Awakenings

                He bowed his head, eyes sliding shut and fingers loosening their grip on mine.
                “Blood takes care of blood,” he whispered again.
                The pain in his voice was almost unbearable.
                He belongs to us.  We belong to him.
                “I don’t understand,” I said in a choked whisper.  I was beginning to, though.  I just didn’t want to.
                Phelan laughed.  It was a quiet, almost bitter sound.  “Yes you do,” he said as he shook his head.  “You have all the pieces, you just don’t want to put them together.”
                “You’re trying to tell me that we’re—that all of us are—“  I shut my mouth, unable to say the words.
                We’re all from the same blood and bone back through the centuries.  We share common ancestry, and it’s ancestry that we share with you.
                “That’s why the Shadow Man showed up before you came,” I said.  “Not because of the nexi or the power or the lines.  It was because of us.”
                Phelan didn’t have to say anything for me to know it was true.
                I sat back against my heels, shaking my head slowly.  “Unbelievable.”
                “Is it?” he murmured.  “Is it really?”
                “No,” I said.  “Yes.  Why didn’t you say something?”
                “How could I?”  He shook his head again, brows knit, eyes tired.  His shoulders slumped as he leaned back again.  “What words could I have used to make everything all right, to make it not sound crazy and terrifying and utterly disturbing?  What could I have said?  Tell me you don’t suddenly feel strangely awkward knowing that you and your future husband come from the same Otherworldly bloodline, that you and almost everyone else here can be traced back to one line or another.”
                One line or another.  Where do they cross?  How?  I shook my head slowly.  “We’re you’re family.”
                He closed his eyes.  Tears glittered amidst copper lashes, sparkling in the light.  “Yes,” he said hoarsely.  “And I would die to protect you.  Any one of you.  All of you.”
                I reached out and squeezed his uninjured shoulder.  “What did this cost you, Phelan?”  I wasn’t sure what I was asking about—coming to us, surviving whatever he’d done to Vammatar, all of it.
                One diamond tear trickled down his cheek as he opened his eyes and stared at me.  “Nothing I wasn’t willing to give up.”  He looked away, staring beyond the shelter of the tent, watching the work going on within the camp for a few long seconds.  “I can’t go back to the Tír, that’s all.  Not that I ever wanted to, but you asked and that’s what I gave up.”  A fleeting, rueful smile touched his lips.  “I had thousands of years by your reckoning to find someone.  Immortality, agelessness—that’s a small price to pay for people who love you, people you love in return.”
                Eyes stinging, I pulled him into a tight hug.  He stroked my hair lightly and sighed.
                “Don’t cry, leannán.  Nothing’s changed.  Everything’s the way it was before.”  His arm tightened for a moment and then he let me go, gently pushing me back so he could hold me at arms’ length.
                “You have every ounce of her strength,” he murmured, “and more than her share of compassion.”
                “Brighid,” I whispered, lending the name the unconscious lilt I’d heard in J.T.’s voice when he said it.
                A puzzled expression flickered across his features before he smiled faintly.  “Aye.”
                Phelan smiled.  “A legend.  Pour the tea.  I’ll tell you the story if you want.”
                I’d almost forgotten the kettle on the fire, but apparently he hadn’t.  I got up and brewed a pot of tea, then poured two mugs of it before I sat down with him again.  He smiled as he accepted one of the mugs, then raked his hand through sweat-damp hair, leaving it standing in unruly spikes.
                “Brighid iníon Dúbhshláine was the chieftain of the Imbolg after her father passed.  Her brother Ciar was a druid-born, like Angie, though I imagine her life will be much less tragic.  The Imbolg—her clan—was reluctant to accept a woman as heir apparent to her father, but she proved herself in a great hunt when she was just fifteen.  Before he died, Dúbhshláine also made arrangements for her to marry the chieftain of another clan, and that put all murmurs of discontent to rest.  He died a year after the great hunt and his daughter took his place as leader of the Imbolg.
                “She was without a doubt the greatest hunter and warrior I have ever known.”  Phelan smiled wistfully.  “And I don’t say that because of the legends that made her into a goddess, I say it because it was true.  There was so much of her life that I only knew of through stories—like how she reclaimed her brother after he was kidnapped so far south that her tribe feared that she would fall off the edge of the world seeking him.  She made herself a legend and a hero from Egypt to the Caribbean to Ireland and back again.”  Phelan looked at me sidelong, smirking at my aghast expression as I struggled to process how someone back in the time he was talking about would have had any occasion to show up in the Carribbean.  “It’s best not to ask, leannán.  It’s sufficient to say that you remind me of her greatly.  You have her fire and her stubbornness and her dedication and that—someday, Marin leannán, that will make you a hero as great as Brighid was, if the fates allow it to be so.”
                He put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
                “What happened to her?”  I managed to ask.  “After the battle when you slew…whoever you slew.”
                “Thom told you, then?  I’m not surprised.”  He stretched a little and stared at the tent’s ceiling.  “She married her intended, Finn, and they had children—many children.  Eíre was their first, though they adopted her.  She washed up on the seacoast and they found her while they were out hunting.  The child had no one else and they took her in.”  The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile.  “And she birthed a nation.”
                I shook my head slightly.  “Sometimes I think you’re just making all of this up, you know.”
                “Of course,” he said, smiling now.  “And then what?”
                I sighed, smiling lopsidedly.  “Then I realize that it’s just crazy enough to be true.”
                “There’s my girl.”  Phelan patted my knee.  “Someday, you’ll know all my stories.  I imagine that your son will cut his teeth on them and more.”
                My stomach flip-flopped.  That’s the second time he’s mentioned something along those lines.  “Then it’s—”
                “Set in stone?”  Phelan asked softly.  “Oh, yes, leannán.  Fate doesn’t take chances with some things.  Some things are simply meant to be.”

                Phelan sat by the fire, propped up against the storage totes that housed spare dishes and silverware, his staff across his lap and knife in hand, as if he’d been working on carving it.  His hands were still, though, and his eyes were on the fire.
                He seemed a thousand miles away as I added another log to the fire and sat down next to him.
                It was another moment before he tore his gaze from the fire and looked at me sidelong.  “What’s wrong, leannán?”
                I shook my head slightly.  “Just trying to understand all of it, that’s all.  They wouldn’t tell me why they’re making a dress.  You wouldn’t tell me why it’s so important that you marry Thom and I so soon.”
