[Marin’s point of view.]
Aoife stared blankly at Seamus, her expression caught somewhere between slack and incredulous. Phelan growled and shook his head again.
“I need to take a walk,” he muttered.
“I’ll come with you,” I said. I glanced up at Thom, who nodded slightly and let go.
“Be careful,” he murmured, then kissed my ear. I smiled faintly.
“Always.” I squeezed his hand. “Tell Jac I’m with him when she finishes up with whatever wounded we’ve got, okay?” That way either she and Thom would worry together, or neither of them would get to worrying—I was hoping for the latter.
“Of course.” Thom stole another kiss before I let go of his hand and moved toward Phelan, who’d paused a few feet away to wait for me—a small favor that I honestly hadn’t expected.
Phelan gave me a weak, crooked smile as we began to walk away, headed toward the space beyond the tent. It was raining, but not too hard. I tugged the hood of my jacket up. Phelan didn’t bother to cover his head, walking out into the rain.
I suppose he’s used to that kind of thing. Getting rained on.
I wondered how many hours—days, nights, maybe even weeks—he’d spent on the road in the rain, bareheaded or otherwise.
He’s got a lot of years on all of us.
We’d walked about half the distance to the wall before he sighed and I glanced at him sidelong. “Did you just need to get away from your sister and the bickering and the blame, or was there something else going on?”
“It’s a lot of things,” he murmured, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “There’s a part of me that thinks she’s right and at the same time, I think the only thing that would have happened if I’d actually gone after the bitch was me getting myself killed.”
I caught his free hand and squeezed it. Phelan sighed again and tilted his face toward the sky, staring up at the rain and the clouds.
“But I don’t know that we’ll ever be free of her,” he said quietly. “And even if we were, someone would just step in to fill the void. I wish it wasn’t the case, but that’s just the way it is. I can’t change it. I just have to live with it.”
“We have to live with it,” I said softly. “You’re not alone. Not anymore—not ever again.”
He squeezed my fingers again. “Thanks, leánnan.”
“Anytime, Phelan.”
Thank you! This is much better.
I don’t recall you using square brackets much in your stories so those should be easy to find and remove when you put it together to publish.
Ironically, in this post, it was very clear who the point of view character is. Though I can see where it would really ruin the flow of the story in a continuous read if you made an effort to highlight the point of view character in prose in each post.