“Just wonderin’ if you’re actually gonna tell me how you’re doin’, or if I have to ask.”
I glance away. “Better, thanks. What’d you do—sweet-talk Adora’s maid for the medicine?”
“Somethin’ like that, but that’s not what I meant. After I left your room earlier, Eogan talked to me. Said somethin’ didn’t go right between you an’ him and that I should look after you.” He steps closer. Taking up my vision. “An’ by the looks of the weather, I’m guessing there’s a bit more to it.”
A bark of thunder shakes the sky.
He raises an eyebrow and chuckles. “Thought so.”
I pull away. “I don’t want to talk about it.” And walk off to help Breck with the food-filled saddlebags.
“Fine with me,” his voice follows softly. “But when you do, I’m here.”
The lump that clogs my fiery throat is grateful and grieving all at once. I toss him a bag and then nod and yank my hood up before allowing him to take the pressure off my leg as I climb into the saddle. We leave the sheep shed behind with a pounding of hooves.
After that, I only glance back at Colin and Breck once, and it’s because his gaze won’t leave me alone. I can feel it. What does he want? When I look, the concern I find written there is caring. It’s authentic. And it’s the same expression I’ve seen a hundred times on Eogan.
The pain it brings clobbers my lungs.
The clouds crackle, and I press Haven to ride harder, the thumping of her hooves keeping time with my screaming heart until, whether it’s my exhaustion or the medicine, my mind eventually takes off to drift on its own in the rainy fog. I welcome the numb—the cold as it whittles away at me, hour after hour, until I’m nothing more than a dull pile of ice.
Shades of day have folded into black shadows of night when we finally reach the edge of Litchfell. We stop among the thick, peripheral trees long enough for the horses to feed on a disgusting nest of hornet-badgers and for Breck to help me rewrap the dressing on my leg before she wanders off enough paces to relieve herself. My leg is inflamed, but I can’t tell if that’s a warning of infection or just because it’s been abused on a horse all day.
“You’re like fresh bait for the bolcranes,” Colin notes grimly. “Probably smell your injury a mile away.”
I shake my head. “They can’t smell. They hunt using heat visio—” I stall. And stare at him. Ah kracken. Adora didn’t tell him.
His face turns the color of the dripping, overgrown spindle trees behind him. Their lengthy green branches poking out in all directions like giant needles waiting to impale. He shifts to peer into the thorny forest as the rain drums around us. His barely fevered body will be like a blasted bull’s-eye compared to ours. I thought he knew.
“Colin, if there was any way around—”
He shrugs it off with a brave face that is false. He saw Adora’s map. There’s no way around Litchfell except by water, mountains, or cliffs. Which is why very few people ever visit the Fendres.
“I’ve been planning to keep the temperature around us at freezing. Which means you should be fine.”
“Maybe we shoulda got here earlier and gone through while it was daylight,” Breck says, making me jump. I didn’t even hear her behind us.
“It wouldn’t matter. It’s never daylight at the heart of Litchfell,” Colin mutters, indicating he at least knows that much. “So how ’bout we get this over with, yeah?”
I stand and tug my cloak tighter, suddenly aware of the sound of an airship puttering through the lessening storm overhead. Along with what I swear are hoofbeats coming toward us.
Flipping around, I glare into the dark.
Nothing.
It’s nothing.
Before I think on it further, Breck pushes past me. “We need to go.”
Suddenly a chorus of bolcrane screams erupts.
CHAPTER 28
THE SHRIEKS OF TORTURED CHILDREN SHATTER the night around us, echoing off the enormous spindle trees and jagged rocks, removing all doubt that the bolcranes sense our flesh.
The fact that we’re still alive just says they haven’t found it.
Yet.
Colin stays close with Breck as we ride fast and hard past miasma clusters that lash wispy tendrils out in search of blood and by giant ticks on trees that supposedly use their teeth if you get too close. I’m trembling and sweating like a rhino-horse.
Stay to the center of the path, I tell my hands. But it’s all I can do to just keep us on the path while trying to cool the temperature amid the heat and what I suspect might be my own injury-induced fever rising.
By the time we reach the steam swamps, spasms are wriggling up my spine, making my leg hurt and vision blurry. But even when my head sags, I’m too scared to slow down or pull out the medicine lest I drop it.
Another miasma cloud morphs, followed by a chilling screech, and I have to blink to focus on Haven as she dodges the deadly fog.