Twenty-eight – 09

I found Leinth half an hour later, after I’d left Thom out by the wall to wrestle with his thoughts. She huddled under a borrowed blanket—two-layered fleece with snowflakes—with her knees drawn to her chest, watching from a distance as Drew talked to our werewolf visitor. She jerked, startled, when my fingers brushed her shoulder, gaze snapping toward me in a heartbeat.

She sagged as our eyes met. “Oh,” she said softly. “Seer, it’s you.”

I inclined my head. “You look like you’re about a thousand miles away.”

“I don’t deserve your hospitality,” she said softly, her gaze drifting back toward the pair she’d been watching. “But I’m grateful that Phelan and Neve offered it.”

I shrugged and sat down beside her. “You saved his life. We owe you that.”

“I owed that much to Seamus,” she said, resting her chin on her blanket-shrouded knee. “I did love him. I do love him. I don’t know that they believe me.”

The pain in her voice made my heart ache. Focus, Marin, focus. You came to ask for her help.

How can I ask for it now, though? I bit my lip. She glanced at me sidelong.

“You came for a reason,” she said.

“So did you.”

Leinth snorted humorlessly. “I had nowhere else to go, nowhere safe. I wasn’t even sure you’d welcome me when I came.”

“You don’t mean us any harm,” I said. “Hell, you showed up and warned us that Cameron was coming and that we shouldn’t kill him when he did.”

“I didn’t expect what’s happened,” she whispered. “I had no way to foresee this.”

“I saw them,” I blurted. “On the road before they made it here, I saw them. I dreamed about them, had visions about them. I knew that they were important.” I stared at her for a long moment, at her pale face and sad eyes. “I never saw a vision of you, though. Do you have any idea why?”

“Maybe I was just shielded from your sight,” she said softly.

She tugged her blanket tighter and I frowned.

She knows something.

But what the hell could that something be?

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