Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The water soothed some of the burn, but it didn’t stop the poison.
But the stream meant I was close to where I was supposed to be. If Dorian was here, he would find the solacebloom. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t stop until he’d found it.
I followed the river along its left bank. The sun drew lower, slanting longer, and my face grew tighter and more swollen. I tried not to think about either fact, only to keep my feet moving toward the falls and to keep my eyes searching for the small flower I needed to counteract the poison.
I saw neither—not the falls, nor the flower.
Shadows crowded in around me, along with the croaking of nighttime creatures.
I didn’t know what they were called, only that they congregated around the water and made a throaty noise I found innocuous.
What would it be like to die here along this river?
Not the worst death, listening to clean water flowing by my head.
But the poison was already swelling my airways. That part would be fucking unpleasant.
My feet kept moving whether I willed them or not. My hand once again went to the breast of my jerkin, over my mother’s journal, as if it were a lodestone. Maybe it was she who brought me along to the falls. I’d felt like I could drop for hours, but I hadn’t.
Maybe it was her who brought me along to the falls, finally. For hours it had felt like I could drop at any moment, but I hadn’t.
Virellan Falls began as a low, almost inaudible hum. But it soon grew, and I moved faster as I recognized what the sound meant. Eventually the river widened into a huge pool, and the crashing of the water over the rocks above me was a violent, terrific sight in the almost-darkness.
It drowned out all other noise. It blotted out everything else from my vision.
I’d arrived. Somehow, I’d gotten here.
The path behind the falls was past a thicket, just as Dorian had said. This bush had soft leaves that tickled me as I pressed past it, and then my boots tapped on rock.
All at once, I was encased by darkness behind the waterfall.
I brought out the small purple crystal from my belt. Its light grew, painting the space in a trembling glow, revealing an empty cave. No Dorian. Just me, my strawhole breathing audible in my ears past the thundering of the waterfall.
A thought came, unwilling:
This is it. The place I die.
Then, a return panic. A desperation so human and natural that my hand rose to my throat like I could scratch the poison out with my fingernails.
My eyes traveled the cave floor, darted place to place.
Something small and white caught my eye. I lifted my shaking hand and the crystal toward the crevice where the cave’s wall met the earth at its mouth.
There, tucked like small offerings in the dark, were three heads of a flower. White petals, yellow faces. Solacebloom.
I sat against the cave’s wall and carefully used the pommel of my sword to crush up the blooms I’d gathered into my palm. It was no doubt the worst mortar and pestle to grace this court, but I was breathing loudly now, my throat feeling more and more the width of a blade of grass.
Once the blooms were a mash, I shoved half of them into my mouth and chewed. I struggled to swallow, so I swigged at my canteen and, with eyes pressed shut, spent half a minute working them down my throat. I choked and coughed and spat them up, then stuffed them back in my mouth again.
Three times I did that, until some went down.
I spread the rest of the mash over my face. It was an indelicate, desperate job, and I wasn’t sure at first if it made any difference. My face went on throbbing, my breathing hoarse beneath the thundering of the falls.
When I had done all I could and there was nothing left but for the antidote to work, I sat back with my head against the cave wall and the crystal lay beside me, casting its purple glow. My breathing remained audible and difficult, and I fought to stay awake.
I had to wait for him. I had to stay awake.
My eyes fell shut, anyway, and my mind wandered on its own. It wandered back through the forest, the long trek, the manic run. It retraced the steps we’d taken through that tunnel and brought me back into that cottage.
Once again, I was seated on that low chair with Dorian standing above me. This time, his hand passed over my cheek, fingers threading into my hair, and he took hold of my head and urged my face up.
A dream. An urge I hadn’t acknowledged.
Now it rose up. It rose up, and he descended.
His lips came over mine, hot and claiming, and his arm went around me and he pulled me up from the chair, pressed me tight against his body. My arm went around his neck, and his tongue slid past my lips.
Fuck, why was I thinking of this? Here, dying in this cold, dark place, my brain was seeking something. Something soft, warm, alive. That was how far gone I was.
I forced my mind elsewhere.
Back to the southern district, where I’d climbed the wall as a girl just to see what was on the other side. By night I arrived at the top and peered between two battlements and I saw nothing, nothing at all. It was darkness and the firelight babbling beside me.
I remembered the night Elisabet’s parents disappeared. The return of the guard, the great doors opening and a mournful horn blowing. How I’d watched from high up, peeped their torches, wondered who the horn blew for.
The next day, and every day after that, her brown eyes were faraway. Like a part of her had disappeared, too.
The day Theo and my almost-father took me to the great spire in the southern district.
We sat against the hot white pillar and we split a round of wheaten bread and drank stickleg—“It’ll make your legs go stiff before you’re done drinking it,” Aldric said when I’d taken my first sip and coughed it all over the dirt.
Theo’s red hair glinted, his teeth white as he laughed with his head tilted back against the spire.
How high it went, straight into the sky.
I remembered being in my mother’s arms. Sometimes she still held me as she had done when I was very small, her hand stroking through my hair, and there was nothing better in the world. No memory—not even the day it rained without acid—could outweigh the comfort of her hands.
And then I thought of nothing at all.
Voices sounded beneath the thundering falls. At first I thought I dreamed them, imagined them in my dying haze, but then something cold and hard touched my throat.
“She’s dead.”
“Not quite.”
