Chapter 8 #3
Reis's hand was light on her skin as he slid across her rib cage. The crack beneath her skin was subtle but unmistakable. He pushed on the bone to check for movement. Mirielle looked away and gasped painfully as tears stung her eyes.
"It isn't broken." His voice was strangely uneven. "Only cracked."
He released her and Mirielle let her skirts fall. Mirielle was still panting, her heart still recovering from the pain. Mirielle could feel the question that hung silent in the air.
Who?
Reis knew it wasn't the kind of injury that happened by accident. Instead, he said something that was altogether worse.
"How long have you been pretending that didn't hurt?" His voice was quiet demand.
His mood darkened further as he watched her retreat into herself. Reis knew gravewort was a powerful painkiller, good enough to dull a sprained ankle, to clear a bad headache. Maybe good enough to take off the edge of a wound like that.
Not enough to be able to ride a horse without serious difficulty days later. Every movement would have felt like a knife. Every breath should have hurt.
And yet she had said nothing. She hadn't complained once.
Reis dragged a hand through his hair.
"Mirielle."
She still wouldn't look at him. Her eyes were stubbornly fixed on the ground.
"How long?"
A long silence followed. Finally she answered. "Since yesterday morning."
Reis dragged his hand down his face. She rode the whole day yesterday. Smiled yesterday.
"Gods."
The word escaped him before he could stop it.
"It wasn't that bad."
Reis laughed. It contained absolutely no humor. "You can barely stand."
"I can stand."
"You cried when I touched it."
Her face flushed pink and she folded into herself.
Reis stared at her. The way she fought him and then hid like a frightened animal. Like pain was just another burden, a weakness she couldn't show. It twisted something vicious in his chest.
"You should have told me." All the anger was gone from his voice.
She didn't answer, but her features seemed to relax slightly, like someone who had been waiting for a storm only to realize it never came.
Reis looked at the landscape around them. Ambersaith was close, far too close.
He walked to Maisey and pulled out a vial from one of the packs. He returned and showed it to her. "This is thimweed," he said quietly. "It's a strong painkiller, but it will also make you sleep."
Fear immediately passed her silver eyes. Fear of him.
Reis looked at the dirt to hide the pain that crossed his face.
"We can't stop." His words were laced with regret and violent promises.
Mirielle shifted on her feet. "I'm alright."
Reis felt his shoulders drop.
She was lying.
*
Reis lifted Mirielle onto Hank's back with such gentle care that she felt almost no pain. But when he started moving, she met a whole other monster.
With the gravewort completely out of her system, there was no barrier to her pain. Every hoofbeat sent a grinding ache through her side, every sway of his gait felt like a punishment, the steady rhythm finding the wound and warring at it relentlessly.
Breathing was painful. She tried to breathe deeply, but the pain was so sudden she nearly cried out.
The best she could do were shallow, breathy pants that only allowed tiny sips of air to fill her strangled chest. Each inhale came with the desperate need to breathe deeper. Each attempt only punished her.
Reis sat behind her, rigid with barely contained tension as if he were aware of an invisible danger ready to be fought.
A thousand times he considered trying to convince her to take the thimweed but every time he remembered the legends that followed him and the fear in her eyes when he had offered.
She had made a choice, a rational choice from her perspective, and he could only respect it.
By midmorning, exhaustion had hollowed her out completely. Her muscles trembled beneath his hand from the effort of remaining upright.
By midday her body was so weary from exhaustion that she slumped into his chest and fell into an itchy sleep.
*
She dreamt of a castle perched on a large craggy rock situated at the center of a deep ravine.
She stood at the front gate, peering up at its proud stone walls dusted with frost. Ice threaded through every crack and seam in stone, creeping across the fortress like silver veins.
It clung so completely to the structure that it seemed less like winter's touch and more like a permanent part of the castle itself.
Its roof was unlike anything she had ever seen. Blue like midnight over a lake. Its towers stood like stone spears piercing the starred sky.
It was surrounded by white. Soft piles of icy blankets seemed to inhabit every available surface. It buried boulders and pressed its weight on trees, bowing them to the earth. It was endless, frozen and still as if winter had warred with it centuries ago, only to forget it entirely.
A heavy iron gate sat fixed to the earth in front of Mirielle. Frost crusted over metal, tracing elegant patterns across the black. Heavy chains moved and metal ground against metal as the black gate bared its teeth.
She took a step forward and blackness swallowed her.