Chapter 29
Istarted to laugh. “Truth or dare. You can’t kill me with a bit of magic.”
Lianne tipped my head side to side. “But the fever that’s raging, that could kill you, and it is driven by magic meant for a witch to imbibe.”
I let my eyes flutter closed and hoped that my immunity would hold off long enough for this to work. “Ask your questions, witch.”
The words were so many, and when I answered her, she was right, I didn’t remember all of them. Veyyr’s name was in there somewhere. Trust.
Fear.
Trauma.
Connection.
Hope.
Things I shouldn’t say out loud because they did terrify me.
But they faded along with the fever as my immunity blessedly decided to show the fuck back up.
I felt the shift, like a cool breeze across my face, but it came from my own body, as if it pulsed through my bones outward.
Pushing back on the magic potion I’d drunk down.
“Enough!” Veyyr’s voice was the first clear thing I heard in…a surreptitious look at the light showed me a solid hour had passed. Maybe even a little more.
“I will ask her questions until the spell fades—that is the price. It is designed to ease after a full day.” She laughed then, and my thoughts now that they were less scrambled solidified over her and Ammi being more alike than they’d seemed at first.
I preferred Ammi, at least her aggression was right out there to be seen. Lianne was a sneaky one.
Veyyr snarled something under his breath, and I felt him pull on the bond, as if he could break through to me that way. I reached back for him through the connection and he stilled.
I lifted my head and took a deep breath, the air flowing from me hot, as if I’d been in a sauna. The witch’s fingertips slid off my jaw line, where they’d rested feeling as if I’d been burned. Even with the drain of whatever the fever had done, my head was clear. “I believe we are done here.”
Her rapid blinking said it all—she truly didn’t think I’d survive. Nor could she understand how I was alive. But unlike the gasp from Ammi, Lianne kept her composure.
It was my turn for a wide smile as I pushed back to my feet, my muscles and body barely responding. “You asked the wrong questions I think, or maybe you should have asked the more important ones first.”
Her eyes flicked over me, up and down and then they widened, eyebrows climbing.
“Oh, I see now. I asked the exact right questions, though I am…surprised…that Veyyr would bring a Tracker with him, I didn’t see you at first under that spell.
I would have given a different task if I’d known.
Clever, both of you.” She dipped her head toward me in a respectful way, then the same dip toward Veyyr.
Well, maybe almost respectful is more accurate.
I saluted her with two fingers off the tip of my forehead half wanting the salute to be a single finger. “We can pass now?”
“You may. But be warned,” Her eyes went beyond me, and I turned to see Veyyr standing behind me, his normally tanned skin as pale as his hair.
He had all our weapons—my falcata was in his hand and pointed at the witch.
She waved at him as if she could brush the blade away.
“You carry her truths now, Veyyr, truths she has not yet even told herself. Guard them poorly and it will kill you both. I see our deal fairly met. Though I will not wish you luck, Veyyr. Not even for your mother’s sake. ”
His jaw tensed and he nodded, even as he took what I could only call a rough step. My own legs weren’t exactly happy with me, feeling as if I’d been burning up with a true fever for weeks, not hours.
Sorrow cawed from an upper branch and swooped down, landing on my shoulder, his beak in my hair as if he were preening me. But even his weight, which wasn’t a great deal, forced me to lock my knees. “Sorrow, fly ahead.”
He took off as Veyyr got to me, then made sure to do a circle and shit on Ammi’s head as he went over her.
“Oh, that fucking bird!” Ammi screeched as she touched the watery mess sinking into her thick curls.
“He’s just an animal,” I said. “He couldn’t possibly know what he’s doing.”
Veyyr put a hand under my elbow. “Don’t antagonize them.”
“I didn’t.”
His frosty blue eyes said it all—he was unconvinced. He all but hauled me along as I fought to stay upright. “Keep walking, you must walk out of here,” he said under his breath.
I understood. Showing weakness was not going to help us—not at this point.
I waved backward.
We left the witches of the eleventh island in their forest as fast as we could without running, searching for the path to the next. Sorrow swooped back.
“Bridge!” He tried once more to land.
“No, keep watch and lead us,” I said, motioning him to go. “Can we rest a minute?” My legs felt like they were being drained and by the look of it, Veyyr was getting it too.
