze head-on.  There was no guile in his gaze, his jaw set firm and his body rigid—nerves rather than a man tensing to strike.

By all that’s sacred, he’s nervous.  Phelan brushed the thought aside and stood a little straighter.  “You guard the ways in and out of the area,” Phelan began.  “Failure to warn of something coming that you should have seen is grounds for a termination of the agreement.”

Cariocecus frowned briefly.  “And how is ‘something I should have seen’ defined?”

“If you see something, you tell us,” Phelan said flatly.  “And woe be to you if we discover that you’ve lied about something.”

“I assume that none of this is truly negotiable?”

“Not if you want peace with us—or our leave to stick around.”

Cariocecus sighed and nodded.  “All right.  Go on.”

“Second, you’ll swear not to harm any of them for any reason.  If you do, your life is forfeit.”

“Are they going to forgive my past sins in exchange for that?” he asked.

Phelan’s lips quirked into something close to a smile.  “Mostly.  After you and I are done here, the Seers want to talk to you.  You’re going to tell them everything.”

“Everything,” Cariocecus echoed.  “Just like I’m going to tell you everything?”

“That’s the idea.”

His lips thinned and he looked away.  “Wanderer…there are some truths that should only be for your ears.”

Phelan’s brows went up even as he blurted, “I have no secrets from them.”

It was a lie, of course, but Cariocecus didn’t know that.

Or did he?

He smothered a frown as Cariocecus gave him a long, hard look.

“Very well.  If you want them to know everything…”  he paused, then frowned.  “Your original negotiations indicated that you wanted to hear what I had to say alone, though.”

They did.  Phelan frowned slightly.  “What would you possibly tell me that I might not want them to hear?”

“Perhaps why I spared your life on the battlefield.  What your sister could bargain for your life.”

A shiver shot down Phelan’s spine.  “What did she bargain?”

“Information,” Cariocecus said simply.  He fell silent for a moment, then looked Phelan in the eye.

“Seamus the Black is alive.”

Phelan decked him.

“I—”  Marin stopped, her brow furrowing, then began again.  “How can you be sure you’ll never know what happened to him?  I mean, with everything that seems to keep popping out of the woodwork from Phelan’s sordid past, at least, couldn’t you hope to eventually find out something about what happened to Seamus?”

Neve sighed, shaking her head.  “It seems to me that all of the people who might likely know something are probably dead right alongside him in centuries past.  He went south on my father’s orders.  I…we…”  She broke off, exhaling a frustrated sigh.  “There were always stories about what he was doing, what had happened to him, but you never knew which to believe.  Then we got word that he’d been killed…”

Marin edged her chair closer and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the edge of the bed.  “Did they send proof?”

“His sword and his signet,” Neve said.  “And his mask.”

“You know, I was going to ask about those.  I saw Teague with one once, and then Phelan wore one when he married Thom and I.  Are they significant somehow?”

Neve nodded slightly, feeling her stomach give an uncomfortable twist.  “Yeah.  Just a little.”

Understatement of the millennium right there.

Marin smiled wryly.  “You’re hoping I won’t ask how.”

Neve smiled back.  “Nice to know we understand each other.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Marin said, smiling faintly.  “But I’m still going to ask.”

“I figured that you would.”  Neve rolled onto her back with a slight wince.  “You’re too curious for your own good.”

“I figure that eventually it’s either going to pay off or get us all killed.  Is asking about the masks going to get us all killed?”

“Not likely.”  Neve sighed and stared at the ceiling.  “They’re symbolic.  Each one, its colors, the style, the symbols painted on them—they’re unique to the wearer.”  She shook her head slightly.  “We each have one.  Losing it…losing it isn’t an option.  They’re typically returned to the closest surviving relative upon our deaths, if they can be located.  Otherwise, they’re buried with us.”

Marin’s nose wrinkled, but she leaned back and didn’t press for more details.

Thank the gods for small favors.

“I can tell you all miss him,” she said after a moment.  “The way you talk about him.  The look all of you get when you do.  I can only imagine how awful it must have been—to not know for such a long time and ten all of a sudden be told that he’s dead and you’ll never see him again.”  Marin shivered.  “If it were Matt, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Teague took it the hardest,” Neve said softly, slowly rolling onto her side again.  “He always blamed himself.  Father blamed him, too.  I think that was the harder burden to bear, really.  Father blaming him for Seamus’s death.”

