Did they want the same things?
Ell moved closer, tilting her head. Aesa shifted back, the same look of concern on her face as when Ell had first tried to kiss her. Ell grabbed her chin. “Aesa,” she said, stroking her cheek. She put all the good emotions behind the word, tried to say that she wanted to kiss Aesa, wanted to know what a kiss was like when it was her that needed it instead of someone else.
Aesa closed her eyes, delighting Ell with the desire that passed over her face. They did want the same things. Aesa just didn’t want to kiss her without a free mind. Ell moved in, sliding her lips expertly across Aesa’s in teasing little touches. She deepened the kiss and flicked at Aesa’s lips with her tongue until Aesa pulled her closer, making hungry little sounds. When Ell’s fingers slid around her neck, Aesa gasped and sat back, and Ell remembered the blood.
“Let’s save that for later.” She pointed at Aesa’s head, her neck. “How did you get hurt?” She mimed hitting and then pointed the way Niall had come.
“No,” Aesa said. She tried to act out her adventures, her sentences peppered with words Ell knew. Some new ones were easy to learn. She picked up the language as if suited for it, and she wondered if all fini would learn so quickly, trained as they were to pay attention.
Ell gleaned enough to know that Aesa’s people were on the island, that there was some kind of attack nearby. She tried to inquire about the owner of the gray robe, and Aesa pointed into the distance, as if she could walk that way and find him. “You killed him?” She mimed stabbing and used the word she’d heard Aesa say.
“No, no!” Aesa said, as if even the idea appalled her.
Ell smiled. “I hate you even less now.”
“Fini.” Aesa made a circle with her arm, pointed the way the others had gone, and then gestured all around. She touched Ell’s forehead. “You. All fini.” She splayed her fingers as if Ell’s head was throwing sparks.
“No, not sparks,” Ell said. “Thinking? You want all fini to be like me? Then you want to keep them from the pools or do something to the pools, the water.”
“No water!” Aesa said. “No fini water, no water fini.”
“I understand, but…” She thought of the girl she’d sought to free, the girl she’d terrified. She thought of her own loneliness and despair. If she asked them to choose, the fini wouldn’t be able to, especially not with the shaptis herding them.
“Come on,” Ell said, heading toward her cave.
Aesa hesitated, but Ell grabbed her hand, leading her. “For once, you’re doing what I say.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Smoke flowed through the air, curling around trees and floating sluggishly through the torchlight. Maeve watched over Dain as Laret climbed high into the branches to look around. Something large had to be on fire, and it had to be nearby.
Dain, to his credit, didn’t seem as if he even wanted to escape. He kept staring as if he didn’t know her anymore. Well, she supposed he didn’t.
“Are you afraid of me?” she asked, the concept so foreign that it repelled and intrigued her.
“You’ve taken me prisoner.”
“Well, to be fair, you took me prisoner first.”
His head slumped. “I wasn’t going to let any harm come to you.”
She opened her mouth to promise the same and realized she couldn’t. “We couldn’t let you tell anyone where we’d gone, so it was either come with us, or…” She didn’t say that she would have killed him. Laret hadn’t killed the woman in the village, and Maeve didn’t truly know what she’d do as a bear.
He swallowed and gestured at the forest. “Where have we gone?”
Laret slipped down from the tree with a slithery sound, her feet skidding on bark. “There’s a settlement on fire. Either Gilka’s there, or it’s an incredible coincidence.”
“Should we head that way?” Maeve asked.
Dain shook his head. “What do you hope to do? Find Aesa on the battlefield?”
“That would be best,” Maeve said.
“But your doubt is warranted,” Laret added. “I suppose we could watch from afar and hope to see her, but in the dark…” She shrugged.
Maeve looked to Dain. “You said you wanted to find her, too.”
He sighed. “I swore an oath to my thrain.”
“You can tell Ulfrecht that we forced you,” Laret said. “Mention the bear, and they’ll forgive you.”
Maeve gave her a dark look. She’d already admitted that she might not be able to summon the bear at will, but Dain didn’t know that and neither did Ulfrecht.
