14 Eira
Eira
Eira fell through the doorframe, the nearly deadweight of a barely conscious Hugo over her back. He was definitely bleeding
all over the only cloak she had with her—bleeding because he’d been stabbed. Stabbed by whoever, whatever, the hell that thing was. The thing she’d ultimately dispatched. Did that make her a murderer?
She heaved Hugo onto the bed with a grunt and Pennyroyal immediately jumped up to him, sniffing the part of his shoulder where
he’d been injured.
“Penny,” Eira said, pushing her away. “I need to work.”
The rabbit turned and hopped, giving Eira just enough space to work.
“Sorry,” she said as she took off his leathers and tore open his shirt as quickly as she could, a handful of the buttons flying
into dusty corners of the dark room. There was little time to figure out exactly what she had to do to stop Hugo from bleeding
out.
Hugo’s now-bare chest rose shallowly, his breathing labored from the pain he was in. Eira was momentarily distracted by the dark hair and scars on his muscular torso, but shook her head and admonished herself to get back to what was important—saving his life.
The gash on his shoulder was deep and still actively bleeding. Eira could see muscle and sinew through the wound. His jaw
was already growing darker with bruising, but didn’t look broken. She needed a salve to stop the bleeding; that was first.
Cutting a piece of the shirt he’d been wearing, Eira placed it on the wound on his shoulder.
“Penny,” Eira said. “Sit on this.”
It was the best she could do for direct pressure until she could get the poultice done and tie a proper tourniquet.
“We need to go,” Hugo mumbled as Eira pulled out the potions pack she had purchased earlier in the day.
“If we go right now, you’re going to bleed out and die,” Eira retorted. Eira started tossing in everything she needed to get
this salve done: lemon balm, witch hazel, calendula—she kept adding and mixing until the herbal paste was nearly glowing,
the Flow trickling into the poultice with each smooth motion of her hand. Potion making wasn’t just mixing ingredients; it
was about who mixed them. If anyone could make an effective healing poultice, it was Eira Eckhart. She thought back to what Hugo had said,
that she wasn’t who she thought she was. That Eira Eckhart was actually Viscountess Eira Westcotte. It just . . . didn’t seem
true. But then, neither did the things that had been happening to her. The wide gap in her memory, skills she had that she
couldn’t remember learning. The vague remembrance she had had of Hugo when she met him, but couldn’t pinpoint how or where
she knew him from. There was no world where she was a viscountess in hiding . . . but it nagged at her. What if she was?
A few moments later she headed back to the bed, Pennyroyal jumping off of her perch on Hugo, her fur now lightly coated in
blood.
“Sorry, Penny,” Eira said as she lifted the makeshift bandage and started applying the paste to the open wound.
Hugo winced, a small gasp of pain leaving his lips.
“Sorry to you too,” Eira whispered to him, placing a second piece of fabric on the wound and tying it around his shoulder,
leaving the paste underneath. As she finished tying, the wound glowed slightly, pulsing with the beat of Hugo’s heart. Just
as good magic should.
Eira grabbed a washcloth, wet it with fresh water, and wiped down Pennyroyal’s fur before taking her cloak off and trying
to dab out as much of the blood as she could, silently thanking herself for buying a dark cloak instead of the light blue
one she’d been considering a few months ago.
She turned her head as she heard a grunt, seeing Hugo struggling to sit up.
“No, you don’t,” Eira said running over to him and pushing his firm chest back into a prone position. “You need to rest.”
“Eira,” he said, catching her hand in his uninjured palm. “We need to leave.”
“We can’t run with you in this state.”
“I’ve had to run in worse conditions before,” Hugo said, still holding her hand.
“You are very injured,” Eira said, shaking her head firmly. “And you need to rest so my spell work can take its full effect.”
“Eira,” he said, his hazel eyes full of concern as he looked deeply into hers. “What we fought—who we fought—she was an old friend who was still willing to harm me, and likely you too. Whatever they turned her into . . .
we can’t face another one right now.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
“Is what you said true?” Eira finally spoke.
“That we need to leave? Yes.” Hugo answered, slowly standing up through groans of pain. He was still holding her hand, and
Eira found herself wishing he wouldn’t let go.
“No, not that,” Eira said, the nails of her free hand worrying at a fraying thread on her wet cloak. “What you said about me . . . about my being a viscountess.”
