[This post is from Thom’s point of view.]
Seamus did not disappoint him, though he stayed quiet for a few seconds more, just staring at the spot.
“I led them for centuries,” he said slowly, as if the weight of the years and the memories had settled on his shoulders again, pressing him down with their magnitude. “They became my family. I knew them as well—better—than I knew myself. The past few weeks—hell, the past few days—something has started to feel off, to feel wrong. I don’t know what it is. I have no explanations. It’s just a gut feeling, one I can’t shake.”
“What do you think it is?” Thom asked.
Seamus considered the question, still not turning away from the broken ground beyond the gates and the walls. “I don’t know. Once upon a time, I would have chalked it up to paranoia, but now I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything anymore, to be honest. I wish I was.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, exhaling a heavy sigh. “I begin to wonder, though, if someone has started to pull on their strings—it’s not impossible. The old ways are breaking down. We—the Hunt, I mean—the Hunt used to be something that stood aloof from the wars even as we rode into them. We were a force of nature, a thing not to be trifled with. If we came, they would quake in fear.”
“They?”
A weak, rueful smile curved Seamus’s lips and he glanced back over his shoulder toward Thom. There was regret in that smile, regret mingling with a sort of sad nostalgia and longing. “Everyone. The Otherlanders. We would ride into their wars on nobody’s side but our own, taking who and what we wanted because we wanted them, because we could. They feared us for that, hated us for that, but they could never quite touch us, never quite manipulate the Hunt in the ways they hoped to. Even selling me to them, that didn’t have the outcome that my wife’s father had hoped. He had hoped for some allegiance, some loyalty, considering the magnitude of the boon he’d gifted them.”
His smile turned into something almost wicked. “Instead, he got what he deserved.”
