“What do you mean you don’t know?” Dylan cried in a distressed voice.
“She’s going to be okay,” Adrian answered with calm certainty. “She will.”
With that, Dylan became silent.
Adrian and Arisella worked quickly and quietly, save for the few instructions they gave each other, like “apply pressure on this area” and “we need gauze here.”
“That’s strange,” Arisella murmured. “I was sure she would need stitches before we cleaned the wounds, but I guess not.”
“Not deep enough,” Adrian agreed.
Not deep enough? They had seemed pretty deep to me!
My vision was beginning to clear, my awareness beginning to sharpen.
My abdomen was being bound tightly with cloth, and I coughed at the unusual pressure around my ribcage.
“There’s nothing else we can do for her,” Adrian sighed when the binding had stopped, “except wait.”
“You can give me an aspirin, actually,” I said in a shaky voice, as I rose to a more respectable sitting position.
“You shouldn’t be sitting,” Adrian began.
“I feel better already. Aspirin, please,” I motioned toward Dylan, who hastily removed the bottle of medicine from my bag and shook one tablet into my hand.
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Oh sorry,” Dylan mumbled. He shook three more into my palm, and I smiled at him graciously.
I popped the handful into my mouth and swallowed dryly. The pain was already beginning to dissipate. Could the aspirin be working this quickly?
I looked at the two dead Bloodbourn on the ground with repulsion. The reality of what I had done was just beginning to dawn on me.
“We killed them,” I stated in an empty voice.
Arisella sneered at their bodies. “We had to.”
“They had Dylan. They were asking him questions – his birth, his loyalty. His answers confused them, and they were going to kill him,” I remembered, and turned my attention worriedly toward my friend.
He looked terrible. His arms were covered in bruises, one side of his face swollen from where he had been beaten.
“They always sent the stupid ones out on pointless patrols,” Adrian muttered. “What were you thinking, attacking two trained Bloodbourn soldiers like that?” Adrian growled at me.
“They had Dylan,” I repeated.
“They almost killed you!” he practically shouted.
“They would have killed Dylan!” I shouted back. “What was I supposed to do? Watch him die?”
“Yes,” Adrian said with a straight face. “We have a responsibility to get you to the Praetus, and you alone. Dylan knew full well the moment he joined us that he was not fit for this world.”
I gaped at Adrian with incredulity. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am. If we had arrived a moment later… Dylan’s recklessness would have killed you.”
“No,” I objected. “A Bloodbourn soldier would have killed me.” I wobbled to my feet, and Adrian moved to help me, but the look I gave him was enough to tell him to keep quiet and keep his distance. “Now, I’m going back to camp, where I will sleep in my makeshift bed, content that I saved the life of my best friend. Dylan?”
Despite my refusal of Adrian’s help, I would need assistance getting back to camp. Dylan took my arm and didn’t complain when he had to support a considerable amount of my weight.
Together we hobbled back to camp without looking back.
Chapter Thirty-One
I rose stiff and sore the next morning. I had slept solely in Arisella’s undergarments, and my back burned under the bandages. They felt thick and wet on my skin, and were starting to smell a pungent odor. They would need to be changed soon, but by whom?
I couldn’t do it myself. Dylan wouldn’t know how, and asking Adrian was out of the question. That left Arisella.
I pulled myself out of my sleeping bag and grabbed my backpack. The glow of the sunrise had just begun to tint the horizon, and everyone was still asleep. I nudged the back of Arisella’s head with my foot, and she made a purring noise before opening her eyes and shifting into her normal form. At least she had remembered to wear her magic Spellbourn clothes she had found before going to sleep, so, fortunately for me, she was fully clothed.
“Your bandages need to be changed, don’t they?” Arisella surmised, as she tiredly ran her hands through her disheveled hair.
I nodded and led her outside. We sat in the middle of the street, on an out-of-place stone block jutting out of the ground.
She carefully tugged at the layer of bandages that encased my skin.
“What you did last night was really dumb,” she said curtly.
“I know,” I admitted with a scowl. She had a very disagreeable way of saying good morning. The last thing I needed was a lecture from her.
“But you don’t regret it,” she sighed.
“No.”
“I don’t think you should have done it,” she admonished. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why you did.”
I looked at her in disbelief. This last thing I expected to receive from her was understanding. But perhaps that was because I had always expected so little from her in the department of human emotion.
I winced as she peeled away the cotton that had fused to my skin.
“My brother can overreact sometimes.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Is something going on between you two?” Arisella asked me suspiciously. “You were really going at it last night.”
“No, nothing,” I assured her. “We can both be very stubborn, I guess.”
“I see…” To my relief, Arisella dropped the subject.
“Your back looks quite a bit better than it did last night. A lot better, actually. You heal very quickly.” She cleaned the wounds with a wet rag and applied fresh bandages to them before rebinding my chest. She stood up and inspected her work with satisfaction. “You’re done. You should be fine to walk today.”
“Thanks.” I slipped on the clothing I had collected the previous night. They felt stiff, like clothes that had been dipped in starch, but as long as they stayed together, I was content. I couldn’t afford to ruin another pair of clothes if I decided to change spontaneously, and I had no idea what the rest of our journey would have in store for us.