I opened my eyes, slow and crusted. I must have dropped to my side; now I lay in the fetal position on the cave floor. In the crystal’s faint light, a face hovered above me.
Faun’s partner, holding a sword to my throat.
Behind him, Faun’s slender, cross-armed form stood just in front of the crashing water.
“See,” Faun said. “That one resists death.”
“It would only take a poke.” The sword’s tip was set over my carotid. I should have been terrified; instead, after hours of delirium, I couldn’t bring myself to feel more than discomfort.
“We’re Sylvanwild, not Noctere.” She lifted her chin. “Stand up, pettifey.”
I considered whether I could stand. My breathing, I realized, was no longer audible in my ears. My throat didn’t sound like an instrument. I breathed deep, long, sharp.
The solacebloom had worked.
I got my hand under me and with slow effort pushed myself up to a seat. My vision was still partially obstructed in one eye, my face warm and puffy, but it no longer burned.
“Tethryn,” Faun’s partner breathed. “What happened to your fucking face?”
“Where’s Dorian?” Faun said to me.
I only stared up at her. I didn’t otherwise move.
If she thought I would tell her where Dorian was, she had entirely the wrong impression of me. I hoped he was safe somewhere, warm, that he had some comfort tonight. I hoped he was far from here.
Faun understood. Her lips thinned, and she nodded to my sword at my hip. “Rise, and draw.”
“Faun—” her partner said, his sword still at my throat.
“It won’t be two versus one,” she snapped, her hands falling loose at her sides. “And we won’t kill her while she’s not on her feet.”
I pulled my legs under me and set my hands on the ground. I rose, swaying. My eyes fell on the red feathers on the arrows rising over Faun’s shoulder from her quiver. “It was you,” I said, voice hoarse. “Your arrows.”
She didn’t answer, which was my answer. They had followed me, tracked me to this place. But now I knew they hadn’t found Dorian.
I didn’t move to take up my sword. “We don’t have to kill each other.”
Faun’s partner snorted.
She didn’t so much as smile; her eyes were twin gems on me. “Trust me,” she said, “this is better than what you’d receive from the Wild Hunt.”
I did trust that. And I’d rather die fighting Faun than by a poke to the throat from her fucking partner.
My hand went over the grip of my short sword, and I drew.
Faun drew her own sword, a slender rapier. We were of similar height and build, and I saw immediately in the way her rapier’s point touched the ground and the sidelong stance she took that she was more than capable.
She was probably better than me. And she had two good eyes.
“Tell me,” she said, unmoving. “In your kingdom, do they spin tales of our evilness?”
I stood with my sword raised, uncomprehending. Adrenaline had seeped into my limbs, and I was ready to fight and die. I stared at her and finally said, “Yes.”
A small smile appeared on her face. It was tinged with an emotion I couldn’t read—but it almost looked like pain. “Of course they do.”
Then she struck.
Her sword flashed in the crystal’s light, singing through the air toward me. I barely managed to block, and her blade slid down mine before she stepped forward and brought it up in an arc toward my head.
I blocked again and ducked, sidestepping.
Her blade followed like a wasp, angry and unable to be put off.
I parried, backstepping toward the cave’s mouth.
She swung, I blocked—and she was already swinging again.
Defense, defense, defense. Not one opening for me, her whippet-thin arm moving so fast it blurred.
Her eyes were wide, luminous in the purple light.
Where had she learned to fight like this?
A servant. A floor-scrubber.
But she’s Sylvanwild. They’re all like that.
Ruthless, unyielding, wielding death like a birthright.
She swung hard, the clang ringing in my ears when our swords met. I could not help but respect these fae, this court. Another swing. Another, distracting me with a sweep I had to leap away from. Then—
She swung the blade up with a whistle and sliced my cheek.
Pain bloomed there, and the warmth of blood seeping out of my already swollen face.
Her partner blew out a breath from where he stood, but Faun’s face remained serious. She took no pleasure in this. And she meant every swing, every thrust.
I had to win, or I would die.
Now. Now was all I had.
Dorian’s voice entered my head, harsh and sharp. Every day we’d arrived at one endpoint in our sparring, our time spent clashing in the citadel. It was the moment I had to wait for:
Other hand.
She struck again, and this time I thrust her blade aside and lunged forward. I tossed my sword to the opposite hand and struck at her. My sword cut through her leather jerkin at her waist, and she let out a cry.
I had cut her. The pettifey had cut a Sylvanwild fae.
Even I couldn’t believe it.
Now her eyes were wide and wild, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to use that trick on her again. She moved faster, more whiplike. She came at me again and again, and all I could focus on was blocking and parrying and keeping the point of her blade from skewering me through the breast.
She was twice as skillful with a blade. She was better than me on my best day.
But I was a daughter of scorn. We were never down until we were dead.
I waited, backstepping and blocking. I waited for just the right strike to come. When it did, I allowed it. The tip of her blade went into my shoulder, and I only half muffled the cry that escaped through gritted teeth. The pain was like lightning through my left arm. And yet I had no choice.
I reached out with that arm—fuck, it felt like setting my blunt knife straight to my own nerves—and a cry grated its way out of my throat. But this was it; I couldn’t stop moving.
I grabbed the strap of her shoulder quiver and yanked her toward me. The blade in my right hand came up to her throat.
I had her. I godsdamn had her—
A howl cut through the trees. It pierced the pounding of the waterfall like a knife through ice. It echoed toward the back wall of the cave and caromed back at us.
Fear. This spot stank with it.