[This post is from Phelan’s point of view.]
Phelan kept walking—out of the tent, out into the sunshine and the grass of a late afternoon. The chill of winter had faded, giving away to a spring that was warming quickly, would turn to a brief, violent summer if he was anyone to guess.
He didn’t intend to end up there. It just happened.
The sound of a hammer against an anvil echoed from the forge and his heart lifted even as his throat tightened. He knew it wasn’t Matt up there. Matt was still gone, still lost—not forever, he hoped, but sometimes it was hard to believe that they’d ever see him again.
Phelan closed his eyes, leaning against the solid walls that he’d helped build. The stone was cool where it had been sitting in the shadows, warm where the sun had hit it. If he just closed his eyes, he could take himself back to before, before it had all started to come unglued, before everything had stopped making sense in his brain.
Does she really know how to love someone—anyone?
The sound within the forge stopped. Phelan opened his eyes, tilting his head back to stare at the sky for a few long moments.
“I’m not disturbing you, am I?” he asked quietly, knowing full well that Thordin would hear him.
“Get in here if you need to talk,” his friend rumbled. The sound of the hammer resumed.
Phelan managed to smile, his eyes stinging.
There are worse problems to have than friends who know when something’s eating away at you—even without seeing you.
He straightened from his lean and went inside. Thordin glanced up at him for a brief moment before he shoved the piece he was working on back into the maw of the kiln to heat. Phelan sat down and reached for a sword with one hand, setting his book down with the other.
“It’s eating away at you,” Thordin observed, pumping the bellows and watching the flames build in the firebox. “Has Jac told you that’s bad for you, or do I have to do it for her?”
“I do a lot of things that are bad for me,” Phelan murmured, picking up one of the whetstones. “I’m not dead yet.”
“Yet is the operative term in that statement,” Thordin said. “Is this about your sister?”
“Yes,” Phelan said, then sighed. “And no. I can’t stop her from doing what she wants to do, Thordin, but somehow everyone seems to be expecting me to find a way.”
“You’re her brother, not her keeper.” Thordin pulled the blade out of the fire and laid it on the anvil. “Are you worried?”
“Yes.”
“That she’ll get killed?”
Phelan hesitated, then shook his head. “No,” he said in a soft voice. “No, I’m afraid that she’ll succeed.”