There was a time I never thought I’d see Teague smile again, especially after she was gone and Seamus was dead and it was all coming apart…

“It’s always been hard,” she whispered.  “But half the time we don’t even dare talk to each other about it because all of us have such burdens to bear already.  It just doesn’t seem fair.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that you can’t talk to each other about them,” Marin said, leaning forward again.

“You’re right,” Neve said.  “It doesn’t seem fair.  But that’s how it’s been for a long, long time.”

Teague was trying to bridge that gap before you left.  I wonder how closely he and Phelan had been working with each other before everything fell apart, before the world ended.  She closed her eyes for a moment.  She’d have to ask Phelan.

“You okay, Neve?”

“Yeah,” she murmured.  “Just thinking.”

“About anything important?”

Her lips quirked into a smile.  “Maybe.  We’ll see.”

We’ll see.

“So you’re just going to make a deal with him?”

“Yeah.  We’re going to set the terms and if he doesn’t abide by them, he’s getting Thordin’s axe between his eyes.”

Neve chewed on the inside of her lower lip, hunched over slightly, her chin resting on the knee of her good leg.  Her ribs hurt, ached, but somehow this position was more comfortable than sitting up straight—probably because it let her stretch out her back muscles, which were growing uncomfortably tight and stiff from laying on her back most of the time and hobbling around with the crutches the rest of the time.

“I don’t like it, Marin,” she said after a moment, lifting her gaze to regard the other woman seriously.

Marin looked up from the pile of fleece scraps in her lap, her nose wrinkling slightly.  “I’m not sure that I do, either, but we took a vote and that’s how it went.”

“What happens if Thordin’s not here?”  Neve asked.  “What happens then?  Who deals with him?”

“Thordin promised that he’s not going anywhere until Matt can safely plant a war-axe between Cariocecus’s eyes.”  Marin shot her a smile before she laid a couple of the pieces of the fleece together and started to stitch them together with small, even stitches.  “I don’t really foresee him going anywhere anytime soon, either.”

Neve shook her head slightly.  “If Cameron’s going anywhere, I’m sending Thordin with him.”

“Well, I don’t see Cameron going anywhere anytime soon, either, so I think we’re safe on that front.”  Marin smiled and reached over to squeeze her shoulder gently.  “Neither of those boys are going anywhere until they’re confident that you’re going to be fine if they go.”

“They’ll go if they feel like they have to,” she said.  “Cameron’s got a pretty impressive sense of duty.  He might decide that he needs to go well before I’m healed up.”  He’ll definitely make at least one trip away from here before I have this baby.  I’ve got no doubt of that.  It’s where, when, and who goes with him that’s in question.  I’d want it to be Thordin, I think, and maybe Thom.  Her gaze slid back toward Marin.  The other woman probably didn’t want her husband going anywhere anytime soon.

Marin met her gaze, brows knitting.  “Would you want him to?  Would you let him go?”

“I don’t know,” Neve said softly.  “I’ve thought about it.  I think I’d have to, but…”  Her voice trailed away and she sighed softly.  “I think I’d have to whether I’d like it or not.”

“There are other people who would go—volunteer to do it, even.”  Marin set aside the sewing and leaned forward.  “Whatever burdens they think they have to shoulder—Cameron especially—they have to realize that they’re not burdens they shoulder alone.”

Damn, but isn’t that a familiar speech?  Neve squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled quietly.  “You know, my brother said that to me once.”

“Teague?”

She shook her head.  “Seamus.  Our older brother.”

“Oh.”  Marin leaned back a little.  “Phelan’s talked about him, but in passing.  His death hurt you guys a lot, didn’t it?”

“It’s a miracle that we didn’t all spiral out of control,” Neve said.  She sighed and eased back down to her pillows, slowly and carefully stretching out on her side to face her new friend.  “It was a bad time for us.  In a lot of ways, he was our anchor.  My father couldn’t take it.  He abdicated, went away.  None of us will ever see him again.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know,” Neve said softly.  “And I never will.”

I don’t want that kind of mystery for my children.  I want them to know where their father is, whether he’s breathing or not.

Bloody hell.  Why did he have to be the one to claim the sword?

And why did I have to fall in love with him?