***
We had been walking for half the day when the grassy hills transitioned into another forest, this one brighter, warmer, and, much to my relief, more alive than the Black Forest. The unbelievably wide trees were a deep purple shade, extending far into the sky, where their branches housed singing bird-like creatures and scampering rodents. Tree roots as big as me jutted out of the ground, and the bark of the trees was smooth and polished, unlike anything I had ever seen before.
This was where the remaining sprites who hadn’t been cursed as wraiths had fled, Arisella told us. Like with the kelpie, she cautioned us to avoid them as well. Forest creatures weren’t meant to be trusted, she had said.
Who was meant to be trusted in this world?
It was when Dylan and I were filling our eco-friendly water bottles in a kelpie-free river (I had made sure to check first) that I noticed the table overflowing with food no more than four yards away. My stomach growled ferociously as the smell of sweet cakes and pudding drifted past my nose.
Dylan smelled it too, and when he caught sight of the unattended feast before us, I could practically see the drool spilling out of his mouth.
“I want. All of that. Inside of me,” he whispered. Before I could stop him, he took off toward the table with a mad look in his eyes.
“Dylan!” I shouted after him. He picked up a long slab of glazed meat in his bare fingers, and I slapped it out of his hand, sending it falling to the forest floor with a wet splat.
“You wasted it!” he whined.
“I don’t think we should be eating this,” I tried to reason with him. “There’s something off about finding a ful
ly made meal in the middle of a forest.”
“Hell, Amber, it’s not like we’re accepting candy from strange people in ice cream trucks. I don’t see the risk here.”
“We should ask Adrian and Arisella…”
Dylan scowled. “So Arisella can just eat all of it? Oh, don’t give me one of your judgmental looks. You’ve seen how much of our food she’s eaten.”
It was true. Arisella had eaten more than her fair share of our food, and for the past two days I couldn’t seem to get rid of the constant hollow feeling of hunger that had been gnawing at my stomach…
But no, there was definitely something strange about finding food when we needed it most.
“We’re going to go get Adrian and Arisella.” Before Dylan could say another word, I took him by the wrist and pulled him back to where Adrian and Arisella were waiting for us.
“You two took quite a while,” Adrian commented upon our arrival.
“Sorry, we were –”
“Where did Human get that?” Arisella raised a finger to Dylan’s hand, which appeared to be clutching something tightly.
A little yellow cake.
“I found it. This one’s mine,” Dylan said possessively. He must have been hungrier than I had thought.
“We found a table of food right over there. It all looks fresh, like someone was about to sit down to lunch, but no one’s around.”
“Did you eat any of it?” Adrian asked with urgency.
I shook my head.
“Good,” he sighed, more relaxed. “It’s the sprites. Anyone who eats their food can’t survive off anything else. And for that reason, they can never leave. For thousands of years, the sprites have been snaring travelers in this forest by tempting them with what they most desire.”
“So,” I said slowly. “As long as we don’t eat the food, we should be able to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Dylan, look who was right.” I turned around to smugly tell him “I told you so,” and my eyes fell on his tiny golden cake. Where a small but unmistakable bite-sized piece was missing. I widened my eyes in horror.
“You didn’t…” I whispered.
“I didn’t!” Dylan exclaimed. “It crumbled off on the way here. I was just looking at it, I swear!”
I was just looking at it. I was just looking at it. That was exactly what he used to say as a ten-year-old when he tasted desert his mother had specifically told him not to touch.
“Gods,” Arisella muttered.
“Throw up,” I ordered. “Throw up now.” I looked to Adrian. “Would that work?”
Adrian shrugged. “Maybe.”
“But I didn’t eat it!” Dylan griped.
“I don’t care. Just do it.” I pointed to a far off tree where he could do his business.
Dylan looked at me like a kicked puppy-dog, but my resolution didn’t waver.
“Fine, if it makes you feel better.” He grumpily started in the direction I had been pointing.
I tried not to listen to the retching noises that were coming from behind the tree, and in ten minutes Dylan returned, pale and damp with a sheen of sweat.
“I did it,” he said in a weak voice.
I offered him a granola bar, and he waved it away with a sick expression.
“Not now. Definitely later, but not now.”
We continued onwards, wary of any more suspicious offerings of food. I kept a closer eye on Dylan now, and we moved at a slightly slower pace so he could regain his strength. When Dylan tried to get us to join him in a hearty rendition of “One Thousand Bottles of Beer on the Wall” – yes, not ninety-nine, but one thousand – we knew we could pick up our speed without feeling sorry for him.
We traveled along the river now, moving up a barely noticeable incline. Adrian wanted to get out of the forest quickly, so we planned to walk later into the evening than usual. For that reason (but mostly for Dylan’s sake), we took a short break near some pools of clear blue springs before continuing the long walk we had ahead of us.
I discreetly detached myself from the group and busied myself with the repetitive exercise of piercing a tree with a switch blade. I needed to be alone with my thoughts for a while, and the knife made me look busy, so it didn’t seem like I had just decided to dickishly ignore everyone.
