Something screamed in the distance. I jerked, twisting toward the sound, heart pounding painful tattoo against my breast. Who was it? What was it? I swallowed bile and shuddered. Thom touched my shoulder and I leaned against his hand, abruptly out of breath and lightheaded.
“That sounded like it was near camp,” I whispered, barely able to hear my own voice over the sound of my thundering heart.
“I think it was,” he said quietly, fingers tightening. “They’ll be fine, Mar. We have to trust them.”
“They have help,” Seamus growled. “The Hunt will be guarding the perimeter once they’ve dealt with the gremlins. I imagine most of them have already returned to the border, which means that scream was more likely to be my daughter than one of your friends.”
The way he said ‘my daughter’ tore at my heart. The words were laced with equal measures of bitterness and agony. Something told me he was wondering what it might have been like if he’d been there when she was young, during her formative years—however long ago that might have been.
Something tells me that she’s had more than a few centuries for the crazy to set in.
I shuddered and forced myself back on task, swallowing hard and pulling away from Thom with no small measure of effort. He watched me, pain flickering through his gaze before he turned back to the search.
Not enough time. There’s just not enough time.
“Has this ever happened before?” I asked abruptly, glancing toward Seamus in the dim.
He flinched slightly. “Once,” he admitted. “I’ve seen it once. It was what happened to the Ridden Druid.”
I straightened, eyes widening. “I thought he was just possessed.”
“It was more complicated than simply that,” Seamus said, his eyes on the rubble, as if he didn’t dare meet my gaze. “His soul was sundered and his consciousness was split—part subsumed beneath the Stag King that ruled his physical form, part trapped in a silver vessel that was carefully hidden. While Brighid sought his physical form, Finn and my brother sought the vessel. I helped as I could—it was probably the last bit of good that I did before Albina gave me to the Hunt.”
“Not the last,” Leinth said quietly from the other side of him. “You did have a son.”
Seamus winced. “Aye,” he whispered. “That I did.” He took a deep breath and exhaled it in a rush, shaking his head hard. “In any case, they found the vessel and provided it to Brighid so she could regain her brother. The stories say he wasn’t the same after that.”
“He wasn’t,” I said quietly, heart in my throat. “He was blind and strange, but was still Ciar, still her brother.”
Seamus shuddered. “You have her soul.”
“And some of her memories.” I hopped down into a hollow where I could still see the tile floor of the building that had once stood in that spot. “There are things I remember sometimes, things that I see. To be honest, it’s a little disconcerting—worse because her daughter’s ghost is here watching over Neve and I.” I pressed a hand against my stomach and shivered, biting down hard on my lower lip for a moment. “It’s all very strange.”
“Well, once we find the vessel, we’ll just need to return Phelan’s anima to him and all should be well,” Seamus said.
“Assuming we’re able to find it,” Thom growled.
“Yes,” Seamus agreed quietly. “Assuming we find it.”
“We will,” I said. “One way or another, we will.”
