Neve preceded me out the door of Phelan’s room a little while later. She didn’t speak until we were about halfway to the campfire.
“How far is the lake from here?”
I blinked at her, then cocked my head toward the sound of snow and ice lashing the rooftop above us. “I don’t know anymore,” I said. “It rose before the snows began to fly, but I never quite figured out how close it got to us. Not too far, I guess. You’re not seriously thinking of heading in that direction in a raging blizzard, are you?”
“When the weather breaks, you and I and Thordin will ride out to the shore,” she said. “Don’t tell Thom or Cameron or anyone else we’re going to do it.”
“Do I at least get to know why we’re doing it?” I drew alongside her as we exited the narrow hallway and she purposefully made her way toward the secondary cookfire, where some of our fellows had taken up fletching, knitting, and sewing as useful pastimes. I wasn’t sure that I’d linger there once she was settled, but she’d probably pull out her knife and start working on another bundle of arrows to go with the arrowheads my brother and Thordin had been churning out from molds at the forge.
“We’re going to get the answers that he won’t give us,” she said firmly. “The answers that your gifts haven’t shown you yet and the ones that I’m afraid to look for.”
My stomach dropped. “About what, Neve?”
“Our children,” she said. “Their futures. I could care less what happens to me. I only care about them.”
It was a lie, one that made me shiver. She looked so determined, though, all I could do was sigh. “So why are we involving Thordin in this? Why do we need him?”
“He has runes that would be useful in the scrying,” she said. “He doesn’t talk about it, but he’s got a gift, too—made more powerful by the fact that he was kind of dead for a while, but he got better.”
“He—wait, what?”
Neve laughed weakly. “Come help me with the arrows and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I shook my head slightly. “Right, sure.” This I have to hear. “It sounds too absurd to be true.”
“More absurd than gods walking the Earth and sending snowstorms and other nastiness our way?”
“Point.” I sighed. “Lead the way.”