                “And that’s important?” Phelan asked, smiling wryly.
                “To me it is.”
                He nodded, snapping his knife closed and tucking it away into his pocket.  His palms rested lightly against the wood of his staff, his eyes drifting back to the fire.
                He was silent for so long, I started to wonder if he was ever going to answer.
                “It’s complicated, Marin,” he said at last.  “Part of my insistence is born of regrets, though perhaps not the largest part.  That honor, I think, goes to one thing—the two of you are stronger together than you are apart.  This ensures that you’ll be together.”
                “For as long as love lasts,” I said.  “That’s what a handfasting is.  You promise to stay together for as long as love lasts.”  Or a year and a day, but I wonder if Phelan will give us that option.
                “Aye,” Phelan said, voice as distant as his eyes, which seemed to focus on something well beyond what I could see.  “And nothing that I have ever seen or ever divined says that you and Thomas Ambrose will ever fall out of love.  That’s what being a soul mate is all about, leannán, and you are his as surely as he is yours.  You are two halves of a wholly dysfunctional whole, but two halves of the same whole nonetheless.”  Phelan reached out, laying his hand over mine.  “And in the days and years to come, we will need you together as one rather than as two—or three.”
                A shiver shot through me.
                As three?
                I thought of the vision of the birth of our son.  It seemed like more dream than vision.
                “Phelan—”
                “Hush,” he soothed softly.  “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, Marin.”  The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile as his head lolled toward me.  “Trust me.  That’s a question you don’t want to know the answer to.”  He kissed my forehead.  “Things will be what they will be.”
                “Will they?”  I asked, unable to keep the doubt from my voice.  I don’t even know what we’re actually talking about here.  What are you hiding, Phelan?
                “Yes,” he said, drawing himself a little straighter.  “Now make me some tea.  I’m parched.”
                I laughed weakly and got up to get the kettle.  He watched as I filled it and hung it over the fire, silent as I fetched a teapot and a pair of mugs to match.  I’d hung the bags in the pot, ready for the hot water when it boiled, before he spoke again.
                “Now tell me what’s really upsetting you, leannán,” he said, patting the ground next to him.  “I know it’s not this wedding business.”
                I froze for a moment, heart skipping.  Don’t be surprised.  Of course he can read that in you.
                I sat back own with him and stared at my hands.
                “Go on,” Phelan said softly.
                He’d been different since the battle, less vibrant, less present.  It was as if he’d left a piece of himself somewhere and his mind couldn’t help but to wander, looking for it.
                “How close was it?”  I asked.
                “Ah.”  Air rushed out of him and he deflated like a balloon.  “So that’s what it is.  You saw her?”
                A shiver shot through me.  He knows?  Did he somehow see her, too?  Sense her?  My mouth was dry.  I’d promised not to talk about it, but I needed to know.
                My voice came out as a bare whisper.  “Who was she, Phelan?”
                “You have your suspicions already,” he said, his eyes on mine as we looked at each other sidelong.  He looked almost frightened, but more sad.
                Who else would come for him?  Who else would whisper those words in my ear?
                But why would she care?
                “Then why do you need to ask?”  Phelan smiled weakly.  “Why does it matter?”
                “Why shouldn’t it matter?”
                Phelan sighed.  I got to my knees, looming over him.
                “What are you not telling us?”  I whispered.  “Why would a goddess care?”  My hands found his.  “Why would you die to protect us, Phelan?”
                A shiver wracked him and he looked down at our linked hands.  His fingers were cold.  For the first time, I noticed faint scars that crisscrossed the backs of his hands, his knuckles permanently swollen from long-ago fistfights.  He’d been fighting for a lot of things for a long time.
                “Isn’t it enough that I would?” he murmured.  “Blood takes care of blood, leannán.  That’s all it is.”
                My stomach dropped as I realized what he’d just implied.  “Phelan—”
                Pain filled his eyes as he looked up at me, lips thin and jaw trembling.  His fingers tightened and his voice came as a whisper.
                “All of you belong to me as surely as I belong to you.”

                “I’m still not sure this is entirely necessary,” I muttered to Carolyn as she fussed over the darts in my bodice.
                She glared at me, pins her mouth.  Behind her, Tala ran the treadle sewing machine, its rhythmic clacks echoing through the camp.  We’d salvaged the heavy black vintage piece, still in working condition, from the university theatre’s costume shop of all places.  My friends had been putting it to hard use the past week.
                They’d insisted on making me a wedding dress.
                I protested.  I whined.  I bargained, cajoled, tried to remind them that we had so much other work to do before the snows flew; did we really have time for this?
                Yes, they’d all told me firmly.  Yes, we do.
                But they’d never said why.
                Carolyn took the pins out of her mouth and stared at me.  “Trust me, it is.”
                “You keep saying that,” I said, stifling a groan.  “But none of you will tell me why it’s so damn important that I have a dress.  It’s not like Thom’s wearing a suit.”
                “No, he’s wearing his black doublet,” Carolyn said, seeming to agree with me for just a second.  “And for the record, Jacqueline is putting new trim on it for him, so you’re not the only one who’s going to be all dolled up for this.”
                I huffed a sigh, fighting the urge to cross my arms.  All that would do was get me glared at and stabbed with the pins that were already adjusting the bodice’s fit.
                The clacking wound down as Tala eased up on the sewing machine’s pedal.  “I don’t see why you’re so against this whole dress business, Mar.  Can’t you see why we’re doing this?”
                “No.  That’s why I keep wanting to know why.”
                Carolyn rolled her eyes.  Tala just smiled as she stood up slowly.  She was showing more than she should have, Jacqueline had said in a whisper, wondering out loud if Tala had been wrong about when she’d actually conceived the baby.  Only time was going to answer that question.
                Tala brought the half-finished skirt over to me to check its length, making sure it wouldn’t be too short.  It was heavy silver-white brocade that they’d looted from the fabric store down the road.  I suppose a dress was as good a use as any.
                “We’re doing it us as much as we’re doing it for you, Mar,” she said softly as Carolyn resumed pinning.  “Who knows if any of us will be able to have a dress like this, let alone get married?  You, in a white dress, marrying Thom…we’re doing it for all of us.  Something close to normal amidst everything that isn’t.  You can’t begrudge us that, can you?”
                When she put it like that, it almost made sense.