He held most of my weight. “No, we cannot stop. Lianne will consider everything we’ve done and our passage forfeit if you are unable to walk clear of her—that her magic is stronger than your will is enough for her to claim you, and possibly me as well.”
“Of course. And they didn’t mention that? Is that against the rules or something?” I didn’t remember any small print on the cup before I’d drunk the contents down.
“If it would gain them two slaves with our failure? No.”
That did make me stumble. “Wait, what?”
“That is the cost, if we do not complete a passage. Now keep moving.”
Anger spiked in me which was good because it gave me a burst of energy. “They could make us slaves?”
He kept his eyes on Sorrow, tracking the big bird through the treetops. “Yes. That is the challenge. Complete all the trials, or if and where you fail you can be claimed as slaves. Or sacrifices.”
“You didn’t think to mention that before we started this?” I wanted to hit him, but I couldn’t lift my fucking arm to scratch my nose, never mind break his.
“We’re almost there.”
Sorrow screeched, drawing my eyes. Ahead of us was a wide bridge with solid looking wooden planks instead of a stupid stack of stones half submerged in the ocean. For that at least I was grateful. The bridge would take us to island number twelve.
And another chance at being slaves or sacrifices apparently.
My legs started to lock, the muscles seizing. Was I healing? Sure, but even with the speed of healing, and my push back on the spell, the damage done was on a level that I felt all the way to the center of my bones.
“Veyyr,” I struggled with the next few steps.
“Just get to the bridge, I can carry you once we are on it.” He didn’t apologize, just dragged me along.
My knees buckled as my boots hit the first plank of wood. Before I dropped to the ground, Veyyr scooped me up. Easily. “We have to hurry. I think we are running out of time.”
I laid my head on his shoulder and just breathed, knowing for the moment I was safe. In the first couple of steps he took I slipped in and out of consciousness, my body slumping in his arms. I needed to sleep. Rest. “What now?” My voice was groggy even to my ears as I struggled to stay with him.
“I think Thorn has figured out where we are.”
I tensed all over, my hand unintentionally tightening at the back of his head, digging into his hair. He paused, one foot on the bridge. My adrenaline spiked and the fog lifted immediately. Sorrow hopped along beside us, the tips of his talons clicking on the wood. “Bitch!”
Before I could ask Veyyr how she’d found us—me—he went on.
“But I think we can rest on the other side. She’s not figured out yet fully…I don’t think.” He tipped his head.
“Another witch you know but won’t want to kill us?”
He shook his head. “No. A witch that you know.”
I didn’t think he meant from my current state which could only mean… “I know her from before? Before I came out of the Rift?”
“You were children together, but he has not seen you for a very long time. He might not even remember you, depending on his training.” Veyyr’s arms tightened around me, just a flex of holding and then letting go as if the second he realized he was holding onto me he tried not to.
“We can’t rest long but…he is our best chance before we face the final trial. ”
He. A male witch. I knew that there were male witches, warlocks, but this would be the first we had dealt with here.
I guess I didn’t really count Veyyr as a warlock now because his power felt more…
elemental. He felt like the Undines and the other elementals we’d run into, less like those who wielded witch magic.
I also realized in between the states of fog, that Veyyr had always known to some degree what we were going to face on this last leg of his quest. That he’d had the witches mapped out, that whether it was his training with Thorn, or his mother who had obviously given him his witch bloodline and done some work with him before her death, he knew.
And they knew him.
“And after him?”
“We face the final witch and pass the trial and…you go back to Harrison and the others.”
I took note that he didn’t say ‘we’ would go back to Harrison. But I ignored it. Maybe he assumed he would be a sacrifice, willing of course, to stay so we could take hold of the item he needed.
Idiot.
We were in the middle of the bridge, his footsteps echoing on the wood, a spray of water from the ocean kissing at the edge of the curved planks when a voice called out to us—male, very definitely male, and he sounded very close.
“Veyyr,” this warlock that I supposedly knew had a voice that I didn’t recognize. “I am surprised you’d actually dare this oath. Even for the….” There was a sharp intake of breath. “What have you brought me? A peace offering?”
Veyyr once more held me tighter. We were still on the bridge still but only one step from putting a foot on the island, and I didn’t even try to lift my head.
Not yet. “She took Lianne’s drink before I could stop her.
And she needs to rest, even for a few hours before your trial, Zane, so we can be ready for the last. Can you give us that? ”