Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“WHAT HAPPENED?” RAGNHILD barked as Lyssa limped through the stone archway, supporting a semiconscious Alderic. Nadia leapt to her feet with a cry of concern, knocking over the basket of herbs beside her.
“Nothing,” Lyssa grunted, tossing their packs to the ground with a clatter.
“The idiot stayed up all night so that I could sleep.” She adjusted the drape of Alderic’s arm around her neck, gritting her teeth against the strain his weight was putting on her stitched-up back.
His head lolled, and he muttered something unintelligible. “Yeah, you regret that now, don’t you?”
His cheerful, pleased-with-himself energy had lasted for all of about two hours once they started down the mountain.
By the time they broke for a hasty lunch he was swaying on his feet, and when they finally reached the place where the horse-cart had dropped them off the day before, he had tumbled into a ditch and stayed there, buried in bracken, until Lyssa hauled him out.
She could have sworn she’d heard him snoring.
“So, he’s not hurt?” Nadia asked, eyeing him warily. “He’s just … tired?”
Alderic muttered something else and Lyssa snorted. “He says he’s heroically tired.”
“Heroically?” The witches shared a bemused glance.
“I’ll tell you after I dump him in the smithy.
” She hefted Alderic higher up on her shoulders, wincing as his arm brushed against the bandaged mermaid-bite on her neck.
Brandy circled her legs with an anxious whine, almost tripping her when she tried to move.
“Brandy, no—stay with Rags. Yes, I know you’re worried about him, but if you don’t back off, you’re going to knock us both over. Nadia, hold him, will you?”
“Brandy, come here!” the little witch called. The bullmastiff limped over to her and she took hold of his collar, her brows furrowing when she saw the wounds on his flank. “He has stitches!”
“It’s been an exciting couple of days,” Lyssa said over her shoulder, already heading in the direction of the smithy.
“All right, Al, try to actually use those shapely legs of yours, or I’m going to drop you in the dirt and leave you there.
” Considering how comfortable he’d seemed in the ditch, it wasn’t much of a threat.
“Here, let me help you with the door,” Ragnhild said, getting to her feet with a grunt and tucking her herb-collecting knife into her apron pocket. “You look sore.”
“Thanks.”
The witch waddled ahead and was holding the smithy door open by the time Lyssa got there. Together, they managed to half drag Alderic up the stairs, and Lyssa wrestled him over to her bed, dumping him unceremoniously onto it, his legs sprawling over the side.
“You’re bleeding through your shirt,” Ragnhild observed as Lyssa slid Alderic’s shoes off. His socks were pink and embroidered with white roses, because of course they were.
“Nothing the hot springs can’t fix.” She covered him with a blanket and said, “I’ll wake you in a few hours,” but he was already snoring.
He looked so different in the grip of sleep, younger and more vulnerable, and Lyssa felt a sudden fierce urge to protect him. To right the wrongs that had led to him dragging cold steel across his warm wrists, desperate for a way out.
I swear to you, I will kill it, she had told him.
It was the first time she had made that promise without thinking of her brother when she said it.
“It sounds like a lot has happened since you left us,” Rags said as they went back down the smithy stairs and out into the Wood’s unnatural summer.
Nadia and Brandy were coming up the path, the little apprentice dragging Lyssa’s and Alderic’s packs behind her, and together the four of them went into the cottage, Brandy settling in his hearth-bed with a fresh beef bone Rags found for him in the cupboard.
Lyssa recounted—briefly—what had happened at the lake, leaving out everything Alderic had told her about himself and his past. When she got to the part about him saving Brandy’s life, the bullmastiff paused his chewing long enough to bark and wag his tail, as if he wanted everyone in the room to know how he felt about it.
“He’s a good-hearted man,” Rags said, and she and Nadia exchanged a weighted glance.
“What was that?” Lyssa demanded, looking between them.
“Nothing,” Rags said innocently.
“Nothing, my ass. You’ve got a twinkle in your eye. And why are you smiling?” she accused the little apprentice.
“I’m not allowed to smile?” Nadia’s grin stretched wider.
“You never smile. Rags—”
The old witch patted Lyssa’s arm. “Oh, relax, you brute. Nadia and I talked a great deal about Alderic while you were gone. We like him, that’s all.
And it’s good for you to have a friend other than the dog.
