“Maybe not, but you have me.”
“I’m sorry I scared you. I’ll be more careful,” he promises. He opens his mouth to say more, but the sight of a single snowflake drifting down in front of him makes him pause.
The clouds have closed in above us, faster than I expected. Snow falls in a delicate dusting, light and airy. The first brush of winter has arrived at last.
“We should head for the cottages,” Lugh grumbles, gulping down the last of his tea. I toss what’s left of mine on the fire.
Damn Cybel for being right. Talking seems to have put the world to rights again. Lugh and I are once more moving as a team, sharing the responsibilities of packing the last of our gear away and stomping out the bank of dying coals. Before I can think about it too much, we’re in our saddles and heading off down the road in the direction Cybel has scratched out in his makeshift map.
Our newfound ease remains, even when the storm picks up and the air whips the snow about with fierce intensity. We pull up our hoods and soldier on, searching for the turn in the path that should lead us to the stone ruins. We ride on and on, slowed to a near crawl.
“I’m fucking freezing,” Lugh yells over the wind. “We need to find somewhere to get out of this damn wind.”
I point toward a dark smudge barely visible through the drifting snow. “Trees?”
“Better than nothing.”
Liath and Dubh must agree. They let us lead them over a bumpy field and into the first edge of the forest. It’s still cold in here, but the trunks and branches protect us from the worst of the storm’s fury. Lugh shakes off his cloak and rubs his hands together before brushing snow off Liath’s mane. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“No. And I don’t want to risk getting turned around in this. What do you want to do?”
Lugh cocks his head and stares off into the forest.
“Lugh?”
“Do you feel that?” he asks. “It’s like a tug...”
“A shade?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. This is different.”
“Do you want to follow it?”
He bites at his lower lip and doesn’t quite look me in the eye when he answers, “Maybe.”
“Fine. But if it changes, if you feel anything threatening about it, we leave.”
“Agreed,” he promises easily, and urges Liath deeper into the trees. We weave in and out of the trunks, moving slowly for the horses’ sakes. The noise of the storm dies away for a while, then picks back up, though it sounds different.
“I think there’s a clearing ahead,” Lugh tells me.
He’s right. The trees open unexpectedly into a small meadow, partially protected from the wind by the towering trees surrounding it. It’s unnaturally quiet here, silent enough the fall of snow seems unwanted. The dilapidated ruins of a small cottage hunker at the edge of the space. The stone walls still stand, but the thatched roof and wooden beams have long since fallen and rotted away. The chimney rises out of the mess, a gnarled, blackened finger pointed toward the sky.
“This can’t be the place Cybel was talking about,” Lugh mutters.
“Not with only one building,” I agree. “At least it’ll give us a bit of shelter until the weather turns.”
Lugh dismounts and tosses me his reins. His boots make soft sounds as he strides deeper into the meadow, the snow well past his ankles. “I don’t feel it anymore. Whatever it was.”
I slide off Dubh’s back and lead both horses toward the remains of the building. I eye the doorway of the cottage. “What should we do with the horses?”
Lugh peers past me into the cottage’s interior. “They’ll probably fit,” he says, though he can’t hide his obvious doubt.
Too bad they’re both determined to not go inside. We try until one of them gives a harsh whinny of displeasure. Rather than risk upsetting them further, Lugh tromps the horses back to the tree line and hobbles them under the relative shelter of the evergreen branches. He’s shivering by the time he returns to me and I tilt his head up to get a better look at his bluing lips, surprised at how quickly he’s reacted to the cold. He stills when I press my thumb to his skin, worried about how much cooler it is than mine.
“You’re freezing,” I whisper.
“Maybe there’s enough wood to start a small fire,” he says, abruptly moving out of my grip. He ducks under my arm to make his way inside.