Thom rested his chin on my head, his arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders. “What do you think it is?” he asked after a long moment.
Neve’s eyes shown brightly in the dim. “Are we really going to talk about this now?” she asked in a whisper.
“I think we should. We’re all awake, and if you two are that unsettled…” There was a note of nervous hesitation in his voice, as if he was starting to be as unsettled as we were. “Well. We’re already here.”
I slowly started to disentangle myself from him and the blankets. “I’d better go get Cameron, then.”
Neve laughed weakly. “He’ll be upset when you wake him that I’m not there.”
“Well, that’s why I’m going now instead of waiting any longer.”
Thom caught my arm and squeezed gently. “You stay here. I’ll go get him.” I started to protest but Thom shook his head. “I want to have a look at what’s going on outside anyway. It probably sounds a lot worse than it is. Tends to be that way.” He kissed me gently and squeezed me close for a brief moment before he was out of bed, lighting the lamp and groping around for pants and socks and his coat. Neve sank down onto the bed with me to watch him fumble around. I put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned against me with a slight shiver.
“I hope you’re right, Thom,” she said. “About the storm out there. I hope you’re right and it sounds much worse than it actually is.”
“I’ll let you know when I get back,” he said, stooping to lace up his boots. “You two just stay here and get comfortable. This isn’t going to take that long.”
At least we hope it won’t. I nodded as I freed a blanket from the tangle of bedding and wrapped it around Neve’s shoulders, then tugged a second free for myself. “We’ll be here.”
He nodded, shrugged into his coat, and ducked out the door into the darkness. I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.
“He doesn’t want to think about how bad it might be,” Neve said, her voice reed-thin and weak.
“No, he doesn’t,” I agreed, then sighed softly. “But I don’t think I can blame him, either. I don’t want to think about what it could mean if this is something other than a natural storm.”
She sat up a little straighter. “You don’t think it’s natural either, then?”
“Something in my gut is screaming that it’s not.” Would I have noticed that a few months ago? I think I would have. My hand absently drifted to my belly, where the beginnings of life were still too small for me to really feel. If Cariocecus was to be believed, that didn’t matter. My child’s power had already protected us once.
I shivered, and not from the cold. Neve put her arm around me this time instead of the other way around.
“They’ll have destinies,” she whispered in my ear. “But they’re intertwined. They’ll take care of each other. I know it.”
I stared at her in blinking confusion until she took my hand and pressed it against her belly, then put her own against mine.
“Oh,” I said lamely, blinking back tears that suddenly stung in my eyes. “How can you be so sure?” I’m the one that’s supposed to know these things.
She rested her head against my shoulder and stared at the flickering flame of the lamp. “I’ve spent most of my life searching for the man destined for Caliburn,” she said. “After the first bearer, I despaired of ever finding the one who it was truly meant for, for the line destined to carry it. Then I found Cameron and I started to…well. I started to think that the burden I’d been shouldering for so long wasn’t one I had to carry anymore.”
“Then you realized you were in love with him,” I said softly. She nodded.
“And I realized that my fate was always supposed to be intertwined with the sword—with him. It always had been and it always would be.” She squeezed me gently. “I felt the same thing when I met you and Thom. Not love, of course, but the sense of knowing. Somehow, some way, we’ve always been destined to come together.”
“You know, six months ago Thom would have told you that you were crazy.”
She laughed weakly. “Somehow I suspected as much. He might still tell me I’m crazy. Cam might say the same thing. But you and I…we know the truth.”
I nodded slowly. “You’re right,” I said in a bare whisper. “We do.”