Dain frowned as if considering. “Well, I don’t know my way back, anyway, and I’d hate to be alone on this cursed island.”
“You were always getting lost as a child,” Maeve said.
He gave her a wry look. “I’ll help you find Aesa, but if I see a way to interfere with Gilka’s plans, I’ll take it.”
Maeve glanced at Laret, and both of them nodded. Aesa might agree with Dain as long as his plans for keeping the fae asleep merged with hers for freeing the fini. Either way, it wouldn’t matter until they found her.
As they started toward the flaming settlement, Laret said in Maeve’s ear, “Should we give him his sword back?”
She nodded. She’d spent enough time with him growing up to know when he was being honest, and she knew he didn’t want to hurt her. If they were attacked, he’d need some way to defend himself. Besides, he wasn’t fast enough to counter Laret’s blood magic, and if he attacked her, he might find a bear in his path. The thought brought the taste of blood back to her mouth. She didn’t think she’d ever forget it.
When they saw a glow through the trees, Laret doused the torch. Maeve followed the crackling, rushing sound of the fire until the underbrush thinned enough that she could see the flames.
If this was Gilka’s work, her newest conquest would soon be burnt to the ground, whether that was her intention or not. Even at a distance, sweat broke out on Maeve’s forehead as heat billowed over them with each stray breeze. Figures moved across fields with the light of the inferno raging behind them, lighting up the forest on all sides. Bodies lay scattered through the grass, and Maeve forced herself not to look too closely at them. They were beyond help.
She, Laret, and Dain crouched among the trees, hiding from anyone in the woods, not knowing friend from foe. “This is hopeless,” Dain said in Maeve’s ear.
Everyone between them and the fire was just a vague shape, no telling warriors from the strange guards, though Maeve had glimpsed unusually pale skin on one of those who’d fled near their hiding place. Maeve heard someone bellowing, Gilka’s voice. She strained to see and made out Gilka’s tall shape among those in the field before the fire.
“You could mingle among them,” she said to Dain. “Go and have a look.”
He balked. “They won’t know me!”
“Do you know everyone on Ulfrecht’s crews? Just stay away from Gilka.”
He frowned hard. “I’m sure everyone knows who Gilka’s newest recruits are.”
“In the dark?” Laret asked. “They don’t know yet that Ulfrecht is here. All they’ll see is that you’re one of their people. Keep your head down, your face turned away from the light.”
“Looking for my kinswoman in a flaming village held by the enemy of my thrain,” he said. “Fantastic. Just what I pictured for my future.” Before they could say anything else, he was gone, moving slowly through the trees until he could emerge onto the field. Someone called to him, and he shouted back about chasing someone who got away. The one who’d called out moved off in another direction.
“Good,” Maeve said. “They don’t care who he is, just like you said.”
“Did you have doubts?”
“Some.”
Laret chuckled. “Good thing we didn’t mention those.”
And then all they had to do was wait, but Maeve didn’t want to linger. It wouldn’t be long before Gilka’s crews moved through the area in force, chasi
ng down straggling guards and looking for wounded. When a larger group moved straight toward them, they had to retreat, Maeve trying to keep track of Dain, but it was difficult in the shifting light.
Laret swore, and Maeve turned to see her pitch into the bushes as she tripped. She came up ready to strike, but Maeve grabbed her arm.
Several robed figures clustered together on the ground. “Onslau,” one said. The others echoed him. They peered at her eagerly.
With Aesa’s descriptions in mind, Maeve knew them immediately. “It’s the fini!” She gestured for them to be quiet, and they followed her movements with alarming attention. She sank down next to them with Laret, not knowing how Gilka’s crews had missed them. Maybe they’d just ignored anyone who wasn’t a threat.
She watched them watch her, happy smiles on their lips. One took the soft sleeve of his robe and wiped her face, probably trying to clean the blood. She gently moved his hands away. Their village was on fire, their people dying, and they were trying to clean her face in the dark. Pitiable.
