“It’s not going to happen tonight, Thom,” I said quietly as I drifted up behind him. He stood at the mouth of the tent, staring at the driving snow that was drifting into knee-deep piles in places. At that point, I wasn’t even sure that the attack would come the following day, either—it would be too hard to move on the ground with snow calf-deep nearly everywhere.
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and I wrapped mine around his waist and we stood there together, staring at the snow. If not for the dim reflection of the fire off the flying flakes and the snow already on the ground, it would be nearly black as pitch out there—a darkness we were still slowly getting used to, even four months after the end of everything we’d ever known.
“I want to believe that,” he murmured softly, “but I can’t. I’ve just got this feeling, Mar, and I can’t shake it. It’s going to happen tonight.”
“In this?” I nodded to the storm outside. I wasn’t sure who was on the night watch in the tower, but I knew for certain that I didn’t envy them one bit. “I don’t think so, Thom.”
“If this breaks, he’ll be on our doorstep in the next heartbeat,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”
I almost asked how, but I elected not to. If he’d seen anything about the coming battle, I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to share it with me.
I didn’t want to force him to lie to me about it if the outcome was bad.
“I still wish I knew why he wanted us so badly, though,” Thom murmured, then closed his eyes and sighed. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Means to an end, I guess,” I said softly, resting my cheek against the warm, soft cotton of his sweatshirt. His coat was slung over one of the storage bins by the fire, but the hilt of his sword dug slightly into my belly where I was pressed against his side. “It’s a long game.”
“A game,” he echoed. “Some fucking game, huh?”
“We’re playing the long game, too,” I reminded him, tilting my face to peer up into his shadowed eyes. There was worry there, clear in their blue depths. I could see it even in the dim, even with our backs to the fire. “We’re in this for the long haul, trying to survive just the same as they are.”
“No,” he said quietly. “Not just the same. We’re different, Mar. We’re supposed to be here. They’re—”
“Not?” I smiled weakly. “Whether they’re from one of the Otherworlds or not, they’re here now, Thom. Possibly exiled like Phelan and Neve.”
He shook his head slowly. “It doesn’t feel right. That’s all I’m saying. Us, here—this feels right. Cariocecus, Vammatar…it doesn’t.”
Of course not. I closed my eyes and swallowed a sigh. “They may not have a right to be here, but they’ve still got a right to be.”
“I’m not saying that they don’t have that right,” he said.
“Aren’t you?”
“No,” he said, perhaps a little too quickly. I sighed again.
“Thomas, I love you, but this world isn’t black and white and without the shades of gray, we’ve got no idea what good and bad are.”
“They’re trying to take our land and our lives, Mar.”
“And I know it,” I said, trying to be soothing. “And we’re not going to let them. That doesn’t mean that they’ve got no right to exist.”
He shook his head. “I’m not saying that. I just want them off our patch, that’s all.” His arm tightened around me. “I don’t think that’s too much to be asking. We were here first, after all.” His eyes slid shut. “And Cariocecus is here for more than just the land and the node, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why and it’s driving me crazy.”
“It’s doing the same to Phelan,” I admitted. “He’s been up the walls over it. I don’t know that we’ll ever know why, Thom.”
“No,” Thom said quietly. “I think will. It’s just that by the time we figure it out, it’s going to be too late. No one goes to all the trouble of turning someone against their fellows just to gain the land they’re standing on, Mar. He wouldn’t have used Leah like that if there wasn’t more at stake.”
I hadn’t thought about Leah in weeks. Now that I did, I felt a pang of regret for the way we’d treated her—but she was the one that had taken supplies and run.
I hope she found a safe haven somewhere. I hope she broke free of the voices. Not for the first time, I wondered how many others of our merry band were as vulnerable as she was.
“At least there hasn’t been any evidence of anyone tampering with anything this time,” I said, half to myself.
“Let’s hope that the fact that we haven’t noticed any evidence means that there isn’t actually any tampering going on,” Thom muttered. “Since last time, we at least noticed it first.”
As my arms tightened around him, I swallowed hard and hoped against hope that he was right.
