Twenty-one – 04

They walked across a pedestrian bridge over a finger of the network of ravines they’d climbed coming over the river. Aoife looked beyond the iron rails, her stomach dropping to the floor of the chasm below. They’d climbed that? And probably more, she realized, since the floor of the ravine here was likely still higher than the river they’d left behind.

Even at that distance and difficulty of ascent, the people here had still set patrols all the way down to the river’s edge. That wasn’t something you did without good reason for doing it—probably more than one reason, at that.

I’m afraid we’ll find out rather quickly what those reasons were.

“Something wrong?” Seamus asked, glancing back over his shoulder, as if he could suddenly sense her discomfort. Maybe he could—he’d always been like that, in tune with their moods, a peacemaker when he could be, when it was safe for him to be.

They’d all loved Seamus even when they hated him at the same time.

Aoife shook her head slightly. “Probably not, but we’ll see. I was just thinking.”

“Mm,” Seamus said, turning his attention to the path ahead. Beyond skeletal trees, Aoife could see the remnants of orange bricks and green-tinted glass. They’d known that this had been the site of some kind of school thanks to Teca’s scrying, but seeing it in the scrying mirror and witnessing it firsthand were two entirely different experiences.

Her fingers tightened around Gray’s hand. He squeezed back before he let go of her hand and slid his arm around her waist, pulling her tight against his side for a moment.

“Seems like this might have been a nice place before everything came unglued,” he said quietly, though she felt him shiver against her. He must have sensed the same thing she did—the power lurking beneath the surface, the swirling knots of energy that were almost too close. “How many survivors here?”

“Not counting the Hunt? Thirty or forty, these days. The numbers fluctuate a bit. There’s a pack of shifters that have come and gone from time to time and then there’s the Hunt.” Seamus smiled over his shoulder at them as they stepped off the bridge. “There’s at least three more on the way.”

Aoife frowned. “Travelers, or…?”

“Children,” Seamus said, a light coming to his eyes that Aoife couldn’t remember seeing since the day he’d said good-bye to Brighíd of the Imbolg. “Neve’s pregnant and so is one of the leaders of the survivors here.”

Aoife stumbled a step. “Neve’s pregnant?” Her stomach sank. That—there’s—dammit.

She needed to talk to her brother, and badly, but alone.

“When did that happen?” she asked her cousin.

“Before I got here,” Seamus said quietly. “Should deliver before the summer’s gone.”

Aoife swallowed hard, glancing at Gray. He arched a brow in question and she exhaled a shaky breath, shaking her head. A chill crept down her spine.

Then it’s begun already.

Now only time would be able to show them what tale prophecy and fate had written for them in places far away and times long forgotten.

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