Will probably be missing Monday updates until mid-December.
-
Want to help support all of Erin’s writing endeavors?
Fourteen – 03
[This post is from Thomas Merlin Ambrose’s point of view.]
“Lin, dammit, slow down.”
I ignored Tory, my head down as I kept walking. I was determined to get back—hopefully before he and Anne had the time to ask more questions.
Then he grasped my shoulder and I almost blacked out from the white-hot pain that shot through me as his hand closed over the bandages hidden beneath my shirt. I nearly went to my knees, stumbling the next few steps as he let go, eyes going wide.
“What the hell?” he blurted. “Lin?”
“Just leave me alone,” I said through gritted teeth, regaining my stride after those few stumbled paces. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Did they do this to you? The strangers?”
“No.” I bit off the word. He fell in behind me, though he didn’t try to draw up alongside or touch me again, just stayed an arms’ length behind me. “They had nothing to do with it.”
“Then what happened?”
“Ask someone else. I’m going to bed.”
“I’m asking you.”
I swallowed a curse and shook my head. My vision twinned for a second, then returned to normal. The thumping pain just got worse.
I should have stayed in bed like Aunt Jac said. Dammit anyway.
“Lin, seriously. What—”
“Next time you’re going to run off to the lake, tell someone you’re going,” I said. “Because it’s fucking dangerous out there and my uncle will tell you all about it once you check in with him and let him know you’re alive. Or your mother will—your mother, who’s probably worried about both of you. You should probably go see her.”
His footsteps stopped. I kept walking.
One foot in front of the other.
It was all I could manage as darkness nibbled at the edges of my vision. I just wanted to make it back to my bed before I fell over.
I failed.
Fourteen – 02
[This post is from Thomas Merlin Ambrose’s point of view.]
Their voices followed me as I walked and I winced, knowing that whatever respite I’d hoped to garner wasn’t going to come.
“What’s going on with him? Is it because of whoever showed up?” Anne asked.
“Something like that,” Kailey said. I could sense the grimace in her voice. “It’s—it’s been a really long day.”
“Every day is long lately,” Tory said. “There’s a weight to everything we’ve been trying to ignore for weeks. Dad should’ve been back by now but no one’s saying it out loud. Shit doesn’t feel quite right. Something’s happening but we’re not talking about it.” He paused, then added, “Especially not Lin.”
Dammit. I just want time to sleep and think. My limbs felt heavy. It was like I was walking through water to my waist, slowing me down, trying to drag me under.
Was this what it was like when Mom and Dad had to deal with things? Gods and monsters, I wish I knew for sure. The journals said a lot, but there were things that they left unsaid—to what ends, I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t even sure it was strictly necessary for me to fully understand what they’d left unsaid at this point. Maybe they’d done it on purpose. Maybe they’d known.
Knowing them, they probably had—they’d known a lot of things they never spoke about, never told anyone.
“Lin! Lin, wait up.”
I could hear Tory’s footsteps behind me, though I didn’t slow down—I was moving slow enough already for him to catch up easily, and if I stopped walking, I was probably not going to start again. The weariness and pain was starting to grind me down like grain under a millstone. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling by any stretch.
Did you live with this, Mom and Dad? Was this every day of your lives?
Is it still this now?
No Monday update this week – there have been no Monday updates lately due to a combination of my work and school schedules, unfortunately.
Stay tuned!
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Fourteen – 01
[This post is from Thomas Merlin Ambrose’s point of view.]
“So what did we miss?”
I jerked at the sound of Artorius’s voice, then winced as pain lanced through me. Kay’s grip tightened a little and I could almost hear her teeth grinding. She turned more quickly than I did toward the sound of his voice, lips already starting to curl into a snarl.
“Where the actual hell were you?” she demanded, her tone abruptly even more angry than she’d been earlier. I barely suppressed a wince that had nothing to do with my physical discomfort as I turned around.
Tory stopped a few feet from us, his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Anne was with him and she blinked in surprise at Kailey.
“We were out by the lakeshore,” Anne said. “We didn’t know anything was happening until we got back here with our catch.” Her brow furrowed as she looked between us. “So I’ll second Tory’s question—what did we miss? What happened?”
I grimaced and shook my head slightly. “We have visitors.”
“Visitors don’t usually get the Hunt this nervous or make your uncle disappear, Lin.” Tory crossed his arms. “Aunt Tala said he went for a walk when I said I was going to go see him up at the forge. There’s something going on.”
“Yeah,” I said, then started walking—stumbling, really. Anne reached for me but I just managed to dodge out of her reach.
I didn’t know what I was going to tell them, and I hurt too much to think clearly anyway.
I’ll sleep and then I’ll figure it out—or maybe someone will figure it out for me.
“Lin?”
“I’m going to go lay down,” I said, heading back toward the village proper. “Wake me when it’s time to eat.”
Thirteen – 05
[This post is from Hecate’s point of view.]
She could tell that he was trying not to sigh again, even as his fingers tightened around the rail. “What do you make of it? The story? The explanation?”