“I wouldn’t lie about that, my lady.”
Eira remembered the night before, when Hugo had called her “lady.” She hadn’t thought much of it in that moment, but . . .
“If you aren’t lying to me . . . we need to get my memory back.”
“I agree. It’s of the utmost importance to find the princess and ensure her safety for what is to come,” Hugo said as he tried
pulling his cloak on. “Agh, this hurts.”
Eira stepped in front of him, taking the cloak from his hands and throwing it on the bed.
“You need a shirt first, a clean one.” She smiled softly, opening the pack he’d brought in earlier that day for a shirt before
slowly easing his bad arm into it. Eira’s face was level with Hugo’s chest, and she bit her tongue to stop herself from making
a comment about his exceptional musculature; now was not the time. After buttoning the final button she picked up the cloak
again and flicked it around Hugo’s wide shoulders before fastening the wolf’s-head-shaped clasp at his neck.
“Yes, we do need to find the princess . . . I guess,” Eira said, putting her still-damp cloak back on. “But it’s also important
for me to get my memory back. If I’m able to get my whole life’s memories back, I think I deserve that, even without having
to find the princess.”
Hugo looked at her in silence, brow furrowed.
“And if all of this is true,” Eira continued as she tried to exhale some of the stress out of her body, “which I am still
struggling to believe it is, you’re going to need to do a good job of filling in the gaps in my knowledge until we can find
a witch that can reverse this.”
He held out his good hand.
Eira took it, her hand eclipsed in his massive calloused one as he squeezed it and shook.
“You have a deal, your ladyship,” Hugo said, hand lingering.
“One more thing,” Eira said, letting go of Hugo’s hand despite the desire she felt to keep holding it. “Just call me Eira,
okay?”
Hugo chuckled and nodded. “Okay.”
Eira quickly scooped up the rest of her belongings, as well as Hugo’s pack, before urging Pennyroyal into her bag and heading
out the door.
Arthur greeted them with a whinny as they arrived at the dimly lit stables where he’d been kept for the day as Hugo slept.
He sniffed at Hugo’s shoulder, huffing as he smelled the blood and herbs.
“I can’t lift myself. I need help.” Hugo turned to Eira, quickly glancing at her and then away. “Get on and then help pull
me up.”
Was he . . . ashamed that he couldn’t get himself onto his horse?
“I also—” Eira started to say that she didn’t know how to get on a horse but felt something she could only describe as muscle
memory take over as she gripped the saddle. There was no memory in her head of her ever mounting a horse, and yet instinctively
she knew that if she swung her leg a particular way, she could lever herself onto Arthur’s saddle. So she tried, and succeeded
in mounting Arthur nearly flawlessly.
“I told you,” Hugo said with a pained grin as he held his good arm up so Eira could help him into the saddle behind her.
With significant huffing and heaving, and only minimal impact to Hugo’s shoulder, the two managed to get him seated behind
Eira, her bag carrying Pennyroyal and her herb stash strapped around him.
“Okay . . . now what?” Eira said, holding Arthur’s reins and feeling him shiver beneath her in his excitement to get going.
“We ride,” Hugo grunted.
“How?” Eira said.
“You just flawlessly jumped on the saddle—you know how.”
“I . . . I—” Eira stuttered before realizing it.
Muscle memory. That’s how she was going to access physical memories she didn’t have.
If she just stopped thinking so hard and let her body do the work it apparently remembered, maybe they could get out of here.
Eira closed her eyes and loosely held the reins, willing her body to move.
They sat for a long moment of stillness, Hugo planting his hand on her waist to steady himself. She fought back a gasp at
that. Finally, she felt the urge to dig her heels into the horse, and once she did it felt like the pieces all fell into place.
Once Arthur started moving, Eira knew how to steer and started instinctively holding the reins wrapped around her left hand.
The familiarity of it felt stranger than anything else. If Eira hadn’t believed before that something was deeply wrong with
her memory, she couldn’t refute it now. She could feel knowledge buried in her brain trying to force its way out, but unable
to. It made her feel sick; she knew that somewhere in that locked-off part of her brain was the whereabouts of a missing woman.
Eira glanced at Hugo behind her as they trotted out of town, a single question nagging at her. Hugo wanted to find the princess,
but was Hugo the right person to find out where the princess was?