Ethan let go of my arms and leapt to Ric’s side, noting the slight red rash that smoothed across the side of my calf and thigh. I sat up in a fury.
“What is your problem?!” I yanked my sleeve up further, glaring at the angry friction burn on my elbow. “I did just fall off a horse.” Silence fell across the forest once the Berserker’s cries had ceased. I stared back down the hill and saw him partly-propped up on the bank. Unmoving. Unbreathing. “Is he-?”
“Dead? Yes,” Ethan said bluntly. “You should be too.”
I looked at him, waiting for one of them to laugh or tease. When his astonishment refused to shift I scoffed. “How am I supposed to die now when the thing that was trying to kill me is dead?” My head hurt.
“Because of this.” He pointed at the rash. “Do you think he just decided to drop dead?” I was silent. “Ric explained how plants were just as dangerous as the animals to you, yes?”
“He explained a few things-”
“That, down there,” he pointed at the dark grass, “is the worst it gets. If you stumble into a patch of Bitterblack you don’t come out.”
Silence fell for a moment. “So how am I alive?” I looked at the ugly rash on my leg and could still feel the gentleness of the grass’s touch. It hadn’t felt malicious.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, “but I’ll just have to add it to my list of questions. Gnathians keep surprising me.” He winced, clutching his arm tightly.
“Ethan, you’re bleeding.” I hovered next to him.
“Am I? Daeus, I didn’t notice.” He winced again. “I’m fine. It’s just a graze.”
I hobbled to Ethan’s horse and pulled a small medical pack out of the saddlebag. “What about the others?” I asked, rinsing Ethan’s wound with disinfectant. He hissed.
“We were betrayed,” Ric started. “Ethan’s contact set us up. We slew all but one of them, though last we saw of him, Daniel was on his trail.”
“We can’t even trust our own fighters anymore,” he spat.
I looked around and turned to Ric after realising we were two men absent. “What about the dark-eyed man?”
“Dark-eyed man?” Ethan asked.
Ric muttered to him, “Flint has an attachment to this place. Before I could ask him anything else he was gone.”
Flint? Ethan’s face was stony and unreadable as he held his hand out. His horse trotted up to him and Ethan grasped his reins. There was something familiar about its golden eyes that warmed me. “We should go,” he said, pulling himself up and into the saddle. “Your horse won’t have gone far. Ric, run ahead and we’ll catch up.”
Ric shot me an anxious glance but I smiled. “Don’t worry, I think your other form is quite spectacular,” I said reassuringly.
He certainly looked relieved and headed onward, not shifting regardless until he was out of sight. Ethan grasped my hand and helped me onto the magnificent beast. I kept my grip firmly on the back of the saddle to avoid his injured arm – until I was nearly thrown off again from the speed it set off at. He smirked and winced again as I grasped his middle, clinging on with everything I had.
“If I travel at this sort of speed in the future I’ll need riding trousers,” I said, trying to keep my skirt down as Ethan laughed through his pain.
A FEW DAYS passed before the headaches kicked in. We were less than halfway home, Daniel was still nowhere to be seen, and we’d just stopped to set up camp as the sun hovered about the horizon. The firewood in my hands clattered to the ground as my body spasmed. The world rocked around me and I sank to my knees, burying my head in my hands. Daeus, it felt like someone was picking and prodding at my brain. Faces swam behind my eyelids, some of them I recognised, some of them I didn’t, as another memory played soundlessly in my mind. Something popped and blood trickled from my nose. Once the moment had passed I wiped the blood away and gathered up however much of the firewood I could manage, all the while trying to ignore my locket’s suffocating weight.
Ric fussed me when I’d returned to camp and I’d made him promise not to tell Ethan about it. It was a headache. It wasn’t a big deal. Only, it definitely was. Everything I’d seen – everything I’d discovered at the House of Adrian – had changed my life.
Mercifully they’d had little reason to fuss me with Ethan’s injury turning rancid. Something was wrong. Considering the size of the injuries he’d sustained in his fight with the Vampyr, the graze on his arm should have healed in a heartbeat. With each passing day the pain worsened and no matter what we tried his wound wouldn’t clot properly. In the end all I could do was stuff it with macerated primrose leaves and bind it as tightly as I could.
AS THE REMAINING days passed by and we came closer to home, my health deteriorated badly. Where I’d looked terrible and felt fine before, I just plainly looked terrible and felt terrible, full stop. Sweat clung to my back from the enormous effort it took to keep myself on the horse, though Ric and Ethan had been so focussed on keeping an eye out for Berserkers they failed to notice how pallid I’d become.
All for the better.
On that final day, Ethan had also taken a turn for the worse. He looked to us as we reached Carrandell’s perimeter and said, “Go on ahead. I need to do something before I can go back.”
Ric continued onward, understanding and trusting him. I, however, wasn’t having it. “Where are you going?” I pushed.
“You don’t need to know.” He turned his horse around and trotted ahead, turning down the path opposite mine.
“Yes I do. You can barely sit up by yourself.”
“Look who’s talking.” He looked me up and down. Perhaps he hadn’t been too unobservant.
“At least I’m an invalid who’s a stone’s throw from rest and medicine.” I trotted alongside him.
“I don’t need medicine, I need something else,” he snarled.
“Right, and if you’re so insistent on riding off on another escapade while you look the way you do then you don’t have a choice. Better two invalids to look out for each other than one.” I trotted ahead of him.
“I’ll be home by sunset-”
“In that case there should be no problem in me coming along. Such a small amount of time should be bearable for you. I am your responsibility, after all.”
“How are you my responsibility?” he argued, following beside me.
“Because you’re the one who pulled me into this mess, so you’re stuck with me until things blow over – and that means no more kind, docile Ava. I can’t spend the rest of my time in Vremia behind four walls.”
“Docile? Really?” His eyebrows twitched and I kicked up my speed.
We argued and rode, and argued and rode, and by the time Ethan realised how far away we were from Willow’s it was too late. I hid my triumphant smile and shrugged lightly.