“You’ll have a son,” Phelan said softly.  “You and my cousin.  But you’ll have more than just him.”  His eyes focused on something far away.  How much do I tell him?  How much do I dare?  “There’ll be a girl, too.  I don’t know when, but that’ll happen.  Your son and Marin and Thom’s will be as close as brothers—and fight like brothers, in some ways.”

“But she’s not pregnant.”

“We’re not sure if she is or not,” Phelan said, glancing at Cameron sidelong.  “Anyhow, variable ages have never been a real barrier to true friendship, have they?”

Cameron stared down into the ravine, at the dead leaves and the snow that caked them, at the ice gathered around rocks far below. “I guess not.”

Phelan put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.  “He’ll be a hero,” he said quietly.

“I’d settle for ordinary lives,” Cameron murmured, his eyes distant.  “For all of us.”

“You don’t have that in you.”

Choking back a bitter laugh, Cameron nodded slowly.  “You’re right about that, I guess.  I’ve never settled for ordinary. It’s driven everything I’ve ever done.  Joining the service, trying to…to save Neve…”

Phelan squeezed a little harder. “You have saved her, Cameron.”

“Have I?” he murmured.  “I feel like all I’ve done is get her hurt.  Put her in harm’s way.”

“With everything you know about what she is, who she is, where she comes from, you still think that?”  Phelan shook his head.  “Cameron, you’ve saved her from being bloody well alone.  She never thought that she’d ever find someone, anyone.  You lifted the burden of that blade from her shoulders.  She’s carried it for nearly as long as any of us can remember.  She doesn’t have to anymore.”

“Not alone, anyway,” Cameron said softly.  He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, hunching in his jacket.  “You can’t tell me that my carrying that sword doesn’t still make it her burden, too.”

“Of course it does,” Phelan said.  “But the difference is that she’s not carrying it alone.”

Cameron exhaled something that wasn’t quite a sigh.  “None of this tells me what I want to know.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What does this blade mean for me, Phelan? You said you’d tell me what you knew.”

“You’re a hero,” Phelan said, his tone gentle.  “You’re a knight errant, and that’s what you’ll be.  Your son…Cameron, your son will be the leader that you and Neve and all of us teach him to be.  But the four of you—you and Thom and Marin and Neve—you’re the leaders for today.  Your son is the king of tomorrow.”

“King,” Cameron echoed, then snorted softly.  “My son.  A king.  In America.”

“There isn’t an America anymore.”  Phelan sighed.  “There isn’t anything anymore, not yet.  There will be, someday.  All of you will build it, start the legacy.

“You’ll ride the roads, between here and everywhere, carrying messages, doing good deeds, shepherding those who’d dare take to the road.  Sometimes, Thordin or I or Thom will ride with you.  Sometimes you’ll ride alone.

“But you’ll keep your promise to Neve.”  Phelan swallowed hard at the tightness in his throat, the tightness birthed from the lie he was spinning.  “You’ll come home to her, each and every time.  She’ll stay here, most of the time—easier for her.”

“Easier?”

Phelan nodded slowly.  “She has an adventurer’s heart, but after all that’s happened these past few weeks, she’ll never be the same—never be as strong as she used to be.  It’ll be hard for her to accept it, but eventually she will.  She’ll settle in here, settle into a life with friends and people who love her and her children—the children you two share.”  He smiled.  “And she’ll wait with them here for you to come home.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Cameron said quietly.

“Believe it,” Phelan answered. “Because it’s true.”

“What has she already told you about the sword?”

Cameron jolted, twisting, and Phelan smiled grimly.  He hadn’t meant to startle his cousin’s lover, but there was a little piece of him that delighted in having done so.

“Not enough,” Cameron said, brows knitting together as he turned slowly back toward the ravine below.  He was standing amidst the holly bushes that edged their settlement, their community, formed an extra protective boundary between them and everything outside.  “She told me what it was and then shit started happening pretty fast.  After that, Thordin was with us and we really didn’t have much time to talk about it.”

“And now instead of asking her, you’re asking me.”  Phelan shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he drew abreast of the younger man.

“Seemed like a better idea than bothering her with it right now,” Cameron said.  “She’s got enough to worry about.”