                “Still,” I murmured, lifting my arms a little higher as Carolyn tapped the underside of my arm.  “There’s so damn much to do, Tala, it just doesn’t feel right to me.  I feel selfish for even letting you guys do this for me.”
                “Well, don’t,” she said cheerfully, smiling through a flicker of pain in her eyes.  She must have been thinking about Kurt, her baby’s father, if only for a second.  He’d been preparing for a job interview on the east side of the state the weekend the world ended.
                Easier said than done.  I forced a smile.  “I’ll try not to.”
                Carolyn rolled her eyes again as she stabbed her extra pins into the cushion sitting by her knee and stood up.  “Don’t try, do.  It doesn’t matter whether or not you think you deserve any of this, because we’re going to give it to you whether you like it or not.  At the end of the day, you’re screwed.”  One corner of her mouth twitched upward in a smile.  “Besides, you only get married once.  You’d be doing the same thing if it was one of us.”
                Would I?  I smothered a frown, realizing at some point, my practicality had begun to override my sentimentality.  When had that happened?
                Probably around the same time I decided that we should let Leah go wherever she was going to end up and whatever happened to her was just going to happen.
                It had been nine days since Vammatar’s attack.  Things had been quiet since then.  No sign of Leah—but no sign of the Greys, the camazotzi, Vammatar or the Shadow Man.
                Nervous flutters in my stomach told me it was the calm before the storm, but every time I tried to tell someone that, they just told me to settle down and enjoy the respite.  Even Kellin didn’t seem overly concerned.
                If it hadn’t been for Thom and Phelan not telling me to settle down and stop worrying, I might have actually started to think I was just being paranoid.
                “Are you done pinning?”  I asked Carolyn, looking down at myself.  Pins sprouted everywhere from the bodice, but it certainly fit better than it had the last time she’d started working on me.
                After studying me for a moment, she grunted and nodded.  “Yeah, I think so.  Take it off so I can start basting.”
                Tala helped me ease out of the bodice without getting impaled by a dozen tiny daggers.  I nodded my thanks to her and dried my sweaty palms on the seat of my jeans.  My arms ached dully from keeping them raised for so long.
                “You know, I could always help you guys make my dress, since you’re so damn determined to make sure that I have one.”
                “Hell no,” Carolyn said.  “This is our gift to you.  You’re not allowed to make your own damn gift.”  She sat down at the small desk sitting next to the sewing machine.  “Go on, get out of here and let Tala and I work.”
                I smiled faintly and nodded, stepping out of the shed and into the afternoon sunshine.  We’d started moving more people, more things into the sheds, which were arranged in blocks facing each other, laid over the heating trenches Thom and Davon had spent so much time engineering.   They’d tested them out a few days after the battle.  Everything seemed to work well enough, but only time would tell.
                Winter would tell, if we made it that far.
                I headed for the tent, were the cookfire still burned.  The sound of hammering, of breaking up rocks and setting the walls echoed through the camp even as the sound of the sewing machine joined them again.  Somewhere, Angie was laughing as she chased Birtha’s puppies—I could hear the sound of their puppy-barks mingling with the girl’s delight.
                The cacophony of life as we knew it.
                Life as we know it.

                “Your brother?  I thought—”
                She smiled weakly.  “That it was just Teague and I?  It has been for a long time.”  One hand drifted down to cover the hand he rested on her knee.  “Seamus was older than both of us.  He was…I don’t want to say he was the responsible one, because that’s not quite how it was.  He spent a bit of time putting out the fires that Teague started, though, and tried to talk our father out of skinning him alive sometimes.”
                “Sounds like Teague was a handful,” Cameron said, the corner of his mouth quirking in a smile.  He didn’t seem quite like that to me, but I suppose people change in thousands of—Christ, am I actually starting to—yeah.  Trying to tell himself that they were crazy and that they couldn’t possibly be that old was stupid, especially in light of what had attacked him on the road before Neve brought him to the cottage.  Seeing is believing, and I’ve seen a couple too many things already.
                There was still a little part in the back of his brain that liked to scream that he was stuck in some sort of crazy nightmare, though.
                He didn’t really listen to it anymore.  If this was a nightmare and Neve wasn’t real, he wasn’t sure he wanted to wake up again.
                “He was, but we all were in our own ways.”  She squeezed his hand, glancing sidelong at him with a weak, fleeting smile.  “Seamus was just the one who set aside his youthful impetuousness when he felt it necessary, or my father demanded it.  Father was…a demanding man.”  She sighed softly, eyes turning back to the road before them.
                “Was,” Cameron said.  “How long ago did he…?”
                “Die?”  Neve closed her eyes briefly.  “He was killed during the war.  An assassin tore out his throat while he was out hunting.  It should not have been possible, but in those days the impossible was happening.  Much like today.”
                “Do you miss him?”
                Neve shook her head slowly. “No.  No, I don’t think that I do.  He was a hard man, my father.  No.”  She sighed.  “I miss Seamus, though.”
                Cameron heard the pain in her voice, could almost taste it in her words.  “Then he’s gone, too?”
                “Aye,” she whispered, voice almost lost in the sound of their horses’ hooves.  “The war—“  her voice broke.  Cameron squeezed her knee and she looked at him, her eyes bleak.
                “The war took him from us,” she said quietly.  “My father sent him south to marry another like us, but from a different…clan, I suppose you could say.  A different Otherworld from our own.  The woman was supposed to marry Teague—that had been the initial intent—but he’d fallen in love with someone else and she was pregnant with his child.  Seamus took his place.”  She stared at the horizon, velvet dark giving way to the bright of day in the west as the rising sun cast long shadows before them.  “I wonder sometimes if he was happy with her, but I don’t think they ever had the time to know.”
                Cameron wondered which of her brothers she meant for a brief moment but decided it was better not to ask.  “How did it happen?” he asked instead, voice as quiet as hers.  It was as if she was terrified that she might summon up ghosts if she spoke of these painful things too loudly.
                “I don’t know,” she said.  “Do you believe that?  I really don’t know.  A messenger came one day, already dying of wounds he sustained just reaching Teague.  The messenger told him that Seamus was dead, that the southron clan he’d married into was scattered, broken.  We would get no help from them in our war.  Then the man died before Teague could find out how, or why, or anything else.
                “We never even saw his body, never got to bury him in our way.  I think perhaps that’s the hardest part of it sometimes.  Losing Seamus nearly broke my father.  It certainly broke his grip on his temper.  After Seamus died, all I can really remember of my father were his rages and how we couldn’t stop them, couldn’t turn them aside.