” Brandy yowled, as if he wanted them to know how he felt about that, too.
Rags ignored him. “After what happened with Honoria, I was afraid that—”
“Al and I are not friends,” Lyssa snapped, her hackles rising at the mention of the Hound-warden’s name.
The reminder of past mistakes she had sworn never to make again.
“Lady Bright, we barely know each other. We have a common goal, and nothing more.” She flushed at the knowing smirk Nadia gave her.
“Careful, Rags,” the little apprentice teased. “She doesn’t seem to like the ‘F’ word.”
“Oh, go choke on some birdseed,” Lyssa spat.
“Deny it all you want, girl,” Ragnhild said, pointing a gnarled finger at Lyssa. “I saw that look you gave him when you tucked him in. Something has changed between the two of you.”
Lyssa batted her finger away. “Yeah, well, we can’t put too much stock in what you see these days, Rags. Your eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Here.” She dug around in her pack for the canteen and the bag containing the ash twigs, and shoved them into the old witch’s hands.
“Water and wood,” Ragnhild said, inspecting them with an approving nod. “Now we just need earth in order to complete our elemental items. Then a faerie repellant, of course, and personal concerns…”
Lyssa winced. A faerie repellant. They might have been able to gather some iron in Bellgaard, if she hadn’t been so reluctant to make Alderic feel worse than he already did in that place.
“Do you think we could get away with using ordinary iron?” she asked Rags.
“I definitely have an emotional connection to killing faeries, and I’m not about to dig up one of the victims just to get some coffin nails. ”
Ragnhild’s lips thinned. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It could work, but…”
“But the sword might not be powerful enough,” Lyssa said with a clench of worry in her stomach.
“It is likely too vague of a connection,” the old witch said with a sigh.
“But if you must go that route, then you should both gather some grave dirt—from two different victims—and contribute an extra personal concern apiece, in order to compensate. It’ll be risky, though.
” Ragnhild seemed to notice Lyssa’s expression, and asked, “What’s the matter? ”
“Extra personal concerns might be a problem,” Lyssa said. She had no idea what she could possibly use for one, and now she might need two?
“You could make each other bracelets out of your own hair,” Nadia said with a smirk. “I’ve heard that’s all the rage right now. Would a token of undying friendship help unravel the glyph, Rags?”
Lyssa clenched her teeth. “Shut your mouth before I—”
“Oh, stop it, you two,” Rags scolded.
Lyssa shouldered her pack. “I’m going to go soak in the hot springs while Al sleeps. After that, we’ll be on our way.”
“We’re having shepherd’s pie for dinner,” Ragnhild said hopefully.
“Good for you,” Lyssa replied, and stormed out of the kitchen.
The walk to the hot springs was just strenuous enough, after all she had been through over the past few days, that by the time she reached them Lyssa hadn’t thought about anything besides her aching muscles and the sharp pain of the stitches tugging at her skin.
But once she shucked off her clothes and sank down into the steaming water, Ragnhild’s voice resumed its accusations inside her head.
I saw that look you gave him when you tucked him in.
Something has changed between the two of you.
It rattled her, that the fledgling affection she felt for Alderic was so visible.
Rattled her even more that it hadn’t wilted with every mile they’d traveled down the mountain.
She kept telling herself that this feeling was temporary, confined to a particular moment in time.
That it would fade the farther they got from Bellgaard and the shadows of Alderic’s past. But to her chagrin, it had only gotten stronger the more time she spent in his company.
Lyssa didn’t need Ragnhild’s bones to foresee that it was going to become a problem.
She had already allowed it to compromise their task, choosing to spare his feelings rather than make him go into the ruins of his old summer home to find iron they could use for the sword.
And his attitude about her propensity for violence could prove problematic as well.
The last thing she needed was that frilly bastard’s voice in her head when she was fighting the Beast, warning her not to lose herself to her anger.
She had to be willing to sacrifice everything in order to kill it, even her own life.
Whatever she felt for Alderic, she had to distance herself from it, for her own good.
Had to rip it out by the roots now that the signs of infestation were becoming obvious.
It didn’t matter that he seemed to understand her in a way no one else did, despite the fact that he knew next to nothing about her.
It didn’t matter that her instinct was to cultivate the thing budding between them, to confide in him the way he had confided in her.
In fact, that instinct was proof that she could not allow these feelings to grow any further.