Awakenings

Their son fussed softly in his cradle. Teague could hear him faintly over the sound of Kira snoring softly. She’d been a little stuffed up lately and had only just fallen asleep. He closed his eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer that the baby wasn’t hungry—that was the one thing he couldn’t help with.
Teague pressed a kiss into Kira’s hair and eased out of bed, padding across the wooden floor to Seamus’s cradle. The baby quieted as Teague’s shadow crossed over him, dim in the flickering of the fire in the fireplace.
“Attention, huh?” Teague murmured, reaching down. He lifted the swaddled infant and held him against his chest, cradled in the crook of one arm. He drifted out into the sitting room and to the front windows, peering out into the darkness, watching the northern lights ripple and dance in the night sky. Seamus made a babbling, cooing noise, squirming in his swaddle.
“Hush,” Teague said. “You’ll wake your mother and she needs to rest.”
It had been quiet since Cameron and Neve had left headed west, toward Phelan and Thom and all the rest—almost too quiet, disturbingly quiet. It worried Teague more than he cared to admit, but he hadn’t dared to voice his worry to his wife. The last thing she needed was his stress on her shoulders, especially now that they had Seamus. It was bad enough that he’d still been feeling the effects of the attack that had nearly killed him before the world had come crashing down—she didn’t need another burden to carry.
Still, the Hecate hadn’t launched another attack on him since that day, nor had anyone else. It was disturbing, worrisome.
Either someone was planning something, or they had moved on to other targets.
Teague had a sick feeling he knew who those targets might be, if that was the case, and it didn’t bode well for anyone.
Not one bit.

“Hey,” Gray said, his voice gentle. “Aoife, you don’t have to cry. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she grated, then sighed. “No. It’s complicated.”

“Family tends to be,” Gray agreed, sliding his arm around her shoulders again. She leaned into his embrace, his nearness and warmth a comfort she needed more badly than she cared to admit. “You want to see him badly enough that we’re walking to Michigan, though.”

“We decided we were going to steal a boat.”

“Not stealing if they’re dead,” Gray said, a trace of grim humor in his voice. “But you’re right. We’re going to try to sail there as much as we’re able. Question of routes, though—do we try for rivers, or do we just sail the lakes and hope we can get through where there might be ice?”

“We can hope to get lucky and that the ice will melt,” Aoife said.

“That’s a good hope,” he said, squeezing her a little closer. “Assuming that the northern Great Lakes aren’t solid sheets of ice right now.”

“It wasn’t that cold, was it?”

“Maybe not here, but who knows about up there.” Gray shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.”

And hope we don’t end up somehow trapped or farther away from where we need to be than we were when we started walking. Aoife sighed. “I hate logistics.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Gray soothed, then smiled. “Come on now. You were talking to me about a pile of miscreants.”

“Miscreants,” she echoed, then smiled. “I guess we were in some ways, weren’t we? Always in trouble, doing what we wanted because we wanted to—and to hell with what my uncle actually wanted. It wasn’t such a bad life, I guess, while the peace held. It was nice, really, even if Neve and I always had to be the good ones. We were most of the time.”

“Most of the time?” Gray asked with a grin.

Aoife laughed, nodding. “Yes. Most of the time. A girl’s got to have some fun, right?”

“We got into all kinds of trouble when we were growing up,” Aoife said softly once she found her voice again. “Our parents couldn’t figure out what to do with us, how to keep us out of trouble. We ran wild with the children of the local clans—the Imbolg, the Fianna, the Dáire—we knew them and loved them like we would love family. Seamus and Teague, they had lovers among them, the chieftain’s daughters of the Imbolg and the Dáire. Teague had a child with Mairéad of the Dáire. He loved her so much and his father was so angry for it. War was coming and we needed allies and my uncle felt like Teague had ruined himself with Mairéad.”

“Is that how you guys felt?” Gray asked, his voice barely louder than the crunch of their boots in the melting snow.

“No,” she said, shaking her head hard as bile pooled in her belly. She’d been angry with Teague for it—angry because his actions had endangered so many, angry because what he’d done had cost them Seamus, her favorite cousin—but she hadn’t felt like Teague was ruined, had she? Aoife took an unsteady breath and exhaled it as a sigh. “I love my cousin, Gray.”

“So you’ve said.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “But I also know that you resent Teague and your brother. You’ve made that pretty clear in the past.”

“I wish I didn’t. I know I shouldn’t. They’ve made choices that they thought were the right ones—and maybe they were and I just didn’t realize it—but it’s damned hard to deal with the fallout. Really, really hard.”

“You’re allowed to be angry at them for whatever the hell they did.”

Whatever the hell they did. She snorted humorlessly. “We went into exile beyond the borders of this world after the war started and it became clear that it was run or die. Phelan stayed behind. My uncle was livid, but Phelan said he couldn’t abandon them, couldn’t walk away from his duty. He abandoned us instead.” Her stomach lurched. She’d never admitted that to anyone before—that she’d felt like her brother had forsaken her, left her on her own, utterly abandoned and bereft.

When they’d crossed the brink to the Otherworld that had birthed her people she’d found herself utterly alone.

He abandoned me. Gods and monsters, he abandoned me for them. What would make a brother do that?

Tears stung in her eyes and she straightened her spine. When she saw him again, she’d get the answers.

She knew that for certain.

