Awakenings

[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]

Thom’s gaze settled on me for a few seconds after that. He swallowed hard, then shook his head and gulped down some more coffee. “You could’ve woken me up, Mar.”

I choked on a laugh. “At the time, letting you sleep a little longer sounded like the smarter idea. It’s not like there’s anything we can do right now, y’know? Not until we know more.”

He sighed but didn’t argue with me. There must have been a part of him that realized how right I was about that, though I knew that he’d have preferred to be able to give me moral support—such as it was, anyway. I pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“I love you,” I murmured. “You know that, right?”

“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t work so damn hard to keep me out of trouble.” The ghost of a smile curved his lips. I grinned.

“Dead-on on that.”

I stole another kiss before letting him go back to his breakfast. It was only a few more minutes before we started to hear the sound of voices—the ones Tala and I, at least, had been waiting for. Thom tensed slightly, looking up from his plate.

“That sounds like Seamus.”

It did, and that sent a shiver creeping down my spine. Leinth had gone to talk to him, but I hadn’t quite expected her to manage to get him out of bed, not the way J.T. had made his condition sound the last time we’d talked about it. But then, Seamus had been a healer for a long time before his centuries with the Wild Hunt, and I had to trust he knew what he was doing.

After all, there really wasn’t much other choice.

Thom nudged me gently. “Here,” he murmured, holding his arms out for Lin. “Go on. I know you’re worried.”

“I’m always worried,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to his jaw and transferring our son from my arms to his. “It’s just a question about what and who at any given moment.”

“Well, right now it’s about Seamus.” Thom smiled wryly. “Go on. I know you’ll be back in a minute.”

He was right about that.

I pushed to my feet and headed toward the sound of their voices, uncertain of what kind of sight might greet me when I finally reached them. I hoped it was far better than I imagined it might be.

Odds were good I’d be wrong.

[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]

Tala was watching us, so intensely that she startled when Paul stood back up again and handed her his plate with a quick grin.

“Thanks for breakfast,” he said. “Think anyone will mind if I take the cup with me?”

“What?” Tala blinked a few times, then shook herself. “No, no, it’s fine. Take it. Do you want me to top you off?”

“Nah.” Paul smiled and toasted her with the mug. “Thanks, though. See you guys at lunch. If Stasia asks, let her know I’m still out on the watch, okay?” His little sister, Angie, must have already known where he was—or would assume as much. Angie was a smart kid for all of her youth—but still just a kid. She’d be with one of the others right now, probably getting a start on what passed for school instruction for the day.

Thom watched him go for as long as it took for Paul to move out of earshot before he looked at me again. “All right,” he said quietly. “Now what’s going on?”

“Did you not want him to know?” Tala asked before I could answer. She started making a pot of tea to go with the coffee that was already made. “You got really tense and pale for a second there, Mar.”

“I’m not exactly up to dealing with more than my own panic right about now, Tala.” I scrubbed my free hand over my face and exhaled. “And I don’t even know if I’ve got anything to be panicking about.”

Thom looked between us, his expression caught somewhere between concerned and annoyed. “Could one of you please start explaining what precisely anyone would be panicking about before I decide to wander off to figure it out myself?”

“Nothing major,” Tala said as she started to make herself a cup of tea. “Just a bunch of bad feelings coupled with the day coupled with whistles coupled with the Wild Hunt coupled with Leinth flipping out and then Matt and Phelan and Hecate going to see what all the hullabaloo was about from the Wild Hunt.” She exhaled, then shrugged. “Now it seems they’ve headed for the gate and I have to imagine that we’ll know more soon enough. That about cover it, Mar?”

“Yeah,” I said, unable to make eye contact with my husband, who blinked slowly, looking between Tala and me. “Yeah, that about covers it.”

[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]

“You didn’t have to let me sleep.”

I looked up from nursing Lin toward Thom, who limped toward the cookfire, leaning on his crutches and looking like he was still a little more tired that I’d hoped he’d be after he’d fallen asleep again. I managed to smile, though the slight shift in his expression told me very quickly that he’d seen through the attempt at pretending everything was fine.

His gaze flicked from me to Tala and then back again. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly as he slowly lowered himself to sit next to me, laying the crutches on the ground next to us.

“Same shit, different day,” Tala murmured, sparing me from answering. Thom looked at her, his brow arching slightly.

“Oh goody,” he said, then sighed. “That does explain while you’re calmly making breakfast as usual.”

“What the hell else am I supposed to do, really?” Her smile was wry, the words without acid, without rancor. “It’s just another day.”

“We don’t really know exactly what’s going on,” I said. “Not yet, anyway. Probably soon, but not yet.”

“Just another day,” Thom said with a grimace, echoing Tala.

“You’re damn straight.” She handed him a plate a few moments after he’d sat down, then headed to refill her coffee and make him a cup of the same. “We need better defenses, though.”

“As soon as I get healthy, I’ll get right on that.” Thom sighed and leaned his shoulder into mine. I reached up to run my fingers through his hair, smiling weakly.

“It’ll happen,” I assured him softly. He snorted.

“Of course it will. Just takes more time than I want it to and it’s time we don’t have in that much abundance if winter comes this year like it did last year.”

“Well, at least we had last winter to make mistakes,” Tala said, bringing over a mug for him. She sat down with us, cross-legged with her back to the fire. “We won’t make the same ones this year. It’ll be okay, just like it was last winter but more securely. Warmer.”

Thom snorted softly as he lifted his mug. “Warmer,” he agreed. “Hopefully a little less horrifying when it comes to problems and storms.”

“Something tells me we’ll be able to have one but maybe not the other.” Tala smiled and shrugged. “Either way, we’ll be all right.”

Her optimism warmed me but did nothing to alleviate the sour feeling at the pit of my stomach. They weren’t back yet. That was either a good sign or a bad one—hard to know either way.

I was hoping for one but suspected the other.