Like the fact that she’s in love with you and she fears what your intertwined destinies might hold.  To be honest, I don’t think I blame her, either.  I keep hoping I’m wrong about so much…it’s a wonder I dare to open my mouth anymore.  “I suppose you’re right.  What do you want to know?”

“I’m guessing ‘everything’ isn’t a very good answer, is it?”

Phelan laughed.  “Oh, it’s a perfectly good answer, it’s just not an answer I can handle.  There’s a lot about that blade that I don’t even know myself.”

Cameron blinked at him.  “But Neve—”

“She’s been its guardian for a very, very long time,” Phelan admitted.  “And in some instances, she’ll know more about it than I could ever hope to know.  I just happen to know enough to tell you more about it.”

“Was it really Arthur’s sword?”

“His name was Artorius,” Phelan said.  “And it really was his sword.  It was forged well before his birth, though, and Neve’s been its guardian for centuries—almost since the day it was forged, give or take a couple years.”  He smiled wryly.  “It’s an ancient, ancient blade and probably not as ill-fated as you fear.”

“Was it Uther’s before it was Ar—Artorius’s?”

“There was no Uther,” Phelan said, stretching and crossing just beyond the holly hedge and the wardings it anchored.  His skin prickled slightly as he passed through the warding line to the edge of the ravine, abruptly becoming aware of other sensations, of the power that pulsed from the trio of power nodes settled in the ravine, two nearer and one farther away.  Those sources of power were what made this patch of earth so desirable—the confluxes of lines of power that wrapped the earth in what Phelan had always visualized as glowing gossamer threads.

The winding river directly East also made a difference in the desirability of the area, though.  For all its troubles, the Grand was a strong line of power recognized throughout the history—clearly displayed by the array of burial mounds local native tribes had built on its shores over the years.

“Then the stories aren’t true,” Cameron said.  “About how Merlin helped Uther disguise himself so he could take advantage of the lady Igraine—”

“No,” Phelan said softly.  “Fabrications of later storytellers because the actual tale was somehow not interesting enough.”  He snorted softly and shook his head.  “I suppose maybe it wasn’t.  Artorius’s father was Roman and his mother was an Erse princess.  Artorius was a product of the Roman occupation that became a legend well before his death.”  He smiled a faint, humorless smile.  He hated it.  Perhaps that’s why the truth of his story’s been all but lost-because he didn’t want it remembered.  There’s something to be said for the wishes of a man being honored after his death.  “Artorius was a good man and a brave warrior—and that sword kept him safe on more than one campaign, in Britain and beyond.  But it couldn’t save him, not when his time was up.”

“Just like it won’t save me.”

Phelan shivered and shook his head, smiling slowly.  “Don’t make assumptions yet,” he said softly.  “You never know what might happen.”

“You do,” Cameron pointed out.

Phelan shrugged.  “I do.  And I also told you not to make assumptions.”

Cameron swallowed but said nothing, just stepped through the hedge to join him.  Phelan grinned and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Relax.  I’ll tell you what I know, for what it’s worth.  Remember, though—nothing, nothing, is ever written in stone.”

“Right,” Cameron said, only the barest hint of a tremor in his voice.

Phelan nodded and began to talk.

Thordin caught up with him three steps away from the door and fell in with him, walking shoulder-to-shoulder in silence for a few moments before Thordin said, “Fireworks this morning.”

“Eh?”  Cameron blinked at him.  “Fireworks?”

“Yeah, fireworks.  Things happening.  Not sure what, but it seems like something from the looks on folks’ faces that I’m seeing.”

Cameron frowned slightly.  So much for cornering Phelan and grilling him about my sword. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Nah, I was coming to get you before I went and found out for myself.  We’ll probably find out in a few minutes, though.”

The smell of breakfast reached Cameron as they emerged into the chill of the tent beyond the heated makeshift dormitory they lived in.  It must have been later than he’d anticipated.

“How long past dawn is it?”

“Less than an hour,” Thordin said.  “Not many people are up and moving right now.”

My chances just went up.  Cameron nodded slightly and headed for the fire, where he could see Phelan clustered with Tala, Thom, Matt, and Marin.  “G’morning.”

Tala gave him a warm smile.  “Morning, Cameron.  Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee would be fantastic if you’ve got some made,” he said as he and Thordin joined them by the fire.  “And the news.  What’s going on?”