“We can’t stay here,” Laret said.
“We have to stay close enough to find Dain again.”
“Gilka will recognize us. We can’t blend in like he can.”
One of the fini was in his undergarments, and Maeve wondered what had happened to him. He was still smiling, seemed happy. Maeve peered toward the village, trying to find Dain, but it seemed as impossible as finding Aesa now. Just as she thought that they should wander back where they’d been, someone softly called her name.
“Here,” she said.
Dain came out of the shadows. “We have to go. Gilka is headed this way.”
As they moved off, the fini watched them curiously. If Gilka hadn’t found them yet, she was about to. Would she kill them or leave them where they were? And what would happen to them if left alone? Would they sit there until they starved?
Maeve waved them away. “Go! Shoo!”
They stood, following her gestures as if desperately seeking to understand. “Go, go!” She pushed one, and when he stumbled a few steps away, she nodded and moved them all.
“Maeve,” Dain said warningly.
“Go!” They finally started moving, looking at her over their shoulders. Maybe now they’d head to wherever they were supposed to be.
“Where now?” Dain asked.
Maeve had no answer except to move deeper into the trees where Gilka couldn’t find them.
*
It grew cooler under the branches the farther they went from the inferno. Laret breathed in the comforting scent of leaves and the pungent smell of damp underbrush. This was so much better than the fields and sparse trees they’d marched through for two days. She wondered if she’d ever have time to explore this new forest, see what plants it had to offer, instead of having to stay one step ahead of two murderous thrains while trying to find Maeve’s bondmate. Laret found herself wishing more than once that Aesa would simply bound from the trees, hug Maeve good-bye, and then disappear forever.
They’d lit their torch again, and Laret carried it at the back of their little column, wanting to keep an eye on Dain, no matter that Maeve seemed to trust him. He tripped, the third time in several minutes, and she’d heard him cough more than once in the hour or so since they left the fire. Now he began to shudder. Maybe it was fear. She hoped he hadn’t picked up some illness, but his steps fumbled until she began to overtake him. His eyes had grown red-rimmed around the edges, his color like waxy clay.
“Dain,” Laret asked, “are you all right?”
Maeve laid her palm against his forehead. “He’s got a fever.”
Laret glanced around. “I don’t even know if there are any useful plants nearby.” Maeve gave her a kindly, patronizing smile. “Or you could just heal him. You’re going to put herbalists out of work wherever you go.”
“Dain, sit down here.”
“We have to find Aesa.” His words slurred a little.
“Not if you can’t walk.” Maeve glanced at Laret. “Do you think he picked something up in the village?”
“I’ve never seen an illness come on so suddenly. He might have gotten something from someone on the ship.” The idea of a curse drifted through her mind, but who would have cursed him? Ari? Why?
Laret told herself she’d just been a curse breaker too long. But if he was cursed… “Wait a moment.”
Maeve’s eyes rolled upward, and her body jerked so hard she dove to the side. Laret slid to catch her as her legs jerked, and her arms shuddered with spasms.
“Maeve!” Laret cradled her shuddering head so it wouldn’t knock into the ground. Pink foam dribbled from her mouth as she blinked wildly. “Maeve, can you hear me?” At last she stilled, gaze vacant, her chest barely shuddering up and down.
“What happened to her?” Dain asked. Even sitting, he swayed as if drunk.
“You’re not sick. You’re cursed, and her spirit touched it. I should have gone with my instincts!”
“I’m sorry,” Dain said, looking as if he might cry. He sagged until he nearly lay by Maeve’s side. “Can I help?”
Laret gritted her teeth. She’d heard of cursing someone through someone else, but she’d never encountered such a thing. Maybe if she could break the curse in him, it would break whatever connection it had to Maeve. “Do you know where the curse entered you?”
He shook his head. “The only blood witches I know are you and Ari.”
“Anyone could have made the mark. Strip.”
Dain stared at her for a moment, but when she didn’t lose her glare, he started to remove his clothing with shaky hands.
