12. Chapter 12
Isla watched Vaelin’s retreating figure until he was out of sight, forcing herself to relax her hands, her nails leaving half moons imprints where they had dug into her upper arms. She blew out a frustrated breath.
What kind of healer would leave them to suffer, to die, when there may be a cure?
Whether he knew it or not, he had struck a nerve. Isla gritted her teeth and turned back to her workbench, carefully gathering her herbs and remedies and placing them into her satchel, ignoring the slight shake of her hands as she did so.
Ducking beneath a low hanging branch of the willow, she pushed open the door to her home, eyes snagging briefly on her father’s boots, still awaiting his return on the front step. Neither she nor Cael had the heart to move them.
Kicking off her shoes, her eyes landed on her brother stretched out on the couch, a leather-bound book in hand.
“Are you… reading?” she asked, her brows pulling together.
He looked up, a lopsided grin sliding across his face, “Shocking, I know.”
“I didn’t mean—”
But he waved her off, setting aside the book as he sat up. He cocked his head to the side, grin slipping slightly. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Isla dropped her eyes, setting her satchel on the bench by the door.
“Liar,” he stated, eyes narrowing. Isla sighed, and Cael frowned, scoffing as he stood. “Let me guess. It doesn’t concern me.”
Isla opened her mouth to agree with him, but paused.
As if suddenly struck with the realization, she blinked at his high cheekbones, finding no trace of boyish softness remaining in his face.
He was tall - taller than her - and lean, but there was muscle carved throughout his shoulders and crossed arms that she hadn’t noticed before.
Their recent argument clanged through her mind. I’m not a child.
“Sit,” she gestured to the couch. He did so, eyebrows creeping up with surprise.
And then she told him all of it. When she had finished, Cael sat staring at the worn floorboards of the old cottage, his brow knitted in concentration. Then he raised his eyes to hers, lips curving into a small smile.
“So, when do you leave?”
Isla blinked. “What?”
“I’ll go with you, so you don’t have to do it alone.
I’ve never even been outside of Terravern.
” He was standing now, pacing restlessly as he dragged both hands through his messy mop of curls.
He turned, pointing a finger at her. “Neither have you, right?
Except for the few times you went to the Market with Mother. "
"Cael-" Isla began, but she might as well have been talking to an empty room as he ploughed on.
“But neither of us have ever seen the sands. I’ve read the ruins are a sight, let alone the Library, and The City itself. And it’ll be good to see Lyra, of course.” The words poured out of him, the excitement that shone in his eyes making him look childlike again.
“Cael,” Isla said sharply, and he turned, as though surprised to find her there. “I’m not going anywhere," she clarified.
His face fell, features melting into confusion.
“What do you mean? You have to go.”
“No, I don’t."
“What are you talking about? You said it yourself — half the village is sick now. Is it that you don't want me to go?" He tore a hand through his hair again, an act of irritability this time. "Gods, Isla. Fine, I’ll stay here and babysit Gran. But you have to go.”
Isla sighed, impatience gnawing at her. "I can't just drop everything and leave to follow a man I just met across the continent. If he needs a healer, there are plenty of others in Terravern, and Vaelora for that matter."
“But you said he saw you in his vision."
Isla waved a hand dismissively, as she stood and crossed the room. "He thinks he did. I’m sure he was mistaken," she said over her shoulder.
“Isla, come on," Cael pressed, following her into the kitchen like a child grasping at his mother's apron strings. “You’ve always been a weirdly gifted healer. Maybe this is why. What if you really are the key to finding the cure to this? You could be a hero!”
She offered him a small, sad smile as she reached for a mug. “I don’t want to be a hero. There are people - here - who need me."
Cael glared at her, his hazel eyes flashing angrily, "So you're just going to let everyone die?”
The accusation slid between her ribs like a blade. She set the mug down on the counter sharply, and it met the countertop with a dull clang. Her grip tightened along with her frustration as she grappled with his naiveté.
"You think this all sounds like some great adventure - travelling the continent with a mysterious fae warrior and finding the answers that may save the world. That's a pretty story, Cael, but the reality is a bit different," she said.
“I don’t believe this…” he scoffed under his breath, shaking his head.
Isla flushed, anger searing the back of her neck as she glared at her brother.
“Vaelin wants me to travel to Dunovar — now — not when the shuttle is available in a few months. That means crossing the sands on foot. And that’s only after we’ve made our way across the majority of Terravern and through the Pass.
Exactly how long do you think that will take, Cael?
How comfortable do you think that journey might be?
We’re not talking a few easy days, here.
This is weeks of hard travel — one-way — with a fae I met five minutes ago who has no reason to care if I live or die.
And the best part is that there’s no guarantee at the end of all of this.
Assuming we manage to make it to The City, we could find out that they know nothing more than we do.
Or worse - we could find it decimated by the illness,” she bit back the bile that rose in her throat at the thought of her sister and barrelled on, “and then, I could return weeks later with nothing to show for it, and everyone I love dead anyway,” the finality of her words rang violently through the air and she swallowed, softening her tone.
“At least here, I know I can make a difference.”
He had paled slightly, at the bluntness of her words.