But it didn’t look like I would get the solitude I wanted.
“Your aim’s improved.” Adrian was leaning on a tree behind me, studying my movements. How long had he been there? My pulse quickened as I remembered our heated encounter two nights ago. Then I remembered how he had yelled at me the previous night, and my blood boiled.
I shrugged uncaringly.
“You’re mad,” he observed.
I shrugged again and turned to retrieve my knife.
And then he was in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. I froze instantly, startled by the speed with which he moved.
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he apologized. The look in his eyes was sincere.
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“It just makes me so upset when you do such reckless things…”
“You suck at apologies.”
Adrian’s lips quirked up.
“I’ve never had to apologize to anyone this much before.”
What was he trying to tell me? That I was easily offended? Or that he usually didn’t care how people felt?
“Does this mean we’re talking to each other again?”
Adrian ran his hand along his brow. “We should probably talk about what we did a few nights back…”
“No,” I said with hard resolution. “We should not.”
“Why not?” Did I catch a fleeting look of hurt in Adrian’s expression?
“Because I have more important things to deal with right now.” I cast a cursory glance at Dylan, which I was sure Adrian noticed. “Anyway, I don’t need you to tell me that you’re not looking for anything serious, or that it just wouldn’t work, or that it was a bad idea. I already got that. I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”
“I didn’t think it was a bad idea…” Everything I was saying seemed to be coming as a shock to him. “Is that how you feel?”
“Is that how you feel?” I countered.
“Of course not.”
Well, then. I had drastically misjudged the situation.
“I really do care about you,” Adrian continued.
I held up a hand. “Please, don’t. At least, not right now. We really do need to focus on reaching the Praetus, and if anything happened to us along the way…”
“I see.” Adrian’s face was expressionless, impossible to read.
“Until we get to the Praetus…” I trailed off awkwardly. What were we even considering here?
“I understand,” Adrian nodded.
“Thank you.” I felt like one of those girls who kept telling guys they were busy in order to avoid them. I secretly hoped that was a strictly human behavior, so Adrian wouldn’t think I was one of those girls.
I squirmed nervously under the unrelenting gaze of his blue eyes. They seemed to be staring into my soul, reading my private thoughts.
“Adrian!” Arisella’s voice cracked in the distance, and Adrian was gone.
I stumbled forward before retrieving my knife and chasing after him. Arisella was screaming into the water of one of the springs, and Adrian was restraining her by her waist.
“Mother!” she yelled into the pool. “Can’t you see her? Mother! She’s calling to us, Adrian!”
“Stop, it’s not her,” Adrian panted.
“We must go to her.” Arisella tried to dive headfirst into the water.
“No!” Adrian roared and violently drew his sister back.
“I killed her, I killed her,” Arisella sobbed. Tears slid down her cheeks and mixed with the blue water of the spring. I had never seen her this emotional before, never even seen her cry.
“What’s going on?” I inquired.
“Don’t look in the water,” Ad
rian ordered as he fought against the strain of his sister’s weight.
But it was too late.
I saw my entire family floating in the rocks at the bottom of the spring, suspended, unmoving – my mother, my father, my brother, my sister with her golden hair floating around her like snakes.
My sister opened her eyes – or what once had been her eyes. Now they were glassy blue spheres, her pupils tiny dots in her once brown irises. She curved a stiff, hooked finger at me, beckoning me to join her. I leaned my face closer to the water, my nose skimming the surface.
“Amber, take care of Dylan!” Adrian shouted, breaking the trance that had bound me to Heather.
Dylan’s hands were in the water, and he was in the process of gradually leaning the rest of his body into the pool.
“Nate,” he croaked into the water.
I knocked him backwards onto the grass, but he just got up and kept whispering his brother’s name to the water.
I cupped his hands in mine and spoke feverishly to his blank face. “It’s all an illusion, Dylan. Your brother is not here. He’s still at home, probably opening your Star Wars dolls, even though you specifically told him not to.”
For a second, I thought I saw a glimmer of understanding flicker through Dylan’s eyes. But he pulled his hands out of mine so he could reach back into the water for his brother.
“It’s the sprites,” Adrian called over his sister’s wailing. “The water shows you the people you’ve lost or left behind, the people who you won’t want to leave again.”
I looked into the water that Dylan was running through his fingers, but rather than seeing his brother, I saw my sister again. Her inhuman eyes seemed to be screaming my name, begging me to stay with her. With agony, I tore my attention away from her and diverted it to Dylan, who looked like he was getting ready to plunge into the water.
“No!” I grunted, pulling him backwards again. He deliriously clawed at my chest and arms, leaving red welts where his nails had torn at my skin. I got behind him and, grasping him by the arms, pulled him back toward the trees, far from the springs.
He writhed about madly in my arms, all the while crying incessantly for his brother. As soon as I let him go, he would crawl back to the springs, and I would just have to drag him away again. To prevent him hurting himself, I straddled his chest, pinning him down with my sheer weight. To prevent him from hurting me, I held his hands above his head with one of my own, my other hand on Dylan’s cheek as I futilely pled him to stop.
Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) Page 25