Silence lingered between us before I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Neve?”
She glanced up from the plate of food she was still picking at and toward me. “What’s wrong?”
“Just…a question.” I chewed the inside of my lip. “What happens if the Taliesin dies without naming an heir and passing down what he knows?” It was a morbid question and just shy of admitting that it was actually possible that Phelan would die tonight or the next day, but it had been bothering me since the day he’d left—what happened when there wasn’t a Taliesin anymore? Had that ever happened?
Neve flinched and pressed against Cameron, who grunted and put both arms around her. “We lose a lot,” she said after another momentary silence. “The Taliesin is a repository for legends and histories and prophecies that everyone else has forgotten along with the interpretation of all of them. I don’t know exactly how the knowledge transference takes place when one Taliesin is gone and another takes over, but I know that if we somehow lose my cousin now, there’s a lot of information that we’re never going to be able to retrieve.”
“Even if Seamus is alive?” Cameron asked quietly. I saw Neve stiffen and look up at him.
“My brother’s dead,” she said, her voice heavy with conviction. “We know he’s dead, Cam. Even though everyone keeps dangling that carrot over our heads, we know the truth. He’s gone. We’ll never see him again.” She looked toward me. “And even if he was still alive, he’s not the Taliesin anymore and hasn’t been for thousands of years. He gave that mantle up to Phelan and while he would still know a lot, he wouldn’t know what Phelan’s learned in the time since taking on the mantle. That’s just how it works—as much as I understand about how it works, anyway.”
“It sounds complicated,” I murmured.
“It’s mystical and really complicated,” Neve agreed, rubbing at her eyes with a sigh. “I never had to understand it all as well as maybe I should have. Hell, I didn’t even really know that Seamus was the Taliesin until Phelan confirmed it—and then told me that he’d taken on the mantle. I just found that out a few weeks ago, after we made it here.” She looked down at her knees. “I wish he’d told me sooner. No one should shoulder that burden alone. He said that Teague knew, but Gods love him, my brother’s got his own problems and I’m thinking he probably wasn’t able to give Phelan the support he needed or deserved.”
“He seems like he’s dealt with all of it okay,” Cameron said quietly, resting his chin against Neve’s hair. She laughed a quiet, bitter little laugh.
“That’s because you don’t know him as well as I do. Phelan wears his heart on his sleeve, but he buries the hurt and the stress deep. You don’t usually see it until he’s about to explode.”
“I’ve noticed that,” I said quietly, electing not to mention that I seemed to be able to pick up on his pain and his stress before most of the others seemed to—possibly because of his past relationship with Brighid. “But that seems like it’s in part because he doesn’t want to burden anyone else with it.”
Neve winced. “That was my father’s doing.”
I shot her a questioning look and she just shook her head. “My father–”
“He’s awake,” J.T.’s voice interrupted from my left and her right. “And he wants to talk to you two.”
Cameron glanced up toward J.T., who looked like a dead man walking himself. “Which two?” he asked quietly.
J.T. didn’t look at him, staring at Neve and I instead. “The pregnant ones. I’m going to bed. Wake me if something starts to go sideways.”
I opened my mouth to ask a question, but he walked away without looking back.
“Come on,” Neve said quietly. “We’d better not keep Phelan waiting. This could be important.”
“It sounds like he’s going to live,” I murmured.
“We can only hope,” Neve said as she got her crutches under her.
I winced at her words, made sure Thom was comfortable, then hurried in her wake.