                “It was good we were at war in those days already.”  Neve looked at Cameron.  “If we hadn’t been, he would have started one, as sure as the sunrise.”
                “Your brother sounds like he was very different from your father,” Cameron observed.
                “In many ways, we three were more like our mother, yes,” Neve said.  She closed her eyes briefly and then shook herself.  “Enough,” she breathed.  “Let me be happy to be on the road with you, Cameron.  I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
                His heart stutter-stepped and he swallowed hard.  “All right.”
                Her hand closed around his again and squeezed.  “I’ll race you to the next mile marker.”
                She let go of his hand, touched her heels to her mount’s flanks, and was off like a shot.
                “Hey!” he shouted, blinking.  Bloody hell!
                Her laughter echoed off the trees and back to him.  Cameron couldn’t help but grin as kicked his horse into a gallop and raced after her.
                There would be time enough to answer all of his questions later.

                The road stretched out in front of them, lit by the rising sun.  Cameron watched Neve as she packed up their mess kit while he kicked some more sand and dirt over their doused campfire.  Neve glanced up at him and smiled briefly.
                “What’s wrong?”
                He shook his head a little.  “A part of me still can’t believe you came with me.  You didn’t have to.”
                Neve straightened, her dark brows hooding her bright eyes.  “Cam—Cam, I wanted to.”
                “I guess a part of me can’t understand why you would,” he said quietly, taking the mess kit from her, knotting the cord so the pots and pans wouldn’t end up scattered everywhere when he tossed the bag across his horse’s rump, behind his saddle.  “He’s your family.  Sounded like he’s all you’ve got—him and your cousins, anyway.”
                “That’s true.”  They walked toward the horses, picketed in the grass downwind of their little camp.  “But that shouldn’t tie me down, should it?”  She stopped walking, brow furrowing more deeply.  “Didn’t you want me to come?”
                His mouth went dry and he stood frozen for a moment, meeting her confused, almost hurt gaze.  His heart tripped over itself as he reached for her hand.  “Of course I did.  I couldn’t stop thinking about you after we separated on the road weeks back.  I kept worrying about what would happen to you, whether or not you’d be safe and I—I missed you.  I missed talking to you.”  Her fingers were warm in his as he squeezed her hand.  “When you told me that you were coming with me when I left—when you stopped trying to talk me out of it—I was relieved.”
                “Just relieved?” she asked softly.
                He blushed.  “Maybe a little excited.  It’s a big adventure.  A big, stupidly dangerous adventure, but still an adventure.”  His heartbeat quickened as he leaned toward her, his lips brushing lightly against her cheekbone.  “I’m glad you came.  I’m glad you didn’t give me a choice.”
                She caught his chin in her free hand and turned his face to hers, kissing him hard.  For a second, Cameron couldn’t breathe, blood beginning to roar in his ears.  He dropped the mess kit and slid his arm around her, marveling at how neatly she fit against him.  Neve slid an arm around his waist, leaning against him, her body like a torch in the morning chill.
                Then it was over and she was stepping back, leaving him flushed and blinking, feeling almost as if his fever had returned.  Neve stooped and picked up the mess kit.
                “Tonight,” she murmured.  “When we’re camped again, that’s to be continued.”
                He laughed quietly.  “You’re on.”
                She grinned over her shoulder at him and strode toward the horses.  The mess kit got tied behind his saddle, muffled between his bedroll and the horse’s hindquarters.
                “How’s your arm?” she asked as she checked the saddle girths one last time.
                “A little stiff, but I think it’s all right.”  His lips quirked in a smile.  “Worried that I’m not going to be able to stay in the saddle?”
                “Maybe a little,” she said with a faint smirk as she tugged on her archer’s glove, reinforced over her thumb and her first three fingers, then began lacing on her bracer.  Her bow dangled from a hook on her saddle, next to a quiver of arrows that would hang against her knee once they mounted up.  “But if you stay you’re all right, I’m going to have to trust you.”
                “That’s right,” he said quietly, catching her hand and squeezing it gently.  “But I’m not lying.”  At least I hope I’m not.
                “I’ll be the judge of that,” she said, swinging into her saddle.  Cameron gathered her horse’s reins and handed them up to her.  She smiled faintly and nodded.
                “Maybe I should have let you mount first.”
                Cameron shook his head.  “It’s all right.  I grew up around these kind of brutes.”  He grinned and gathered his own mount’s reins, clambering into his own saddle.
                “You did?”
                He nodded, smiling.  “My uncle had horses,” he said, feeling a brief pang of sadness.  His uncle had died when he was a teenager.  His aunt had kept running the place, but he’d lost touch with her after his first deployment.  I wonder…
                “You okay?”
                “Yeah.  Just thinking.”  He shifted until he was comfortable in the saddle, then kicked his horse gently into motion.    “I used to spend almost my whole summers there when I was a kid.  Horses and airplanes.”
                Neve drew abreast of him and their horses trotted side-by-side along the old roadway.  “It’s not that strange, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
                “It wasn’t.”
                “Then what?”
                “Teague was saying something to you the other day,” he lied—half lied, really, since he’d been curious about it since he’d heard the edges of the conversation.  “Something about someone named Seamus.”
                Neve winced, her fingers tightening around the reins.  “I didn’t think you heard any of that.”
                Cameron edged his mount closer to hers, reaching for her knee.  “Who was he, Neve?”
                She sighed.  “Our brother.”

                “You need to talk him out of it, Neve.”
                She closed her eyes and counted to twenty before she straightened slowly and turned toward Teague, standing behind her in the doorway.  “I’m done taking orders from the men in our family, Teague.  If you want to talk Cameron out of going, you have to do it yourself.”
                Teague flinched.  “I suppose I deserved that.”
                “Yes,” Neve said, watching her brother ease deeper into the spare bedroom, the one she—and Cameron—had been sharing.  As far as Teague knew, she’d been sleeping on the floor, leaving Cameron the bed.
                He’d have some kind of attack if he knew the truth.
                She folded her arms across her chest.  “I’ve spent my entire life listening to you, to Seamus, to Father.  I’m done.  It’s time for me to follow my heart.”
                Teague stopped and stood by the window, staring out at the bright blue autumn sky.  “And your heart’s telling you to go off wandering with an ex-pilot who gets attacked by Dirae as if he was one of us?”