Marin and Thom exchanged a look, then she answered.

“We have a chance at peace with Cariocecus.”

“The jackass that attacked us?  That one?”

She nodded.  “He approached Phelan this morning.”

Thordin blinked at Phelan.  “And you didn’t gut him where he stood?  You’re slipping.”

Phelan snorted and shook his head.  “I’m significantly less violent than I used to be.”

Thom choked on his coffee, coughing and sputtering.  “This from the man who knocked Vammatar over the edge of the ravine and probably drowned her.”

“That was different,” Phelan said evenly.  “There was zero hope for any kind of truce with that bitch.  And she attacked me first.”

“Cariocecus attacked us first,” Tala pointed out as she handed Cameron a mug of coffee, then started to get a cup of tea for Thordin.  “I’m still not sure what’s different.”

Phelan shook his head again.  “He knows when to quit and there’s no real grudge there that I’m aware of.  Vammatar was a grudge older than bloody history—and her family’s going to keep coming, too.”

“I’m shocked they’re not here yet,” Thordin mused as he settled on the ground near the fire.  Tala handed him his mug of tea, then a bag of potatoes and two bowls.  Without voicing a question, he produced a knife and started skinning the potatoes for her.  “Those bitches of the underworld aren’t usually the ones to leave off so easily or quickly.”

“They’ve been temporarily diverted, I think,” Phelan said, nose wrinkling momentarily.  “They’re chasing older scents and there’s some friendly shifters running some interference for me.”

“That’s not going to work forever,” Thordin observed.

Cameron frowned, fingers tightening around his mug.  And this is the world that Neve and I are going to be bringing a child into—raising a child in.  Frightening, that.

A child that’ll be heir to a blade whose legacy I don’t understand, only the mythology—and I barely understand that.

“Phelan,” Cameron said slowly. “Not…just now, right this second, but soon, I need to speak with you.”

Phelan blinked.  “About what?”

“About the sword,” Cameron said simply.

Phelan smiled weakly.  “I wondered when you’d ask.”

Marin glanced between them, one brow arching slightly.  “You haven’t talked to him about that yet?”

Phelan shook his head.  “There hasn’t really been time to discuss it in any depth.  Not yet.”  He met Cameron’s gaze.  “But soon.  After we figure out what we’re going to do about Cariocecus, we’ll have that talk.”

Cameron nodded slowly.  “All right.”  I just have to hope that nothing goes sideways between then and now.

The way his luck was running lately, he figured it’d be at least three more days before he got any answers—if he got any at all.

Cameron brushed his hand lightly over Neve’s hair before he stretched and rose from his seat on the edge of the bed.  Behind him, she murmured something and reached for him, more asleep than awake.  He smiled and tucked their blankets a little higher.

“Stay asleep a little longer,” he murmured.  “If anything really needs your attention, I’ll come get you.”

She didn’t even open her eyes, just snuggled deeper into the covers and sighed softly.

Cameron kissed her temple and started getting dressed.  It was still fairly early, unless he missed his guess.  Camp still seemed quiet—not that it ever got that loud, not with the community being as small as it was.  Maybe he’d be able to catch up with Thom or Thordin, J.T. or Phelan before someone else waylaid them with something more important than his curiosity.

I need to talk to Phelan about this damn sword.

It hung scabbarded from a peg on the wall, its hilt gleaming dimly in the lamplight.  It looked brand new and utterly ancient all at once, beautiful and mysterious and deadly.

The sword was Excalibur, and he still couldn’t quite fathom the circumstances that brought it to his hand.

I never believed in fate.  So why did it happen to me?

It was a question he’d asked himself over and over again since the day he’d found out what it was.

“You could come back to bed,” Neve murmured from her cocoon of blankets.  Her eyes were shining crescents in the dim light, half hidden by shadows and the comforter she’d half pulled over her head.  “What’s dragging you out into the cold?”  One of her hands inched from beneath the covers, reaching for him.

He smiled and finished tugging on his pants before he went back over to her and took her hand, squeezing her fingers gently.  “One of us has to show our faces so they know we’re still alive, right?”

“Mm.”  Her eyes slid closed again.  “I guess so, maybe.  Will you be long?”

“I’ll come check on you after breakfast,” Cameron said softly.  “Would you like me to bring you any?”

“Tea,” she said.  “Maybe some bread or toast or something.”

