Page 98 of The Empire and the Wolf King

He leveled his eyes. “It’s all I am thinking about.”

“Great, I hoped I was just crazy, now the insane guy is agreeing with me.”

“It would be a lot easier to rescue all of us when we are together at one time in one place and things are going well. I can’t have been the only person to think of it.”

“What would happen to us?”

He shrugged. “The uncertainty is driving my current obsession with inventory and box strapping.”

I reached out, he passed me the tape dispenser. I drew tape across the top of the box of cans. “Like, are we just here forever?”

“Nah, or I don’t know… maybe? But it’s probably not that big a deal, alternate timeline and all.”

“I guess we wouldn’t know it, we wouldn’t feel it and would have no idea. It’d be like leaving dandruff flakes somewhere, right? Part of yourself, not your self.”

“Yeah, but also, gross.”

“Okay, so this is a possibility, we agree. Are you telling Beaty?”

Quentin looked to the right and left. “Of course not.” He pressed his finger to his lips and said to the pig, “And no squealing.”

Mookie grunted.

Quentin asked, “You telling Sophie?”

“Definitely not, all she can do right now is sleep and nurse. She cannot handle this existential crisis too.”

I put a check beside the finished box on his list and pulled another box down to open. “If they are going to do a do-over, when do you think they will choose to do it? We all need to be together. They could intervene when we all fled to Riaghalbane when we realized Ash had been kidnapped.”

“But Ash had already been kidnapped, we’d have to rescue her again. That leaves a lot to chance.”

“So the weekend before, when Junior was born.”

He nodded. “The night of Ben’s birthday would be good, you know?”

Quentin said, “Now I hope you’re right about Fraoch being in charge of the rescue, I don’t know if my bet ‘Lady Mairead’ will have good instincts for doing it right.”

“If she’s in charge she would probably pick a date that suits her and just go with it.”

“So what do we do?”

“We wait for what comes. There will be shenanigans as Kaitlyn would say, we just gotta roll with it.”

We both gulped.

Then we both started working on the boxes again. We made the project last most of the day.

CHAPTER 45 - MAGNUS

OAKHURST INN, CHARLOTTESVILLE - 1775

Iwoke tae a sound Kaitlyn was making. I turned, still dazed from sleep, then woke up enough tae realize she was softly weeping.

I whispered, “Mo reul-iuil, are ye well?”

She sniffled. “It hurts.”

My heart dropped. I flicked on the flashlight and I said it again, “How long has it been hurting, mo reul-iuil?”

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