Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Fedra was pulled from sleep gradually. Like a seed finally sprouting after being in the cold winter ground. Her eyes were still covered, but they didn’t itch as they had before. She drifted lazily, caught somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
A soft pop snapped her awake. As she lay there, she heard the faint snap of something shifting from heat, followed by the hissing of liquid. A soft whirl of wind stirred near her, causing a few strands of hair to sweep across her cheek.
She didn’t know how many were in the room with her.
There was no other movement or conversation.
A closer listen proved that Marcus wasn’t there.
Yet they wouldn’t leave her alone. Marcus was clearly suspicious of her, and that was her fault.
She had been slow to react to his questions.
Her lack of preparedness might have ruined everything.
Besides, she could only pretend to be asleep for so long.
It was better to face whatever—or whoever—was there now.
And be ready for the next round of questions.
Fedra stretched and rolled her head to the side. She yawned and reached up to touch the bandage around her eyes.
“Not yet,” someone said. Sian. “The medicine I’m brewing is nearly done. I’d like for you to leave your eyes covered until after you drink it.”
“Drink?” she repeated, appalled.
Sian issued a grunt, as if that were answer enough.
Fedra pushed herself up into a sitting position and found that she had regained enough strength to do that on her own, even if she was still a bit weak. “Can’t you put it in a pill or something?”
Sian laughed. “You sound like the children when they don’t want to take their medicine.”
“Who likes to take medicine?”
“Should I bribe you with a sweet like I do the kids?”
Fedra heard the smile in Sian’s voice, but she couldn’t manage to return it. “Perhaps if you put another bandage around my eyes. That could be enough.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Sian replied.
“I never said you were.” Fedra hated the wobble in her voice.
“What’s going on?” came a deep voice, followed by the creak of the door opening.
Fedra turned her head toward the sound of Con’s voice. He worried her a great deal. She hoped he would be the type to want her out of his city promptly, but he likely wouldn’t allow her to leave until he was satisfied with the answers she gave to his questions.
She had spent the majority of her life on her own. As long as these people let her go quickly, then there wouldn’t be a repeat of before. But first, she needed to be able to see.
“Our guest is opposed to drinking the medicine,” Sian said. “I was merely trying to calm her nerves.”
“How bad could the medicine be?” Rhi asked as she approached.
Fedra’s stomach growled when something delicious reached her nose.
Sian laughed. “Clearly, you’ve never had to take medicine.”
“We willna force you to take it. However, there might not be another way to heal your eyes,” Con said.
Fedra sensed the three were exchanging looks. Not being able to see was a real hindrance. People might be able to mask their faces, but the eyes revealed everything.
“That’s right,” Rhi said. “It’s up to you whether you drink it.”
“I came prepared with sweets, too, just in case,” Sian said.
Fedra wanted to see. Maybe her blindness was temporary and would wear off as her weakness was doing. Or her vision could be impaired forever. No matter how much she hated the taste of anything bitter, she needed to be able to see to complete her mission. That was more important than anything else.
“All right,” she agreed.
There was a bright smile in Sian’s words as she said, “Wonderful. It just needs a few more minutes to extract the remaining healing properties from the herbs. It’s better to drink it while it’s hot anyway.”
“In the meantime, how about some water?” Rhi asked from Fedra’s other side.
Something touched her fingers. She jerked her head toward Rhi as she put a glass in Fedra’s hand. She brought it to her mouth and used her other hand to bring her lips to the rim before drinking. Just like the water Marcus had given her, it tasted divine.
“I wasn’t sure what you felt up to eating. I only brought broth this time, but we can get you whatever you want,” Rhi added.
“Broth sounds good.” Fedra wanted to grab the bowl and down it, but she kept herself from trying to reach for something she couldn’t see.
The mattress sank as Rhi sat. “Allow me.”
Fedra waited as Rhi blew on the broth.
“Open up.”
Fedra parted her lips as a spoon touched them.
She let out a sigh of delight as the taste of the broth filled her mouth before the warmth slid down her throat and into her belly.
After that, she sat there with her mouth open, waiting for Rhi to feed her.
It was probably a pathetic sight, but she was so hungry she didn’t care.
“Finished,” Sian declared.
Fedra wanted to argue that she was still eating the broth, but she heard the spoon clink as Rhi put it back in the bowl. There was movement over where Sian had been. Then the obvious sound of liquid being poured into a cup. The whirl of wind had ceased, and she wondered if Sian had been doing that.
Someone took the empty glass from her hand. A moment later, Sian took her hands and placed a mug between them.
“My advice is to drink it all at once,” Sian said.
Fedra hesitated. “Is it that bitter?”
“The quicker you get it down, the better.”
“So, it is that bitter.”
“I still have some broth left,” Rhi said.
Sian added, “And I have sweets.”
