Chapter Seven Claire
Fire is the most unwieldy of celestial materials. For your safety, I give your realm the tinderfox.
—Lesson in creation magic from Diu to the Immortals
Translated from The Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des étoiles), Part I: The Book of Origins
Chapter Seven
Claire
The weakened current drags me by the coat, but I shuffle my way up the riverbank, then fall to my knees. Lucy’s soaked body threatens to slip from the shaking cradle of my arms.
My chest spasms. Bubbles pop on my lips. In a great twist of pain, I double over and vomit up water.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Air slices down my throat so sharply, I start violently coughing. All the while, the crackle of Diu’s magic skitters within my chest in blistery pops that I know from experience are healing my lungs. Steam bursts from my mouth with each cough.
Tears stream from my eyes, mucus drips from my nose, and saliva leaks from the corner of my lips. I should’ve drowned. I did drown.
Death came for me, but Diu’s curse pulled me through.
“Lucy, wake up.” I gently shake the dripping bundle of fur in my arms. “Lucy?”
At first the poor thing doesn’t react. Her closed eyelids flutter, soaked fur a dingy brown. Her little chest heaves for air, but she’s breathing. My having one arm free to support her might be the reason she’s alive right now.
I unbuckle my sopping coat and untie the strings of my bodice. Lucy is shivering and I’m not much warmer, but securing her inside my clothes to share my body heat is better than nothing. It’ll have to do for now.
“Abel?”
Smoke-muted moonlight casts the mud and rocks and red-leafed trees in gray.
Panic spurs my heart while I squint across the shoreline. Back and forth. Up and down. Mud sucks at my boots and slows my steps, precious seconds that could mean the difference between my curer’s life and death.
“Abel!”
Maybe our attackers found him. Maybe I’ll have to defend him again.
Phantom traces of that woman’s blood slick my hands and stick to my hair. I gasp cool air to steady myself. I have a plan and priorities. A curse to cure. I saved a life. I did not steal one.
“ABEL!”
Crickets chirp from somewhere in the forest. I hold my breath, desperate for a murmur, a groan, anything to signal Abel’s safety.
Only the river answers, lapping the mud.
What was I thinking, leading us to the rapids?
Not only did I endanger him and Lucy, but the journal is surely ruined, the pages soaked through.
I’ll never know his research unless he survives.
Movement behind a group of boulders catches my eye. A leather boot goes still, lingering in the freezing water.
“Abel!”
I hold Lucy close and splash through the mud to kneel at Abel’s side.
The sight steals my breath. He’s facedown, skin so pale it’s nearly blue.
I tear the pack from his shoulders and roll him over.
Heartbeat? Present. It’s frantic when I press my ear to his chest. I tip his chin back and bring my open mouth to his, passing my breath to his lungs with the resuscitation technique Papa prayed I’d never need to use.
A surprised sound catches in Abel’s throat. His shocked stare meets mine. We both sit up with a gasp.
He looks away. “I’m alive,” he pants, flicking mud off his chin. “Just finding my bearings.”
My cheeks burn as I shoot to my feet. “Good.”
“Is Lucy—” His eyes widen at the wet bundle nestled against my chest. “Give her to me.”
“She’s still breathing.”
He rips off his remaining glove. “Give her to me, Claire! She needs fire or she’s going to die.”
I loosen my bodice. Abel takes Lucy with trembling hands, leaving me to clutch my clothes against my chest. He tries to breathe warm air onto her paws, but with the chilly air, it comes out as fog. He dumps the contents of his pack in the mud.
“Collect some dead leaves,” he commands. “I need dry kindling. Pull bark off the trees if you have to. Twigs, too.”
I struggle to lace my slipping bodice. “A fire won’t catch here. It’s too wet.”
Abel stabs the ground with a dagger. “Hurry! If Lucy dies because of you—”
“How dare you! I saved your life, and this is how you treat me?”
“Claire, please! She’s all I have left.”
The waver in his outburst hushes me. I snatch his pack and duck through the trees. Once I’ve filled it, I help him bring our loose supplies to a dry space I find—a shallow indent in a stony hillside, nestled deeper within the trees.
Abel arranges stones into a circle around the kindling. He twists a stick on a slab of bark and creates sparks with ease. I shed my coat and kneel across from him while he breathes gently on the embers, holding his hands like a shield against the breeze. The flames emit a slither of smoke.
I take quick stock of my satchel. My coins and flask are safe. I dig for the soaked packet of sleep powder, worried what I’ll find when I peel it open. Please, let my sleep powder still be there. The wet paper falls apart in my hands.
