[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]
It’s not nothing.
“Phelan.”
He stopped, turned back toward me, brows knitting. I took a deep breath.
“You came out here for a reason,” I said slowly. “Now talk to me.”
“I’m probably just being paranoid,” he muttered. “Really, it’s fine.”
“You felt it, too.”
Phelan stiffened even as his expression went slack. “In the distance?”
I nodded. “I picked up on it while I was strengthening the wards. It’s pretty far out and I can’t—I don’t know what it was. Do you?”
He grimaced and shook his head. “I’m not sure. It’s a little familiar, but I can’t quiet tease out what it really is. There’s so much diffuse…mess…lately that it’s getting harder and harder.”
Part of me wondered if that was the whole of it, if he was actually telling me the truth of it—and then there was a part of me that was worried that he was telling me the whole of it and that it meant so much more than I realized. I swallowed against a sudden lump in my throat. “Should I ask what it could be?”
“It’d just scare you,” Phelan murmured. “It already scares me. Both of us don’t need that.”
I stepped forward to hug him, awkwardly, since my enormous stomach was in the way. My son was slowly settling down now, no longer doing gymnastics inside. It was a relief. Phelan wrapped his arms around my shoulders and squeezed me gently.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t do this to you, not at this point. Probably not at any point, really, but especially not right now.”
“It’s okay,” I said, arms tightening for a brief moment before I let go and stepped back. “I’m just—I’m glad I’m not going crazy. I thought for a second I was, that I was imagining things.”
“It’s been too quiet,” he admitted. “That’s enough to ramp up paranoia. Don’t apologize for it.”
“The calm before the storm,” I whispered.
After all, that’s what it was—the calm before whatever maelstrom was to come.