Fedra brought the cup closer to her mouth and sniffed. The smell of herbs filled her nose, but it wasn’t pungent. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she’d thought it would. She couldn’t even tell how much of the medicine there was. “It’s just this one dose, right? I won’t have to drink any more.”
“It depends on how well it works,” Sian answered.
The longer she held off, the worse it would be.
Fedra took a deep breath, brought the cup to her mouth, and tilted it up.
The first taste of the herbs hit her tongue, and the bitterness spread.
She gagged but managed to swallow. Then she gulped down the rest. The minute she lowered the mug, she covered her mouth in an effort not to let it all come back up.
“Sweets or broth?” Rhi asked.
Fedra pointed in what she hoped was Sian’s direction. She took the mug and placed something small and square in Fedra’s hand. She didn’t ask what kind of sweet it was, she just put it in her mouth. She bit down into the chewy goodness that promptly erased all the bitterness.
“How long before we know if it works?” Con asked.
“It needs time to go through her body,” Sian said. “I’d give it at least a few hours, if not more.”
Rhi touched Fedra’s arm. “In the meantime, would you like the rest of the broth?”
“Please,” Fedra answered.
Once her belly was full, she shifted the pillows to recline back against them. She wanted to stand, but she wasn’t sure her legs could support her quite yet. A few more bowls of broth, and she would attempt to get on her feet.
“How are you feeling?” Con asked.
Fedra nodded. “Better than before.”
“You’re still weak,” Rhi said.
Weakness was a side effect of being in the pod, but the scientists had assured her that it would resolve quickly.
A lot depended on how long she had been in stasis.
The scientists had anticipated three to five hundred years.
Anything over that, and the experts had no idea what might happen.
She needed to see the pod to determine how long she had been inside.
“I can sit up by myself now.” Fedra smiled. “That is an improvement.”
Sian made a sound. “I wouldn’t take things too fast. Give your body a chance to adjust.”
“What kind of life did you live before?” Con asked.
It seemed like an easy question, but Fedra knew it was anything but. “I was an ordinary person, living an ordinary life.”
“Ordinary people don’t end up in a stasis pod,” Rhi said as she stood up.
Con slowly walked to the foot of the bed. “Marcus said you volunteered to be in the pod.”
“I did. As for why…because no one else would. As I explained to Marcus, I didn’t have a family or anyone counting on me. It made sense for me to do it.”
Rhi said, “It must have been a big decision. You say you didn’t have anyone, but you still had your people, your home. You left it all.”
Left? No, she hadn’t. It had been taken, stolen. Seized. “I suppose.”
“What was the reasoning for the stasis pod?” Con asked. “No one designs or uses something like that without a purpose.”
This was one question Fedra could answer without difficulty. “To ensure that my people lived on.”
“Why just one of you then? Why aren’t there others?” Sian asked.
“I assumed there were.” The lie rolled easily off her tongue. They had wanted to build more, but timing was everything. And they had run out of time. She was the last—and only—hope for her people.
Rhi said, “We’ve not found any others as of yet. Do you know where they might have put them in the city?”
“I was the first to go in. I’m sorry. I don’t know the answer to that.” Another easy question, as well as an easy lie that was very believable.
Con drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. “What kind of job did you do?”
What would they say if they knew the truth about her? They would likely find it far-fetched and ask more questions, which she would rather avoid. It was better to deliver yet another falsehood. “I worked in a store. It was easy and paid decently. Like I said, ordinary.”
“Every job counts,” Sian said. “It doesn’t matter what it is. Besides, we can be as ordinary or extraordinary as we want to be. It’s all in how you look at yourself.”
Fedra found herself smiling. She didn’t hold on to the warm feelings swirling within her, though. They would only bring pain.
“Most governing bodies would take from those closest to them who had training for such an experiment,” Con said.
She had been right to be concerned about him. He would be hard to win over. Which meant she needed to be extra careful. “I don’t know about any of that. They put out a call for volunteers, and I stepped forward.”
“What caused the plight for your people that you had to go to such extremes?” Rhi asked.
Flashes of the horrors of that day filled Fedra’s head: the screams of terror, the faces of the dead. “We went to war with an enemy we couldn’t beat. We were, in a word, annihilated.”
“I’m sorry,” Sian said in a soft voice.
She didn’t want their pity. Sympathy wouldn’t bring the dead back.
“Where did this happen?” Con asked. “Maybe there’s a chance that more of your people are on Zora, and it’s only a matter of finding them.”
Rhi sucked in a breath. “That’s right. That very thing happened to one of our friends. She thought her family had been killed, but they actually managed to stay alive.”
How could Fedra tell them that it was on another realm without giving too much away? She claimed to have lived in Iron Hall, so whatever she said would have to correlate with the place’s history. Had she backed herself into another corner already? And here she had thought she was doing so well.
“Our people hid in the city, but we were slowly eradicated. We were down to just a few hundred when I went into the pod. I hope they made it out. It would be nice to learn that they did.”