“Put me down, Cameron.”
“Get into bed, Neve.”
“Put me down!”
Thom winced. That doesn’t sound promising.
Marin’s fingers tightened around his hand. “What did we just witness?” she whispered to him.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Thom murmured back. He shut his eyes for a moment and sucked in a breath, then exhaled it slowly.
“Good to know we’re both on the same page,” Marin said, then sighed. “You think they’ll settle down?”
“Once he puts her down,” Thom said. He shook his head slightly and tugged her closer, sliding his arm around her waist. “More enemies,” he said after a moment of silence.
“Par for the course,” Marin said, her head resting against his shoulder for a moment and her voice soft. Rory had looked at them funny, asked what had happened when they’d passed. Thom just shook his head and told him they’d tell him in the morning. It had taken he and Marin a few minutes to get the wall wrestled back into place once they’d come in from the cold. Thom was confident that the storm wouldn’t be passing for a while, not with the warning Leinth had given them.
I need to ask Phelan who she is, how she’s important. Thom shivered. Getting those answers might end up being like pulling teeth.
“Are you cold?” Marin asked.
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s freezing out there and the wind didn’t help, did it?” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, staring of blankly into the darkness for a few long moments. “I don’t know if we can handle another enemy, Thom. Not right now.”
He sighed. “I don’t think we get a choice in the matter, Mar.”
“Probably not,” she agreed softly. “But that doesn’t change anything. I’m still not sure that we can handle it.”
Thom nodded as he put his hand on Neve and Cameron’s door. “We’ll find a way,” he said. “We always seem to.”
Then he pushed open the door and stepped into a war zone.
