Chapter 4 #2
When I don’t disagree, she reaches over to take my free hand, my fearful worry blatant. She gives me a squeeze before letting go, and finally exhales the rest of her outrage. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, gentler this time. “I really need to work on keeping my mouth shut.”
A tapered laugh escapes me, softening my nerves. “You always say that.”
“Yes, well. I’ll keep reminding myself to work on it. At some point. In the near future.”
I snort. “Maybe some of that mob got to Lord Havlon?” I offer encouragingly.
She passes me a rare smile. “Fortune from the Fates if they did.”
The blocked street is guarded at the opposite end too, and we pass by without a word, under the watchful eye of patrol. Once we turn off the road, there are no more blockades, so there are people around. People eyeing our water as we go.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath, cursing myself for my stupidity. I grab my aunt again, pulling us into an alley behind a pile of half-burned Flies that’ve been left to shrivel. I set my jar on the ground and yank off my veillet.
“What are you doing?” Aunt Lenna asks.
My long hair tumbles down, my horns peeking out from the top of my head.
Aunt Lenna pauses. “Esti . . .”
“We need to try and hide the jars.”
I take hers and wrap it in the fabric of my hair veil and then pass it back.
Since she wears no veillet, I have to make do to obscure my own ration.
I yank off the bodice cinched over my tunic.
It’s leather and worn, with simple ties down the front.
I wrap it around the jar and heft it back into my arms.
Not perfect, but at least it’s not blatantly obvious that we’re carrying water.
“Let’s hurry.”
With a sharp nod, Aunt Lenna leads the way, and this time, she takes us farther to the outskirts of the city, where there are fewer people.
All the buildings are stained from the Poisoned rain, rooftops looking like they’re coated in tar, the plaster and lumber all inked up.
Overhead, the sky is painted with pestilence from the pollution’s gush.
When we come upon the very edge of the city, I see the river curling around the land.
The water is as black as night, unsettling in its surge.
It gushes and flows, while dead fish float upon the surface like silvery boils, bloated and ready to pop.
Disintegrating boats teeter on the water, the Poison eating through the wood, bites taken out of them and swallowed beneath the surface.
The smell of the dead fish is so strong it makes me gag.
“And that idiot Havlon thinks he can simply dam it up?” Aunt Lenna fumes.
She’s breathing hard, ignoring the sweat gathered at her scowl.
“With what workers? With what materials strong enough to combat Poison? We’ll all be dead before we can be rid of the foul water.
How would he even get the riverbed cleared?
He’s speaking and not saying anything. Nothing of sense.
And now, the one food source we still had has gone belly-up! ” she cries, gesturing to the fish.
No water. No food.
Trapped.
The Poison rain must have spread incredibly far for the river to still flow pure black, without end in sight. And she’s right; even if it does start to clear or we manage to dam it up, the riverbed itself is tainted.
Worry congeals in my gut. “Maybe there will be free water tomorrow for us to collect?” I say hopefully, but even I can’t keep the doubt from my tone.
She glances at the sky. “Best we pray for rain, my girl.”
If only the Fates would listen.
We turn and head up another street, but just as we do, two men slip out from behind a building, stopping us short. One of them has bright blue eyes that he levels on my uncovered horns. “Look what the Poison spat out.”
I go rigid. The energy rolling off them sets alarm bells pealing in my head.
The other fae man has ginger hair and reddened cheeks, and he looks pointedly at what I’m clutching. “Hmm. What do you have there?”
My hands tighten over the jar.
“None of your business,” Aunt Lenna declares, her back drawn up straight. “Now, please move aside.” She tries to bowl right through them, but Ginger Hair reaches forward and rips off the veillet, revealing the jar in her arms.
He whistles. “Look at that. You got water?”
“Vinegar,” she shoots back.
“Yeah? Open it up and lemme take a sniff.” Her jaw locks into place, and he laughs. “That’s what I thought.”
Fear thumps through my bones as Blue Eyes starts to circle us. His lips are chapped, pants dirty at the hems, and cruelty shines through his face.
“Seems unfair that you both have a jar. Especially you,” he says, gesturing to me. “I think we’ll take it off your hands.”
My panic turns weighted, heaving onto me as I watch the two men close in on us. If we lose this water, we’re as good as dead.
Aunt Lenna opens her mouth, and I just know she’s going to say something combative, so I cut in before she can. “They’re handing them out,” I blurt.
Blue Eyes stops in front of me again. His gaze narrows, dropping from the top of my head to clash with mine.
His stars flash to life at the corner of his nose. Flighty. Shouldn’t be backed into a corner. Opportunistic.
Yeah, no kidding.
I’m exposed, my hair veillet in a useless heap on the ground, and I have this scheming bastard ready to rip away our only hope at survival.
I have to fight to keep the fear from my expression, and my tone without the anger that’s currently building. “If you hurry, you can go get yours from city patrol. They’re giving them away right now.”
He looks dubious, but my aunt nods. “It’s true. You’ll want to get your share.”
“Or I could just take yours,” he counters. The look he sends me is mean. Flat. “You shouldn’t even get one, should you, fiend?”
My muscles tense with outrage. “I have pointed ears, same as you,” I reply shakily.
“Yeah, but you have something else pointed—something all of us untainted fae don’t have, isn’t that right?” he says, looking at my horns. “I think we still have Plagues because of your filthy Bane blood; what do you say to that?”
“That’s not true.”
This argument is completely useless with people like him, but it’s a knee-jerk reaction.
“I think it is.”
He takes a step closer, and I instinctively back up, panic jolting me. But then something over his shoulder catches my eye. People approaching—four men, one woman.
The fae at the head of the group comes over, and his gaze casts critically between me and Blue Eyes. When I realize who it is, my heart twists in recognition. In relief.
And in hurt.
Theodwin.