I excused myself from the company by the fire a few minutes later, saying something about checking the wards and walls now that it was light enough to do it.\u00a0 Thom tried to protest, but one look silenced him.\u00a0 He knew the look well\u2014it was the look I gave him when I needed a little time to myself.<\/p>\n
The vision and what Neve said about the Ridden Druid\u2014Ciar, Brighid\u2019s beloved brother\u2014had left me more unsettled than I cared to admit aloud.\u00a0 I\u2019d never considered the possibility of possession, but now I suddenly had to face it because it had happened once before.<\/p>\n
The soul my brother\u2019s got once shared a body with some kind of deity or spirit\u2014whatever the hell Cernunnos really was.<\/i>\u00a0 I made a mental note to ask Phelan about that later as I headed back to my room.<\/p>\n
Thom and I had talked months ago about writing down what we\u2019d seen.\u00a0 I\u2019d balked, but he was right\u2014we needed to document it somehow, even if doing it was a terrifying prospect.\u00a0 I kept my journal beneath our mattress.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure Thom knew it was there, just like I knew that he kept his tucked into a leather satchel in the corner of Matt\u2019s forge.\u00a0 We\u2019d promised each other not to read those journals of visions without permission.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have his permission yet and he didn\u2019t have mine, either.<\/p>\n
Married or no, vows or no, we had to have some<\/i> secrets, even from each other.<\/p>\n
I needed to get mine now so I could write down what I\u2019d seen before the details faded.\u00a0 Every piece of what I\u2019d seen could have significance, importance.\u00a0 I had no chance of stopping anything from happening if I couldn\u2019t remember what I\u2019d initially seen.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to let that happen to Thordin.\u00a0 I can\u2019t.<\/i><\/p>\n
I shivered at the memory of the man in white and his laughter.<\/p>\n
I needed to talk to Phelan badly.<\/p>\n
After,<\/i> I promised myself as I ducked into my room to get the journal.\u00a0 Get it all down, then you can talk to him about it.<\/i><\/p>\n
I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, sliding my hand beneath the mattress, fingers questing until they closed around the journal\u2019s leather-bound spine.\u00a0 It had been stuffed into the bottom of my duffle bag, the one that I\u2019d planned on lugging along with me when I headed east back in August, back before all of this had happened, before the end of the world.<\/p>\n
This wasn\u2019t in our plans, but I can\u2019t imagine life any other way now.<\/i><\/p>\n
I almost laughed as I clutched the journal to my chest.\u00a0 I must have broken somewhere along the way, just like the world had.<\/p>\n
We all said this was our normal now, but I\u2019d never realized that I actually believed<\/i> that.<\/p>\n
I allowed myself a quiet chuckle and then headed for the wall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I excused myself from the company by the fire a few minutes later, saying something about checking the wards and walls now that it was light enough to do it.\u00a0 Thom tried to protest, but one look silenced him.\u00a0 He … Continue reading