“Three days,” Jacqueline practically snarled. “It’s been three days. Why hasn’t he woken up yet?”
“Unfortunately, the one you need to ask is the one that’s currently unconscious,” Neve murmured, hugging one knee a little tighter against her chest.
“Maybe it’s just the shock,” Cameron said, sounding doubtful. “It could be, right? Between the attack and getting his anima ripped out unexpectedly…”
Gods safe keep you, Cameron. Thank you for trying. Neve bit down hard on her lip and stared blankly at her unconscious cousin, stretched out in his bed, cocooned in so many blankets he looked three times his normal size. “As far as I’ve ever known, he should have been awake by now. We must have missed something.”
“What could we have missed?” Jacqueline asked, her tone edging into desperation territory. “Marin found the urn. Thesan said that’s what it was in and she found it. She put it back in him—God only knows how, because I haven’t got a clue—and he should be fine now. But he hasn’t woken up.” She sucked in a breath. “Is the Hunt still going to take her when they go?”
“I don’t see how they have a choice,” Neve said quietly. “We can’t keep her here. We don’t have a safe place to hold her. At least among the Hunt they’ll have a hope of containing her.”
Cameron snorted humorlessly. “And she’ll have what she wants—proximity to her father.”
A shiver shot down Neve’s spine. There was that. “I’m still not sure that we’re going to let the Hunt take him when they leave.”
“He leads them, Neve. How the hell would he stay behind when the rest of them go?”
“There’s got to be some kind of loophole,” Neve said. “Leinth and I have been trying to figure out how to make it work. Sif’s been wracking her brain to find a way. She said that she thought she’d heard a story long ago that might help but she can’t quite remember what it was. She’s been digging through the books Marin and the others rescued from the library trying to find something that’ll spark her memory.” Her lips thinned. “I’m not going to give up my brother so easily right after we’ve found him, Cam. I can’t do that. It’s not in me.”
“You left Teague easily enough.”
“Teague’s a pain in my ass and Kira is more than capable of keeping him well in hand. Never mind the fact that we never thought he was dead. We thought we lost Seamus more years ago than I care to count.” Neve’s fingers dug into the fabric of her pants where she hugged her leg against her. “Now we have him back and I’ll be damned if I let him just vanish again.”
“We need him to talk to Thesan,” Jacqueline said. “She did something—more than just rip Phelan’s consciousness out of his body. If she didn’t…”
“We’ll find out what she did, Jac,” Cameron said. “But we’re not going to ask Seamus to be the one to do it.”
Jacqueline’s eyes blazed. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”
She was out the door before either of them could stop her.
