[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]
“Marin.” Thom squeezed a little harder and it snapped me back. I sucked in a sharp breath, tears stinging behind closed lids. “Marin, talk to me.”
“She can’t know where we are,” I managed to say, my voice strangled. “Thom, she can’t. We can’t go through that again. I won’t go through that again.”
“Through what?”
“Any of it,” I said. “All of it. I just—I can’t.”
The memories of Cyhyraeth’s encounters with Brighíd had been slow to return, but I had been getting them in a trickle, dreams that woke me in the depths of the night and left me shaken and angry—sometimes even afraid. The only small mercy I’d been able to cling to was that Thom had slept through it all, slept through memories that might as well have been nightmares. I’d get up at night and pace the floor, holding our son and talking half to him, half to myself, trying to work my way through the awful things I’ve seen, the terrible things I’d relived in dreams.
They’d been coming since that moment on the wall, since her attack on me, an attack I’d still been trying to convince myself was nothing.
Thom still didn’t know about it. I still hadn’t told him.
“Marin.”
I rolled over onto my side, buying my face against his shoulder. He moved his hand, letting go of my arm and reaching to tangle his fingers in my hair as I curled against him.
“It’s—”
“Don’t say it’s okay,” I whispered into his shoulder. “It’s not okay.”
Fuck all, it’s so not okay.
“Then talk to me,” he said. “Talk to me, Mar. What the hell is going on?”
“She’s not dead,” I whispered. “She’s out there somewhere and she’s hunting for me. She knows I’m alive, knows Brighíd’s soul is in me. She knows I’m out here and she’ll come after me again—come after us.” My eyes stung as the tears began to flow. “Thom, I’m so sorry. I’m so bloody sorry.”
