“I thought you might be out here.”
Marin turned toward Seamus and he could just barely see her smile in the dim predawn light. She was wrapped in her parka, boots laced up to mid-calf as she stood in the snow near the gate. “You’re up early,” she observed, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I could make the same observation and ask the same question,” Seamus said as he walked toward the wall. “Let’s assume that our answers match. How do the wards look?”
“Solid,” she said, glancing back toward the wall. Seamus could sense more than see the faint glimmer of power that ran beneath the wall and shimmered up through the seams and cracks in the concrete and brick barrier. “Of course, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be,” she said, following his gaze. “Kellin and I keep too close of an eye on them for it to be otherwise.”
“They’ve been on you to share that load,” Seamus observed quietly.
She nodded. “Yeah, they have been. It just doesn’t feel right. I set these, Seamus. They’re mine to tend until I can’t anymore.”
He felt a pang. “Until you can’t anymore?” he echoed.
Marin sighed. “That day will come.” There was a sad certainty in her voice that sent shivers down his spine.
How much do they already know?
He glanced away. “What makes you say that?”
“Don’t play coy,” she said quietly. “You were the Taliesin before Phelan. You know things—maybe more things that he does. There are things that you didn’t tell him, aren’t there?”
“There wasn’t time to tell him everything,” Seamus murmured, and the words were true. What he neglected to add was that he’d purposely omitted other things to spare his cousin pain—things that hadn’t seemed important then, things that Seamus didn’t regret keeping to himself at all.
They deserve to be happy for as long as they can be. I know that better than anyone—and more than I’ve known or believed anything in my life.