“I’m bringing you meat if she made some,” Cameron said as he stepped away again to tug on a sweatshirt.

“As long as it’s not venison.”  Neve curled into a tighter ball, tugging the blankets higher up over her head.  “I don’t know what it did to my stomach…”

“I won’t bring you any venison,” he promised.  “Not for a few weeks, anyway.”

“Good.”  She shivered and he tried not to wince.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she murmured.  “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“Still?”

She snorted from underneath the blanket.  “Cam, I worked magic when I sang those spirits home to their rest.  Why do you think I was so adamant that Phelan find someone else to do it?”

He rocked back against his heels.  “I didn’t realize—”

“No one except for Phelan and I—and maybe Thordin—did.”  She sighed quietly.  “I’ll be all right.  I’ll just want to sleep for a few more days.  That probably has more to do with how much I still hurt, though less than anything else.”

“Has nothing to do with other things, huh?”  Cameron managed to smile at her as he snagged his jacket from near the door.

“Well,” Neve said softly.  “Maybe a little.  Probably a little.”  Her eyes came open again.  “Turn off the lamp when you leave?”

He nodded.  “Of course.”

He gave her one last kiss and turned down the lamp before he walked out the door.

“I’m not sure I like how zen you are about his,” Matt said as they walked.  “The bastard tried to kill all of us.”

“And now we’ve got some kind of advantage,” Thom said.  “That would be why I’m zen.  He needs us more than we need him.  If we decide we want to give him peace, then it’s going to be peace with conditions—including that he stays the hell out of our way and warns us of any nastiness coming well before it hits our wards and our walls.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way.”  Matt shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket to ward off the morning chill.

“Clearly not.”  Thom smiled.  “Don’t worry.  You’ll learn.”  And probably faster, now, if the visions are true.  We’ll have to push, if I’m right.  I don’t want to be right, though.  Thom’s lips thinned momentarily and he glanced away, hoping neither man saw the expression.

If either of them did, they had the grace—or the sense—to keep their mouths shut.

“J.T. is avoiding me,” Phelan announced as they reached the nearest corner of the tents they were still using to house supplies and additional workspace.  “I’m not entirely sure why.”

“Are you sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the ghost that was following you around?”  Matt asked.  “I’m guessing she’s not here right now because my skin’s not crawling.”

Phelan’s gaze grew distant and he shook his head.  “She’s keeping her distance, watching from afar.  It’s probably better that way.”  He glanced at Thom.  “But she said she’s not leaving until the children are born.”

“You mean Neve and Cameron’s baby and Tala’s twins?”

“She mentioned yours, too,” Phelan said.

Thom tried to smother a frown.  That was something I didn’t want to hear.  “We’re not even sure that’s happening anytime soon.  She could be here for a long time.”

“For J.T.’s sake, I hope not,” Phelan said with a rueful smile.  “For some reason, I don’t think he’s a fan—Marin, either.”

Thom winced.  “She might not be, but that might have something to do with the implication that she’s pregnant.”

“Is she?”

“I don’t know,” Thom said honestly.  At least not yet.

Phelan made an interested noise and shook his head.  “I suppose we’ll know soon enough.”

Matt glanced at his brother-in-law with one brow arched slightly.  Thom shook his head.

There’s nothing to say or do until we know for sure.  Thom ducked past the shelves draped in tarps that housed the unsorted books that had been rescued from the library—a project Marin had been working on with Jacqueline and Carolyn these days, especially on the days when the weather had turned foul.  He could smell breakfast already, which meant that the rest of camp would be rousing themselves soon.

“Who was awake?”  Matt asked behind him, clearly talking to Phelan.

“Tala and Marin when I left,” Phelan said.  “Probably a few more, now.  They may or may not have mentioned Cariocecus’s offer to whoever else is up.  I didn’t tell them not to.”

“Maybe you should have,” Thom said.

“How do you figure?”

Thom smiled over his shoulder at Phelan.  “You’re not worried about how they’ll spin it?”

Phelan shrugged.  “I have no real feelings one way or the other when it comes to whether we take his offer or we don’t.  That’s up to you guys.”

“None, huh?”  Something about that surprises me.

“Not really.  It’s your decision.”  He spread his hands.  “This was your home before it became mine.  The choice is yours about whether or not you want to deal with him squatting.”

