Twenty-three – 03

Cameron’s mouth dried out and he stared at her for a few long moments, lips thinning. “Has it gotten worse?” he finally asked in a whisper. “Has the Hunt being here—”

“I don’t think it’s the Hunt,” Carolyn said. “And it hasn’t really gotten any worse. It just feels like it could. He’s been dreaming again and hasn’t told anyone, but I know. He doesn’t realize that he talks in his sleep.” She smiled crookedly, hugging her arms tightly around herself. “I haven’t worked up the courage to ask him about them. Maybe I don’t want to know.”

“They’re bothering you.”

“You have no idea.” Her lips thinned and she edged closer to the border of the wards. “Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do.”

“What does he dream about? Do you know?”

Carolyn chewed on her lower lip, nodding slightly. “I know some of it. He sees memories of his soul—past lives, that kind of thing. A lot of us have old souls. I…I haven’t asked if I do. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to know.”

“I’m with you there,” Cameron said, then smiled weakly. “Bad enough finding out that my bloodline was full of surprises. I don’t know what I’d do if I started finding out about my past lives.”

“A potentially wise decision on both of your parts,” Leinth’s voice said from behind both of them. Carolyn stiffened and Cameron winced.

I should have heard her coming. You’re getting slow and complacent, Mackenzie, and that’s going to get you killed.

“Where did you come from?” he murmured to the dark-cloaked woman as she joined them near the edge of the wards.

“Cariocecus’s bedside, if you’re actually curious and not just making conversation.” The faint smile she shot the two of them softened the sharpness of her words, but only slightly. “You two aren’t exactly people I would expect to find out here staring at that ravine out there.”

“We were just talking, that’s all. We both needed some air,” Carolyn said, smiling faintly at Leinth. “Same thing for you?”

“You might say that,” Leinth said quietly, crossing her arms and letting her cloak fall closed around her. She didn’t seem to notice the rain as it pattered down against her hair. “You two should get out of the rain. You’ll catch your death out here.”

“And you wouldn’t?”

She gave them both a crooked smile. Cameron shivered.

“Maybe not, Carolyn,” he said. She blushed, looking away.

“Right. Well…I don’t know. I’m not ready to go back.”

Cameron chewed the inside of his cheek, still staring at the ravine. He wasn’t ready yet, either. The aches had subsided into a strange numbness—maybe it was the proximity to the wardings, maybe it was Carolyn’s faery friends, or Leinth’s presence.

“It’s not raining that hard,” he said. “I’ll stay a little while, too.”

A wind somewhere above them ruffled the branches of the trees in the ravine and then was gone. The three stood in silence at the edge of the wards. No bird sang. The wind died away, leaving nothing in its wake.

All they could hear was the faint patter of the rain.

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