Hecate looked up at him, her brow arching slightly. “What do you make of it? You have concerns—I can hear the doubt in your voice.”
“I do,” Matt admitted quietly. “I’m just not sure that I should, all things considered. After everything we’ve seen over the past twenty years, should anything surprise me anymore?”
“Of course they should.” She smiled. “What’s a life without wonder and surprise? What’s a world without it? Cold and dark and lonely and terrifying, and none of those are something I’d wish upon even the worst of my enemies.”
“You’ve grown more merciful with age.”
She snorted softly. “Don’t change the subject, Matthew. What, precisely, about their story bothers you? Is it because they had the stories from Aoife originally?”
“No,” he said. “Maybe yes, but that’s not all of it. I just—the once and future king? Arthur? Really?”
“He really existed, though not in the way the books say he did.” She ran a hand up and down his spine. “And he had children and they had children—and Cameron is proof of that.”
Matt startled. “Cameron? But I—”
“There are two sides to every family, mo chroí. We both know that, even if you’ve momentarily forgotten.”
He winced again and looked down at his hands. “So you’re saying—”
“I’m saying the sword chose him for a reason,” Hecate said gently, cutting him off. “Sometimes, the magic knows.”
“Not sometimes,” Matt murmured.
“No,” she agreed. “Not sometimes. It always knows—even when we don’t. It does and there is little of it that we can deny.”
“So what do we tell them? Do we tell them?”
“What do you think?”
He closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” Matt whispered. “I just don’t know.”
Posted in Ambrose Cycle, Book 8, Chapter 13, Story
Tagged Ambrose Cycle, Awakenings, fantasy, fiction, Hecate, Matthew Astoris, original fiction, post apocalyptic, serial, serial fiction, story, web fiction
Leave a comment
Thirteen – 04
[This post is from Hecate’s point of view.]
Matt was silent for a few seconds before he sighed again. “How can you be so sure?”
“I’m old,” she said, her tone teasing and light in ways that she never could have managed before she’d found him again. “You learn things when you get this old.”
He looked back over his shoulder toward her, smiling faintly. “Is that so?”
“It is.” She leaned in to kiss him gently, arm tightening around him. “You need to have more faith, Matt. I know today’s been rougher than most.”
His gaze drifted away, back to the burial grounds. “And I’ve just telegraphed that to everyone by coming out here, haven’t I?”
“Maybe a little,” Hecate admitted. “But the people who know more understand.”
His head dipped. “Why did they put me in charge?”
“We’ve been over this.”
“I know. I know.” He straightened, bracing his hands against the top rail of the fence. “Doesn’t mean that I like it any more or any less. I just—why didn’t they at least give me a choice?”
“Because there wasn’t a choice, Matt. It was always going to be you. No matter what, it was going to be you.”
Posted in Ambrose Cycle, Book 8, Chapter 13, Story
Tagged Ambrose Cycle, Awakenings, fantasy, fiction, Hecate, Matthew Astoris, post apocalyptic, serial fiction, story, web fiction
Leave a comment
Thirteen – 03
[This post is from Hecate’s point of view.]
“Are you all right?”
Hecate’s fingers brushed along Matt’s spine as she came up behind him. His head dipped and he leaned forward slightly against the rail fence that they’d set up long ago around the burial grounds. It had been there for long enough that fresh wood had weathered slowly to gray, the wood smoothed but not yet starting to splinter with age. She leaned against him, resting her cheek against his shoulderbade, arm curling around his waist as he took one slow breath, then another.
After all this time, she knew his silence could mean a thousand things, but she suspected he was simply gathering his thoughts. She led him have that silence, staring past his shoulder to the green grass that blanketed the field where dozens lay buried, many of them from the times before she’d come, before she’d joined them—from times when she’d been their enemy.
Matt’s hand drifted to cover hers where she held him around his waist, his fingers lacing through hers. He squeezed for a moment, then sighed.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to be, but I really don’t know.”
“What’s bothering you?”
“I just—” he stopped, then started again. “I’m just not sure.”
“About?”
“Any of it.” He squeezed her hand again. “Am I making the right choices here, Peia?”
“I would have told you then and there if you had,” she said. “I’d have stopped you before things went too far.”
“And you’re not here to do that.”
“No.” She smiled against his shoulder. “I think you made the right decision—and I think they’re exactly where they need to be.”
“Even—”
“Yes. Even if one of them is her son and they heard stories from her. Even then.” She stood on tip-toe to press a kiss to his ear. “Aoife had every reason to hate me, Matt. I can’t blame her for it. Hell, I couldn’t even blame any of them if they hated me, even though I don’t think for a heartbeat that they do.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
He shivered slightly. “I’m glad you have that much faith. I’m not sure that I do.”
This time she squeezed his hand. “But you trust me.”
“Always.”
“Then trust me.”
Posted in Ambrose Cycle, Book 8, Chapter 13, Story
Tagged Ambrose Cycle, Awakenings, fantasy, fiction, Hecate, Matthew Astoris, original fiction, post apocalyptic, story, web fiction
Leave a comment