Matt made a face.  “Interesting way of putting it, Phelan.”

The once-druid laughed.  “Glad you approve.  It felt like a good way to describe it.”

“It is,” Thom agreed as they drew within sight of the fire.  “True and accurate.  It’s something we’ll have to discuss when we make the decision.”  And I have to hope that no one comes to this with their decision already made.

Beyond maybe my wife, that is.

“Phelan’s coming.”

Thom winced slightly, glancing at his brother-in-law.  “What’s he doing up this early in the morning?”

Matt shook his head.  “You say that like it’s unusual.  He’s usually up earlier than a lot of us.”  He turned away from the forge’s doorway and met Thom’s troubled gaze.  “Are you trying to avid him or something?”

“Not entirely,” Thom lied, looking down at the sketchpad in his lap.  Only partially.  He smoothed a bare hand over the paper, careful not to smear the lines of his sketch.  “Though I’ll admit that I’m not in the mood for him to gently hint at wanting confirmation about some things.”

“You mean like my sister being pregnant?”

“Exactly like that.”  Thom closed his eyes and flipped to a fresh page in his sketchbook, hiding the rough blueprints for a cradle.

“I’m going to regret asking this, but why is he so concerned with that happening, exactly?  I know that he’s interested in it, but no one’s quite explained why.”

I’m not entirely sure I understand why—or that I really want to understand the parts I’m already aware of.  Thom exhaled.  “It starts some kind of cosmic timer or something that Phelan seems to think is coming on too fast.”  I wish I didn’t agree with him about the goddamned timer part, either.

Matt shook his head as he sat down on an overturned bucket next to Thom and settled in to start wrapping the grip of one of the new swords with a strip of suede.  “Well, whether you want to talk to him or not, he’s coming up here.”

“Yeah, I caught that.”  Thom closed the sketchbook and set it aside, reaching for one of the finished swords and a whetstone.

Settle down.  It could be something totally unrelated.

I don’t have much confidence that it is, but it could be.

“He might be here about J.T. or something.”

“Yeah, maybe.”  The whetstone whispered against the still-dull edge of the blade.  It’d take quite a bit of honing until the edge was as sharp as they’d need it before the next attack came—before their next hand to hand round with something ugly and dangerous from beyond their wards, possibly beyond their imagining.

That was one of the perils of surviving the apocalypse.

Phelan ducked into the forge a moment later and nodded to Matt in greeting before he turned his attention to Thom.  “You should come down by the fire,” he said.  “We need to talk.  Honestly, both of you probably should.  You’re both going to have to be part of this decision.”

“Decision?”  Thom glanced up from the blade, brow furrowing.  “What decision?”

The once-druid leaned in the doorway, studying both men.  “Cariocecus made us an offer of peace.”

Because I’d trust an offer from the bleeding Shadow Man who almost killed us.  Thom’s eyes narrowed.  “Do you believe him?”

“I almost wish I didn’t,” Phelan said.  He shook his head slightly.  “But with everything happening right now—everything changing so fast—I can see how and why he’d make the offer.”  His lips thinned.  “It could bode well for us if we make the deal.”

“How do you figure?”  Matt asked.

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten that there’s a trio of Scandinavian bitch goddesses that’re gunning for me because I killed their sister.”

At lease we hope you killed their sister.  Thom winced.  He hadn’t forgotten—not quite—no matter how much he might have wanted to.  “And then there’s the new one.”

Phelan nodded.  “The new one could be worse than them, but the jury’s still out.”

“I imagine you’ll let us know if we actually have something to worry about,” Thom said, setting aside the sword and whetstone, standing and stretching.

“You know I would.”

“Good,” Thom said with a firm nod.  “Have you told Marin yet?”

“Before I told the two of  you.”

Thom nodded.  Then she’s already forming her own opinion.  “How long do we have?”

“Until tomorrow.”

It won’t take that long to decide.  “All right.  Let’s get some breakfast and we can discuss this—figure out what’s best for everyone.”

Phelan managed to smile.  “You’re taking this remarkably well.”

Thom shrugged.  “It doesn’t make sense for me to flip out over everything.  Just the important things.  This ranks somewhere just below that.  Come on.  Let’s go eat.”

The three of them headed back down to the cookfires together.