Laret examined his body for small wounds, minute pinpricks, but found nothing. It would have to be small enough that Dain wouldn’t notice. A good blood witch wouldn’t need much to work with, but the curse was complicated enough to trap any healer who touched it. Did Ari suspect that Dain would leave with Maeve, or did she do this to all her allies? Laret shook the thought away. No time to worry about it now.
“Were you ever intimate with Ari?” Laret asked as she finished examining his legs. If the answer was yes, she’d need to look everywhere.
“Intimate?”
“Sex, you idiot. Were you ever naked around her?”
“N…no, we barely knew each other.”
“Lean your head forward.” She combed through his hair until she finally found what she was looking for behind one of his ears. “Here.”
“How did she cut behind my ear without me noticing?”
“She would have used a ruse.” An image came to her, crystal clear, the witch of Sanaan with a hornet in her palm, slapping the neck of one of her victims. “Just a little one,” she’d said. “Did it sting you, dear?”
“Was there an insect?” Laret asked.
Dain’s mouth dropped open. “A wasp, behind my ear!”
Laret’s eyes drifted shut. What could be taught to one could be taught to others. It didn’t mean that Ari had learned at the witch of Sanaan’s knee.
“She grabbed it, but it had already stung me,” Dain said.
“No, she nicked you and then showed you the dead wasp. She probably used a needle wet with her blood.” He reached behind his ear, but she batted his hand away. “I’ll need some water.”
The sky in the east had begun to lighten. Laret searched the nearby trees until she found one with a natural bowl in the wood, in the roots near the base. She only hoped it would be deep enough to hold water.
Dain kept inching toward the curse mark and then dropping his hand to his lap. Laret stared him hard in the eye. “You want to live?”
He nodded.
“Do exactly as I say.”
He nodded again, his look of terror saying he would comply with anything. Laret moved to Maeve and kissed her gently on the temple before dragging her toward the right tree. “I’m coming for you.”
She helped Dain totter over, poured some of the water from her skin into the makeshift bowl, and then made Dain lay in her lap, he
ad over the bowl. “Stay here and be still.”
She pricked her finger and let a few drops ooze into the water before she splashed him, closed her eyes, and sent her spirit into the blood, following it into Dain. The heady feeling that came with blood magic tried to envelop her, but she fought it. She focused on the way Ari’s essence tainted Dain’s blood like rot on meat, thick and murky, as if wading from a clear river into a muddy one, still water covered in scum. Laret almost didn’t know where to begin. She shepherded the taint in his blood toward the wound, the better to coax it out, but there was always more and more and more. She’d drain him dry before she cured him, and he’d die from the treatment.
True, but she’d finally experience the ecstasy of draining someone dry.
No, there had to be another way. Dimly, she felt something along the periphery of the magic, something beating against the curse, fighting to get out.
Maeve, the panic of her spirit bright and unmistakable. Laret tried to hurry, to separate the curse from the blood, but there was no beginning to it, no end. She might have to kill Dain, but what if Maeve was trapped within him as he died? Laret fought her own panic, beating back the urge to drain. She’d never dealt with a curse like this. What could she do when all the blood was infected, when the curse was so powerful? Ari had anticipated a curse breaker. She had to have known one in her past.
Or the witch of Sanaan had told her what to expect.
Laret forced herself to focus, past the bloodlust, the panic, the confusion, everything. The witch of Sanaan was far in the past, nearly a year’s journey away, and probably dead. There had to be a way to cleanse this curse without killing anyone. Laret focused on Maeve. She would have gone to the source of the sickness, his brain, and when she’d touched that, the curse had enveloped her. Laret cleansed the blood there, pushing the curse back. Maeve’s spirit ceased thrashing, watching her. Good. Dain would need her help. If she healed while Laret cleansed, they could all come through this alive.
For a moment, nothing happened. Laret slowed the flow of blood, willing Maeve to understand. Dain shuddered, and more blood flooded his system as Maeve called upon his body to replenish itself. Laret might have cried out in joy, but she couldn’t hear.
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