                “Someone has to watch his back if he’s going to fulfill whatever grand destiny you’ve foreseen for him, deartháir mór.”  She tried to suppress a wince as she saw her brother’s shoulders hunch slightly.  He leaned heavily against the windowsill and she went to him and wrapped her arms around him.  She rested her cheek against his shoulder blade and sighed.  “It’s not that I don’t love you, Teague.  You know that, right?”
                “Of course.”  His voice was unsteady and she couldn’t suppress the wince this time.
                “Déithe agus arrachtaigh,” she muttered under her breath.  “Teague, it’s not as if I’m leaving you all alone here.  You have Kira.”  You have your wife and the child in her belly.  Hasn’t she told you yet?  Haven’t you sensed it, you bloody oaf?  “You won’t be alone, and you know full well we won’t abandon you completely anyhow.  We’ll be back.”
                “Will you?” he whispered, leaning his head against the glass.  Something wet hit the back of Neve’s hand and she sighed.
                “Deartháir mór,” she whispered in his ear.  “I’ve been in a cage for too long.  Don’t ask me to lock myself in one again.  Not when I’ve learned how to fly.”
                “We need you, deirfiúr leanbh, Kira and I.”
                “Not as much as Cameron does.”  Neve squeezed him and straightened, running her fingers lightly through her brother’s tangled curls.  “He’ll get himself killed out there if he goes alone, deartháir mór.  There’s still too much he doesn’t know, doesn’t understand.”
                Teague closed his eyes, still braced against the windowsill.  “He’s like Kira’s cousin.  He’s not ready, but he doesn’t have the luxury of not being ready yet.”  He cocked his head to one side slowly, meeting her gaze.  The corner of his mouth twitched upward with a wry smile.  “Do I have any hope of talking him into staying on a few more days, even a week or two?”
                Neve smiled weakly and went back to packing her meager belongings.  “I doubt it, but you can try.”
                His smile turned sad as he turned back to the window.  “Maybe I’ll save my breath for a fight I actually have a prayer of winning.”
                They were both silent for a few moments except for the sound of Neve stuffing clean clothes into her knapsack.  She finally looked up to see Teague staring at her again, a little wistfulness in his gaze, in his voice.
                “You remind me of Mum.”
                She felt a sudden lump building in her throat.  She couldn’t remember their mother very well—she’d been too young when she’d died—but Teague had always been close to her.  “Teague.”
                He smiled faintly.  “It’s all right.  You just…you look like her.  That’s all.”  The smile grew a little more wry.  “And talk like her and move like her.”  He crossed the floor and lifted Neve’s bow, weighing the weapon in his hands.  “You shoot like her, too, but don’t let this be your only protection.  Let him do some of the work.”
                She wrapped her arms around her older brother and held him tightly.  “I will,” she whispered.  “I promise, I will.”
                “And be careful.  I can’t lose you, too.  Seamus was enough.”
                It hasn’t stopped hurting after all these years, after so much time.  Neve’s arms tightened.  Part of Teague’s problem, of course, was guilt.  If not for him, Seamus never would have been sent south, married off in his younger brother’s place.  They never would have lost him.
                They’d fought, of course, as siblings always did.  Seamus tried to protect his younger brother and sister from their father’s temper, from his dark, cold rages.  Neve was the only one who had generally been spared.  Teague had gotten the rougher side of their father’s tongue more than once in their lives.  He’d been the rebellious one—they both had been, truth be told, but Neve was too good at not getting caught.  As they grew older, into adults, Teague and Seamus had finally seemed to find the companionship in each other that they’d enjoyed as boys.
                And then Seamus had been taken from them.
                “Do you think he was happy with her?”  Neve whispered.
                “I don’t know that he had time, deirfiúr leanbh.” Teague sighed.
                “We will, though,” Neve told him, then lifted her head and kissed his temple.  “His fate won’t be ours.”
                “Of course not,” Teague murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching again.  “We’re smart enough to choose—not have our choices made for us.”
                Neve smiled and squeezed him one more time.  “Aye,” she said softly.  “Now don’t you forget that you’ve said that, either.”
                He laughed.  “I’ve gone and screwed myself, haven’t I?”
                “Only a little, deartháir mór.  Just remember that you said it the next time you want to tell me or Aoife or Phelan to do something.”  Neve turned back to her bags.
                “Phelan,” Teague said heavily, shaking his head slightly.  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he gets himself half-killed on purpose.”
                “He might,” Neve agreed, rolling another shirt into a thin strip.  “Then again, maybe he can’t help it.  I’m sure he’s fine, though, Teague.  We’d know if he wasn’t, wouldn’t we?”
                Teague made a quiet, noncommitmental noise in the back of his throat.  “I imagine he’s fine.  For all we know, Kira’s cousin got annoyed and stabbed him.”
                “He can’t be as bad as you make him sound sometimes, Teague.  Kira adores her cousin.”
                “She does,” he agreed softly.  “And I suppose I can’t blame her.  They’re very close.”  He smiled briefly.  “As to how he might actually be in truth, I’ll let you be the judge of that.  You’ll eventually meet him.”
                Neve stared at him for a moment.  “Cameron told you that we were going west?”
                “No,” Teague said, and left it at that.

                All eyes were on Aoife as she sat with her back to the hearth and the anemic fire flickering there, but she wasn’t looking at any of them.  Instead, she stared into the depths of the steaming mug of tea cradled between her hands, as if she believed if she didn’t look at anyone or anything else, the questions would just go away.
                But they weren’t going to just go away, were they?  Her lips thinned and she sighed quietly, finally risking a look up, her gaze falling on Gray.  “What did you ask, again?”
                “I just want to know what happened three days ago,” he said, seeming as reluctant to make eye contact as she was.  “That’s all, Eva—I just want to know.”
                The words came slowly, hesitantly.  I don’t know if I want to tell them this.  They’re just going to think I’m crazier than they already think I am.  Can’t just lie, though, can I?  No, I guess not.  There isn’t any way around it, is there?  “It was my brother,” she said quietly.  “He—something—acch.”  She broke off, fingers tightening around the mug.  The urge to throw it was almost too strong to quell.
                “Something happened to my brother,” she spat, forcing herself to set down the mug before it ended up broken.  “The bloody idiot probably got in over his head and got himself maimed.”
