[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]
It was for that reason—to stay with Phelan, to make sure that he was going to be okay—that I followed Thordin. That was the only reason I went. Despite all of my assurances to Thom and everyone else, there was a part of me that felt like I shouldn’t be hiding from whatever this was, but that I should be out on the front lines of it, facing what they faced and seeing whatever they were about to see.
Hiding wasn’t in me. At least, this time it wasn’t in me.
I could feel the part of me that remembered being Brighíd, that remembered what had happened in that long-ago yesterday, railing at the back of my head, tugging at my heart, at my emotions.
She would have fought—if not for the same thing staying my hand.
Phelan.
The staff warmed slowly in my hand as we moved away from Leinth—as she and Sif headed for the gates, which I ached to be.
“What the hell do you think he’s doing?” I asked Thordin in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. My eyes were more on Phelan than the direction we were walking in, truth be known.
There was a part of me that remembered seeing this before—beyond a few glimpses here and there in this life.
That part was terrified, too.
Thordin stopped at the entrance to the tunnels and looked directly at me. “Can you catch him?”
“Hell,” I muttered, squeezing my eyes shut. “I’m not even sure I can climb the damn later, but I’ll try.”
If Tala could climb it, so can I.
Shit, Tala and the babies.
“If it’s about to get bad—”
He cut me off. “I’m sure they’re on their way, Mar. Head down and I’ll lower him to you.”
This had bad idea written all over it, but I nodded, levering open the tunnel’s hatch. I started down, awkwardly and uncomfortably.
“Don’t keep us waiting,” I warned him as my feet hit the bottom of the tunnel. “I’ll need blankets and shit down here, too—a bedroll if you can find one, for him.”
“Just relax,” Thordin told me the second before he started lowering Phelan’s limp body down toward me. “I’ll be back. Just sit tight until then.”
I barely managed to catch Phelan and didn’t have time to fire off a witty retort before Thordin had vanished and the hatch had closed above us.
“Right,” I murmured, holding onto Phelan, slumped as dead weight against me. “We’ll just sit here and wait.”
But not for too damned long, you can be sure of that.