“So what’s he like?” Gray asked as he squeezed her against his hip.

“Who, my brother?”

Gray laughed. “Who else would I be asking about, Aoife? God?”

She smiled wryly and shrugged. “There are other possibilities.” She went quiet for a few long moments, gathering her thoughts as she stared down the pathway ahead of them. “Phelan…Phelan is an experience.”

Her arched a brow, peering at her. “Really? Is that all I’m going to get?”

Chuckling, she shook her head. “No, of course not.” She exhaled a sigh and shoved her hands into her pockets. “He’s a few years older than me—not much in the grand scheme of things, but older. He’s younger than Seamus, of an age with Teague. Neve and I are the youngest. I’ve told you a little bit about the five of us—about me and my brother and our cousins. We were almost inseparable back then, back before…before.”

“Are you all right?” Gray asked softly, apparently taking note of the sudden distance in her eyes and the wistfulness of her tone.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I just miss the old days sometimes.” Before Seamus stopped being the Taliesin and my brother took on that burden. Before Seamus left us and Teague retreated to bitter anger at his father. Before the worst of the wars.

Before we fled the world that was our home for another because one king’s fear became our collective fear.

She leaned into him and Gray held her close for a long moment. “We were always together, even when we were apart,” she said softly. “Now it’s different. Now we’re all too distant, too far. I can’t feel them the way I used to feel them. That gets hard.”

“That’s why we’re walking,” Gray murmured.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah, it is.” She refused to regret the choice. She needed to see her brother—needed to touch him, to assure herself that he really was going to be okay. She didn’t think he was yet, but in time he would be.

Somehow, he always was, always came out of things okay, but it felt different this time.

Maybe it’s because we’re vulnerable somehow. Maybe it’s because of everything that’s been happening. It just feels different. Nothing’s the same anymore. Nothing.

“Aoife?”

“Yeah?”

Gray kissed her temple. “I love you.”

A blush crept up, leaving her cheeks hot. She smiled and nodded, throat tightening so much she couldn’t speak. Gray smiled.

“I know,” he said, and that was all.

Gray looked back over his shoulder for the fifth time that morning. Aoife wrapped her hand around his and squeezed tightly. “Stop,” she whispered. “If you look back one more time, I’m going to make you turn around and go back there. Elton said they’d be fine, and we’ll be back by autumn. I promised Teca.”

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m just still not entirely comfortable with just leaving them, you know?”

“You didn’t have to come,” Aoife said.

“You wanted me to come,” he countered, looking down at her with a faint, wry smile. “I wanted to stay with you.”

Her fingers tightened around his hand again and he leaned in to let his lips brush her temple. She shivered, pleased and suddenly a little warmer than she’d been before.

“That means a lot to me,” she whispered. “You know that, right?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Gray nodded. “I hoped it did, anyway.” He sighed and let go of her hand, sliding his arm around her shoulders. “Though I am going to mention that this is going to be a very, very long walk if we can’t somehow secure transportation. Michigan isn’t close, much less its west coast.”

“We’ll be all right,” she said, hoping that she wasn’t wrong about that. “We’ll find something. We’re not going to walk the whole way.”

“Well, if we make it to the lakes, we might be able to float part of the way,” Gray said, half teasing and half musing. Aoife laughed.

“Don’t joke, we could. I know how to handle a boat.”

He smirked. “Maybe we should alter course, then. There’s a marina only a few miles up the highway and it’s on the waterway. Might be able to make that work.”

“Did we pack enough food for that?” Aoife wondered, glancing at his pack. They’d planned to hunt and forage if they could on their trek to supplement what they’d brought along.

“There’s fish,” Gray said with a grin. “It’s worth looking.”

He was certainly right about that. “Okay,” Aoife said. “Let’s go and see where the path takes us.”

Gray grinned even wider and squeezed her. “All right, then. That’s what we’ll do.”

“Are you sure we can’t talk you out of it?”

She shook her head. “This is something I have to do, Teca. I’ve told Gray—I have to make sure that he’s okay. I have to see him, touch him, talk to him. That’s the only way I can be sure. I keep telling him that he doesn’t have to come with me, but—”

“He wants to, Aoife. He wants to be with you and we’ll be okay until you guys get back. Kes and Wat and Elton and I can hold it together. We’ll keep an eye out for anything weird and stay inside as much as we can. Everything will be okay. We’re more worried about you.”

“I don’t like leaving you guys, you know that, right?”

Teca gave her a brave smile and nodded. “I know that. I’ve been trying to help you convince Gray that you two going is a good thing. I know that just looking at your brother in the glass hasn’t been enough. I don’t think it would be enough for me, either, not after what we saw him go through. Just be careful on the road. I’ll scry on you when I can. Is that okay?”

Aoife nodded. “Yeah. I think feeling the gaze would make me feel better—knowing that you’re keeping an eye on us.”

Teca hugged her tightly. “Be careful, okay? I want to see you come back here sometime in the next few months.”

“Before summer’s ended, unless something changes,” Aoife promised. “And if something changes, you’ll know. I’ll make sure you know. I can feel it when you’re watching.”

Teca smiled. “I know you can. Take care of Gray, okay?”

“He’ll be taking care of me.” Aoife squeezed her hands. “Be safe, Teca. Be careful.”

The other woman nodded, giving her a brave smile. “Always, Aoife. Always.”