                The others sat in stunned silence for a moment, not even moving.  Kes was the first, swallowing and glancing from Wat on her right to Gray on her left before her gaze settled on Aoife.
                “How—how did you know?” she asked. “That he’d gotten hurt, I mean.  How did you—”
                “I sensed it,” Aoife said, cutting her off.  Her voice shook slightly as she forged on.  “We can do that.  We can…we can sense things like that, sometimes.  Not always, just sometimes.  It has to be sudden or bad and usually both and this woke me out of a gods-be-damned dead sleep, so it was probably really bad.”  Woke me out of a dead sleep and had me running barefoot into the damned woods to get him, like I could just run across a few hundred miles to get to him.  No doubt it was bad.  She laced her fingers through her hair, holding her head.  “Damn it, I have to leave.  I have to go.”  She sprang to her feet and headed for her pack.  If I leave now, I’ll have time to make it five, maybe eight miles before dark.
                Gray’s hand snapped out, fingers tightening into a death grip on her arm.  His voice came out oddly flat, his eyes still on the spot where she had been, not the spot where she was now.
                “No,” he said.  His fingers, already digging, tightened even more, dug even deeper.
                “Let go,” she hissed.
                Gray stood up slowly, looking at his friends.  “Excuse us.”
                He dragged her into one of the side rooms, mercifully not the one she’d been sleeping in.  He kicked the door closed and finally let go.
                Aoife rubbed her arm, grimacing.  “What the hell is this all about?”
                “I’m not letting you leave like that,” Gray growled.  “Even if I have to hog-tie you to something.  Not after everything that’s happened so far.”
                Everything that’s happened so far?  Your biggest goddamned problem would be things spitting in Teca’s metaphorical, metaphysical eye if I hadn’t shown up!  “Everything like what?  Like me showing up and starting shit and bringing new and novel problems to the fore for the lot of you?  Please.  Things would get back to normal around here if I left and you guys could just forget I was ever here.”
                “Forget?”  His voice sounded strange.  “Forget?  You expect us to just forget?  Screw that in twelve directions, Aoife.  It’s not happening because this shit doesn’t work that way.”
                She tried to ignore the fact that he’d actually said her name, not Eva, but her name.  Her fingers flexed at her sides.  Gray seemed huge and the room seemed tiny.  Her breath quickened.  “Get out of my way and let me go, Gray.”
                “Not a chance,” he said.  “Not until you promise that you’re not leaving.”
                She gritted her teeth.  “I can’t make that promise.”  Part of her wanted to, though, the part that craved safety in numbers, a warm, dry place to sleep and people to talk to.  Those were the things she’d sacrifice by running.
                If I leave, I might as well never come back because he’s never going to forgive me.
                He is never going to forgive me.  Why does that matter so much?  He’s not the only one here.
                Their eyes met and she shivered at the fear and desperation she saw in him.
                “Then I can’t let you out of this room,” he whispered.  “Because I can’t let you just run away and abandon m—us.  Abandon us.”
                “You mean abandon you,” she said, voice bleak.  Her legs felt shaky and she fumbled her way to a chair, collapsing into it before her knees could give out.  “Gray, why does it matter?”
                “Why does it matter?”  He moved away from the door, expression slack and gaze troubled as he came toward her and knelt down in front of her chair.  “How am I supposed to keep these yahoos safe without help?  You’re the only one who can help me here.  You’re the only one who knows shit that I don’t.  You’re the only one.”  He shivered, looking away.  “What was that thing I saw over you, Aoife?  When I found you in the woods three days ago.”
                “I—”  What is he talking about?  Her mouth snapped shut and she shook her head.  “I don’t know, Gray.  I don’t remember it.”
                He sighed and looked away.  “You can’t just bail on us, Aoife, and I can’t just bail on them.”
                “Who said anything about you leaving, too?”  Shit.  She leaned forward slightly, putting her hands on his shoulders.  “Gray, you can’t.”
                “Then neither can you,” he murmured, looking up at her.  “Because you’re not leaving here alone.”  He swallowed hard.  “Promise me.”
                Gods and monsters.  Aoife squeezed her eyes shut, her voice a whisper.
                “I promise.”

                J.T. whipped around toward him, blinking rapidly.  “Wait, what?”
                “He killed the guy?  The big bad?”  Marin’s nose wrinkled.  “How does he know?”
                Thom shrugged slightly.  “He told me that it’s because the chieftain and one of her allies stood there and watched him do it.”
                “What?”  J.T. raked his fingers through his dark hair, shaking his head as he sandwiched his temples between his hands.  “What the hell kind of batshit crazy—”
                “Finn,” Marin said.  “The ally of that chieftain.  That was his name, right?”
                Thom’s stomach lurched as he nodded slightly, heart quickening for a moment.  How does she know?  “Did Phelan tell you about this before he told me?”
                Her lips thinned as she shook her head slowly.  “No.  I’ll explain later, just…just keep going.”
                Don’t think I won’t ask you about it later, either.  “The fighting had mostly stopped and the chieftain—he kept calling her Breeheed, so I guess that must’ve been her name—“  Thom stopped as he caught J.T.’s wince out of the corner of his eye.  “What?”
                “Brigid,” J.T. said quietly, his voice taking on a slight lilt that was vaguely alien and yet oddly familiar.  Marin shivered as he said the name, though J.T. didn’t seem to notice.  “Her name was Brigid.”
                How do they know this shit?
                “Keep talking, Thom,” Marin whispered, leaning against him again and pulling his arms around her.
                His brow creased.  “You two are starting to scare me,” he said.
                She smiled weakly, a faint blush stealing across her cheeks as she wrapped her arms around his waist.  “Just keep talking.”
                He sighed and rested his chin on her head, staring out at the grass that waved slightly in the breeze.  “All right.  So, those two—Brigid and Finn—got to looking for him, since his warband or whatever was all over the place and mixed up with theirs.  They heard something from this gully at the far end of the battlefield and they got there in time to see the last little bit of the fight.  Phelan strangled the guy with his bowstring.  One-handed, even.  His other arm was broken—almost crushed.  Said she should have lost it and would’ve if not for someone named Seamus and that blind druid.”  Thom took a breath, forcing himself to settle down—listening to Phelan this morning had left him queasy with his heart racing.  Telling the story now was having the same effect.  “He passed out after the brute was down—he said he’s still got the scar where the guy got him with a spiked part of the warhammer.  At least, that’s what they told him he probably got hit with.  He’s not sure, of course.  Over time, he said he’s regained some hazy memories of what must’ve happened, but he’s never been sure if they’re real memories or if he’s imagining it.