Dissolved. All of it.
I take a swig from my flask. Force of habit summons the celestial events calendar to my mind. I have twenty-eight days left to find more sleep powder. Without a way to sedate myself during the next Ignition, I’m bound to be slain.
Deep breath.
The sharp red wine loosens my thoughts enough for me to pick at my plan with a fine-tooth comb.
Abel is alive. That’s a positive. We stumbled upon a massacre.
That complicates things. Murderers don’t let witnesses go.
I need a new strategy to keep Abel safe until I can coax his stance on curing dragons from his tight lips.
No quick fix comes to mind, other than somehow delaying this fraud of a hunt.
For that, I need sleep powder to keep me human through the next Ignition.
One final gulp before I shove the flask away. Months of scouring the black market for the doses I need gave me jitters I doubt I’ll ever shake.
The embers pop and flare into a full campfire.
“You’re all right, Luce,” Abel soothes, gently holding Lucy near the fire’s edge.
Her whiskers twitch. Her eyes peel open.
Weakly, she nibbles the flames. Steam rises from her coat as it dries.
Once she has her fill, Lucy struggles free from Abel’s grip and curls up beside the warm stones.
Her coat settles into a bright shade of red.
“Did she eat enough?” I drape my coat over a low tree branch, then bring more twigs to reinvigorate the fire. “Shouldn’t she turn gold?”
“Her color isn’t ideal, but she’s not in danger anymore. Just exhausted.”
“Good.” I glare at him across the crackling flames and sniff with my runny nose. “Aren’t you going to thank me for thinking to hide your pack?”
Abel moves suddenly. He digs through his pile of items and shoves the mask, sickle, moondaggers, and wad of spare clothes aside.
Our wet maps fall apart, but his focus is beyond that.
He unwraps a square of wax-treated canvas, revealing his journal.
Hurriedly, I circle the fire and peer over his shoulder as he flips through the pages.
Judging by the sound of it, the journal is mostly dry.
He rubs his face with a long, foggy sigh.
Before I can glimpse so much as a word, Abel rewraps the journal and stuffs it tightly away.
He didn’t have the waterproof skin back in Bourlin.
Purchased it before we left, did he? Hope bubbles through me.
If he went that far to protect it, that journal must contain valuable findings.
He even alluded to them when he charged into Ravinfort with his hunting gear.
I was right to take Anne-Sophie’s advice and search for him.
“Before you ran into the fire, you said you proved that dragons could transform after Ignition Day,” I say. “How?”
“Not transform. Keep their form.” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. They can’t do it without slayer intervention.”
“But you’ve intervened.”
“I did. Once. And I won’t do it again.”
I tense. “What, exactly, did you discover?”
“Nothing civilians need to concern themselves with. I’m back to work, all right? End of story.”
It isn’t the end of my story. Abel knows things that other slayers don’t. It’s all inside that journal. I’m sure of it.
I wish I had dug through his pack earlier instead of assuming the journal was ruined, but there will be other chances.
Exhaustion has me in its talons, and we should rest. So I watch while he sorts the rest of his belongings, wrinkling my nose at his dripping tent canvas and camping furs.
That’s the only bedding we have, and it’s useless for the night. Lovely.
The dropping temperature sends shivers along my skin. My sneeze makes Abel examine my hovering presence. I’m a mess—hair plastered to my face, breeches stuck to my legs, bodice clumsily laced. I look at my goose-bumped arms, only now realizing that I’m hugging myself.
“What next?” I hate how miserable I sound. “You’re the camping expert.”
He stands, gesturing for me to take his place beside Lucy. “Sit. Get warm.”
Then he sheds his dragon-scale overcoat and sets it on my shoulders.
Goose bumps double across my skin. The stiff, cold material might as well be human flesh on my shoulders; it came from another person like me. Mercifully, the lack of an absorbent fabric lining allows the scales to trap my warmth and ease my shivers within a few heartbeats.
“Are we safe?” I ask, wiping my runny nose with the neckline of my chemise. Normally I’d find that disgusting, but I’m too wet to care.
“It’s too dark to move. We’ll have to camp here for the night.”
He sounds certain of his decision, but his body language doesn’t exude confidence. His stare lingers on the sky, then skips to each treetop.
“I doubt any attackers will fly in,” I quip.
He startles, as if remembering himself. “I’m…checking for owls.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who believe owls are harbingers of bad luck just because Noctu made that constellation look like one.”
“My luck doesn’t disprove that theory,” he mumbles.