At the truth of them. But she could see that thread of anger still woven through his expression, in the stubborn set of his jaw, the tension in his brow.
The silence between them stretched, Isla’s knuckles turning white as she gripped her mug as though it might help her stand her ground.
Finally he released a sharp scoff, turning sharply on his heel for the door, his final mutter carving its way across the room and into her heart.
“Coward.”
And then he was gone, the front door of the cottage slamming shut behind him, leaving Isla to drown in the silence of the empty cottage as the first glow of sunset shone through the windows.
She’d stood there for a time. Five minutes. Ten. Allowing the tears to slip freely over her cheeks only because she knew no one was there to witness it. Then, she had taken a shaky breath and shouldered her satchel, now brimming with prepared remedies, and stepped out of the cottage.
Squinting against the orange glow of the sunset, Isla made her way through the winding village streets, conflicting emotions warring within her: anger, frustration, shame, guilt…
she felt like she might drown in them. She knew Cael hadn’t meant to fling a dagger into her heart but he’d met his mark all the same.
Was she a coward? She had no desire to leave Rowanmere, to leave her people, what was left of her family, but…
was it truly her responsibilities that held her back, or was it fear?
Her parents had heeded the call of the fae, and had never returned.
Was she truly worried about what would happen to others were she to fail, or was she simply wary of meeting the same fate?
That was a normal, human response, wasn’t it? To fear death?
She crested the slight hill that led to Larissa’s cottage, knocking on the oak door lightly. It swung wide before her fist had met the wood a third time. Larissa’s husband stood in the threshold, wide-eyed.
“Oh, Isla,” he said, glancing over her shoulder quickly. “I thought you might be Larissa.”
“Is she not home? I told her I’d bring over some extra supplies—” Isla broke off as he shook his head, rubbing a hand over his grey beard.
“She got called to the Brewers’,” he looked at Isla with such a heavy sadness that her heart nearly stopped altogether.
She knew what he was going to say, and it wouldn’t be the first time she had faced the worst part of the healing trade.
And yet, her blood cooled to ice in her veins as he said, “It’s Neve… ”
She ran.
As the last of the daylight slipped away, darkness fell over the village and Isla clutched her satchel to her chest to protect the glassware nestled inside, the scant remedies she’d managed to scrape together knocking together.
She had worked her fingers near to the bone that afternoon chopping, bundling, muddling, but she barely noticed her broken nails and stiff fingers.
It was to help her patients, after all. That’s all she’d ever wanted to do. Help. Heal.
Neve.
Her throat tightened, dread settling into her skin, her bones, her soul as she sprinted down the earthen streets.
She turned the corner, the cottage just ahead, and a wail cleaved the earth.
Isla skidded to a halt, her hands trembling as Vera’s keening cries flew through the windows of the once-warm home, splitting the air. She was too late.
The world seemed to slow. Isla found herself walking toward the cottage, pushing the door open, and following the sounds of anguish to the little back bedroom, as if in a daze.
She felt as though she’d shifted outside of her own body as she stepped into the room.
Sound ebbed away, muffled, leaving nothing but her own heartbeat thrumming loudly in her ears.
The edges of her vision darkened as she took in the scene before her.
Vera was on her knees at Neve’s bedside, screaming and clawing at the quilts tucked around her daughter’s body.
Gerard’s arms encircled Vera as if he might hold the broken pieces of his wife together, shaking with silent sobs of his own.
Isla looked to Larissa, who stood sombre at the foot of the bed.
The lines painted across the older woman’s face seemed deeper than Isla remembered in the flickering light of the lanterns, heavy with tension and anguish.
She met Isla’s gaze and shook her head mournfully.
Isla’s eyes slid to the small form on the bed.
Isla had seen death before. It was inevitable in her line of work, of course.
But seeing Neve, lifeless and grey in her childhood bed carved a piece from Isla she feared she might never get back.
Her brown eyes stared blankly, dull and unseeing.
The fever had robbed the girl of her life in more ways than one.
Her skin was wan and grey, cheeks slightly hollowed and hair limp and dull.
In fact, if Isla had not treated Neve herself, she would have thought the girl had been sick for much longer.
Isla mumbled a heartfelt apology, as she stumbled back a step, feeling as though the air had been snatched from her lungs.
An image of Leona beaming with wonder at her new baby rose in her mind, unbidden, as she watched Vera press shaking hands to Neve’s lifeless cheeks, gasping for air between the sobs that racked her body.
Isla stepped out of the room, trailing a hand along the wall as she walked to the front of the cottage.
She turned at the sound of footsteps, to see that Larissa had followed her.
Isla shook her head helplessly, at a loss for words.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying.
If she started, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop.
Larissa pulled Isla into an embrace, her voice both commanding and gentle as she murmured into Isla’s hair, “This was not your fault. You did everything right. Now we know — the illness is fatal. There is little more we can do than treat the symptoms and keep them comfortable in their last days.”
Flashes of villagers clanged through Isla’s mind like discordant notes. Half the town is sick, she had told Oren earlier today. And he had agreed - sick with an illness you cannot cure.
Unless… you can.