                “So I guess it was like this time almost exactly, except it sounded like he was unconscious longer the first time.”  His eyes flicked between the other two as the queasy feeling returned.  “Of course,” he said quietly, “the silver lady took longer to show up that time.”
                Marin’s fingers dug into his arm.  “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
                “No,” Thom said.  “He mentioned her himself—called her an Angel of Death, but the description matched up pretty damn close.  He dreamed of her then and it sounded like he dreamed of her last night, too.”
                Marin shuddered and J.T. swore under his breath.
                “But he doesn’t know we saw her?”
                Thom shook his head.  “I don’t think so. I didn’t tell him and if he suspects anything, he didn’t call me on it.”
                J.T. held his gaze.  “Are you sure?”
                “I’m positive,” Thom said.  “He was pretty damned eager to change the subject anyhow.”  He wet his lips.  “How long before you’d feel all right about my losing the crutches, Jay?”
                J.T. snorted.  “Nice change of subject.  You don’t use them half the time now.  Let me have another look at your ankle tonight and we’ll talk.  Why?”
                Thom looked down at Marin and sighed before looking back to his best friend.  “Phelan wants to do the ceremony for us as soon as he can stand upright long enough to do it.”
                “What cere—”  Marin shot upright and stared at him.  Her mouth snapped shut as realization struck her, her eyes widening.  “He wants to—”
                “Yes,” Thom said firmly.  “He said it’s time and he owes us that much—he can see us handfasted and he can bless the union if it’s what we want.”  A weak smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  “The more I think about it, the more the idea’s starting to grow on me a little.”
                “But…but this soon?  You only just asked me a few weeks ago,” Marin said, seeming momentarily lost.
                Thom felt a little tendril of guilt worm its way through his guts.  He reached up and brushed some hair out of her face.  “Yeah, I know,” he murmured.  “But I also meant to ask you almost a year ago and chickened out.  We’ve been together a long time.”  He rested his forehead against hers.  “If you want to back out—”
                “No!”
                J.T. snickered.  “I think I’ll leave you two to have this conversation in private.  I’ll be up by the forge with Matt if you guys need me.”
                Thom waved him off, still staring at Marin.
                “Then what do you want?” he asked.
                She hesitated a moment, then smiled weakly.  “I want to let him do it.  I knew that I wanted to do it before the snow started, but it’s just that it feels—I don’t know.  It feels sudden, I guess, but it’s really not, is it?”
                Relief flooded through him as he shook his head slightly.  “No.  No, it’s really not.”  Thom kissed her gently and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs.  “I love you.”
                “I love you, too.  But we do have a problem.”
                He raised a brow.  “What’s that?”
                “What are we going to wear?”
                Thom burst out laughing so hard it made his ribs ache and his eyes tear.  He wrapped her up in his arms and squeezed her tightly.  “We’ll figure it out.  We’ve got time.  A little bit, anyway.  Maybe we can talk Jac and J.T. into buying us more.”
                “Just not too much,” she said, grinning widely.
                “No,” he agreed.  “Not too much.”
                “I love you, Thom.”
                “Right back at you, Mar.  Right back at you.”

                “So he doesn’t remember anything?”
                Thom shook his head miserably, knuckling his eyes.  “Just going over the edge and then being in the river, which I’m pretty sure he’d like to forget if he could.”  He hunched slightly, resting his elbows against his knees as he perched on one of the rocks out near the well.  Life had abruptly gone back to normal for everyone except for the barest handful—except for he, Marin, J.T., Jacqueline, and Matt, the ones closest to Phelan.
                He’d fallen asleep again after telling Thom the story and drinking half the bottle of water.  Jacqueline was keeping an eye on him for the day shift.  Thom had every intention of heading up to help Matt with the foundations for his forge as soon as he was done passing along what Phelan had said to Marin and J.T., who were with him out here, yards from either the half-constructed walls or the tent and sheds.
                Marin slumped down onto the rock next to him.  “I can’t believe it.  If he doesn’t remember whether or not he killed her, how do we know whether or not we’re even safe?”
                Thom grimaced as he slid his arm around her shoulders.  She leaned against him, pressing her forehead against his neck.
                “You’ve got that look, Thom,” J.T. said, crossing his arms.  “There’s more.”
                “Is there?”  Marin looked up at him, brows knitting briefly.
                He nodded.  “Yeah, there’s more.”  He shifted uncomfortably, looking away from both of them and staring at the clouds that drifted lazily in the autumn sky.  “He said there was one other time that something like this happened—that he couldn’t remember what happened after a fight, after he went toe-to-toe with someone.”
                “What happened that time?”  Marin asked.  A flicker of pain flashed through her eyes and was gone.  Thom swallowed a little, wondering why it had been there.
                Focus.  Stay on task, here.  “He said it was forever ago, back before whenever that story he told about crossing the ocean and everything happened.”  Thom frowned slightly.  “Still don’t know what I think about that one, but who the hell knows, right?  Anyway, back in the old country, he’d somehow gotten mixed up with this tribe or clan or something called the Imbolg.”
                Marin went stiff in his arm.
                What the hell?  He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but she shook her head before he could.
                “Keep talking,” she whispered.  “Just tell us the story.”
                “Right,” Thom said, shaking his head quickly to clear it, though he couldn’t quite escape the nagging worry at the back of his brain.
                Just tell them what he told you.  “They’d gotten sucked into some kind of Otherworld war or some shit, like out of mythology.  Phelan said it was like the Trojan War but bloodier, if you can believe that.”  He saw J.T. wince out of the corner of his eye, the other man’s face already the color of ashes.  He’s not going to like where this leads.  “Phelan decided he’d better help them out because it was kind of his fault they’d gotten involved in the first place.  That’s what he said, anyway.”
                “Christ,” J.T. grumbled.  “Is there ever a time when he hadn’t sucked someone else into trouble that’s ten feet over their heads?”
                “You’d have to ask him,” Thom said.  “I’m honestly not sure that the Imbolg getting involved was actually his fault, but I wasn’t going to press him on that after I’d already pressed to get the story in the first place.
                “So anyway, he finds out from this blind druid guy that’s some high-ranking dude in the tribal hierarchy that there’s another person like him with the army that the Imbolg are about to face, except the guy’s from another Otherworld.  That makes up Phelan’s mind for him completely and he recruits maybe thirty, forty guys from some other villages to join up with the Imbolg before this big battle—except they show up late to the party.
                “Now, according to him that turns out to be a great thing, because he ends up behind the enemy’s lines with a really great shot at the Big Bad’s back.”
                “Why is this sounding like a D&D game, Thom?”
                He smiled wryly at J.T.  “Because I’m pretty sure if he’d been a little more lucid and had access to minis or action figures or something, Phelan would have given me the play by play complete with visual aids and sound effects.”
                Marin sighed, fingers tangling in the fabric of Thom’s shirt.  “Stay on track.  What happened?”
                “Well, he took the shot.”
                “And?”
                Thom grimaced.  “And he missed.  Then the guy noticed him and the next thing Phelan knew, they were shouting explicatives and threats at each other across the battlefield and the gap is closing between them and the guy’s swinging a warhammer at him.
                “That’s the last thing he remembers before waking up in the Imbolg camp two days later.”
                “What?”  Marin blurted.  “He got hit by a—Thom!  What’s the point of this story?”
                “The point is that Phelan killed the guy.”

                “Mr. Thom, Mr. Thom, there’s snow out there!”
                Thom muttered something under his breath, rousing slowly.  He blinked blearily at Angie in the dim light of dawn.  “Huh?”
                “Little patches of snow,” Angie said, tugging at his hand.  “Will you come see?  It looks like footprints.”
                “All right, all right,” he muttered, gently disengaging from Marin and easing her down to the ground next to the fire.  They’d fallen asleep sitting there together after their encounter with the silver woman—that’s what Thom found himself thinking of her as—the night before.
                He kissed Marin lightly and got his feet under himself, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes.  His limbs felt heavy, sluggish as he moved, but at least his ankle and his ribs weren’t hurting as much anymore.
                “All right, kiddo.  Show me.”
                The little girl took him by the hand and led him to the far end of the tent.  The grass beyond was lightly frosted—except for in a dozen footprint-shaped spots, where there was definitely a crust of snow.
                “Fuck,” Thom breathed, momentarily forgetting the girl was there.  That’s where she was, where she walked.  Her feet seem so damn small, looking at those prints.  They were already softening slightly around the edges from the warmth lingering in the ground.
                “Someone was making those footprints last night, weren’t they?”  Angie said quietly.  “Did you see them?”
                The morning sun would erase the marks soon enough—once the sun had actually risen, anyhow.  Thom took a few unsteady breaths, looking down at Angie.
                “You can’t tell anyone else about this kiddo,” he murmured.  “This needs to stay between us—you and me.  Did anyone else see these this morning?”
                “Mr. Jay, maybe, but I don’t know.  Paul and Miss Stasia went right out to check the animals, so I don’t think they saw.  Paul said I could come out here and play with my soccer ball as long as I was quiet.”  She bit her lip for a moment.  ”I’m sorry I woke you.”
                “It’s okay.”  He pressed her against his hip and though in a one-armed hug, then exhaled.  “Come on back by the fire.  I’ll make you some toast before you come out here with your ball.”
                “Okay,” Angie said, letting him lead her back toward the fire’s glow.
                Damn.  I sure hope those footprints are gone by the time everyone else starts getting up.  Thom scrubbed one hand roughly over his face.  He, J.T., and Marin had all agreed not to talk about their shared experience with that woman if they could avoid it.
                He wasn’t quite sure who she was, but he’d felt her power from the moment the mist began to gather outside the tent.  More importantly—and frighteningly—he’d been able to see and hear her clearly, something he hadn’t experienced in months.  It meant something.  He just wasn’t sure what.
                “Why’d you wake me up, anyway?”  Thom asked as he started working on a couple of slices of toast for the girl.  Why me instead of Marin?  We were both right here?  Or Jay if she saw him this morning—she could have asked him.  Why me?
                Angie shrugged, playing with a half-empty jar of peanut butter.  “I don’t know.  I guess I just thought that you wouldn’t get angry or lie to me about where they came from.”  She gave him a tremulous smile.  “You’re a nice man, Mr. Thom, and the bad things are right to be scared of you and Phelan and Miss Marin and Mr. Jay and Miss Kellin.  They are.  You’ll protect us from the bad things, won’t you?  People like my brother can’t always see so they don’t know how bad some of the things are.”
                Damn, kiddo, I don’t even see it half the time.  Thom tried not to shiver as he put two pieces of toast on a plate for her.
                “I’ll do my best, kiddo.”
                She smiled, standing up.  She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him before she bounced off into the early morning sunshine.  Thom rubbed his ribs and watched her go.  I should either find that kid’s faith comforting or terrifying.  Maybe both.
                “That was touching,” Phelan rasped to his left, eyes half-lidded and gleaming with fever.  “Is it a promise you can keep?”
                “I hope so,” Thom murmured, feeling a brief tremor shoot through his limbs.  “How long were you awake?”
                “Just a few minutes.”  Phelan coughed.  “Water?”
                Thom reached for a jug sitting a little ways away from the fire.  “Glad you’re awake.  J.T. and Jac were afraid it’d be like the time she stabbed you the first time.”
                “You mean I haven’t been unconscious for three days?”  Phelan groaned, lifting his bandaged hand to cover his eyes, pausing in mid-motion to study the wrappings as if he couldn’t remember why they might be there.  “Did I win?”
                Thom froze.  “You don’t know?”
                Phelan’s eyes drifted shut again.  “No,” he mumbled.  “The last thing I remember was going over the edge of the ravine with her.”
                Damn. What does that mean?  Thom finished filling a sports bottle and handed it over to Phelan, who seemed perfectly capable of drinking on his own.  “So you don’t remember anything?”
                “Just going over.  And something about not being able to breathe, or move, and it smelled.”
                “Matt and Jay fished you out of the river.”
                Phelan snorted, then groaned.  “Oh man.  Well, that explains it.”
                “What, the smell?”
                “And not being able to breathe,” he rasped. “Throat feels like I swallowed an electric sander.”
                Thom sat back down next to the fire, idly running his fingers through Marin’s hair.  “Has this ever happened before?”
                “Has what ever happened before?”  Phelan asked between gulps of water.
                “Not being able to remember after a fight?”
                Phelan paused, staring at the tent’s ceiling for a moment.  “Once,” he said quietly.  “But only once.”