Chapter 9 #4
There were no marks of violence, and yet his entire body was a testament to what had destroyed him.
His skin was burned bright red, bubbled and blistered in places, but his clothes were unmarked. He lay in a pool of dried vomit, dark with blood. His hair, an unremarkable shade of brown, had come out in clumps; a tuft of it was even stuck in his fingers.
I squinted, watching as a noxious shimmer of pale green light glistened over his skin like a veil.
“Talos, more light—” I started to say, but my golem picked me up bodily and moved me back from the man, dragging me past Wroth and Marrion.
“Wait,” Marrion croaked. She fumbled at her belt for her waterskin, drinking deeply. “Here. Wait.”
She sank to the ground well away from the corpse, opening her satchel and rifling through packages wrapped in oilcloth, stitched with runes in a spiky, unfamiliar language.
When she found the one she wanted, she tore the oilcloth away, revealing a bottle full of a dark, dense syrup, and a tiny ceramic spoon.
“All of us must take a spoonful.” Her voice was tight and fearful. “This is a Fae curse. Do not touch his body.”
She dipped the tiny spoon in the syrup, and offered it to me first, to my surprise. “Perhaps Lord Wroth should—”
“You were closest to the body,” she said harshly. “Close enough to touch him. Take it now.”
I took the tiny spoon and licked it clean, now alarmed by her demeanor. The syrup, despite the small quantity I drank, was wildly bitter, making my tongue curl up on itself.
Marrion didn’t relax until all three of us had been dosed, and even then she was still wired tight.
“Jesamin, you’ll want to drink extra water. This will cleanse your body of contamination. It’ll make you very thirsty, but it’s better than vomiting out your stomach lining and shitting blood everywhere before dying.”
I nodded silently.
“Uncle, will the knights follow us through here?” Her green eyes were bright with fear.
Wroth assessed the crevasse we stood in. “Likely. For them it will be a tight fit, but it’s the closest path to the next bastion. Clearly, wherever the humans got in, it connects to this path.”
“Then I’ll leave them this with instructions.” She tucked the bottle against the wall, well out of the way of any wagon wheels, and began inscribing several large, brightly glowing sigils on the wall.
“Should fel Arron take another dose?” Wroth asked, and I didn’t think I was imagining the tension in his voice. His ears were pinned flat to his skull, and even his tail was still.
“No, she should be safe so long as she doesn’t touch him. We’ll need to find a way to remove him from the path. I don’t believe he was lying there long.” Marrion sounded distracted, and I couldn’t blame her; the sigils were crowding the wall, unmistakable for anyone with the eyes to read them.
I met Wroth’s worried gaze. “Let’s return to the cathedral. We can find something to push him aside. Or perhaps Talos could—”
“No,” Wroth interrupted, reaching out as though to brush my shoulder, but he stopped his hand abruptly.
“I’ve seen this before. The miasma is a sickness that passes to what it touches.
If your golem comes into contact with him, and touches you, even stays too close to you, you will sicken and die in the same way.
We’ll find something else that we can discard. ”
Marrion nodded, still writing distractedly as we turned, leaving Talos to watch her back.
We were almost back to the cathedral when Wroth stopped before me, his large shoulders squared.
He turned, jaw set, eyes blazing, and gripped my shoulders. “Do you feel sick? Any nausea?”
I considered the question. Yes, I did feel pretty damn nauseated, but only because I’d apparently been within a hair’s breadth of dying just like the burned, shriveled body in the tunnel.
“Only with nerves, I think,” I whispered, almost ashamed to meet his eyes. There was danger everywhere, and yet I kept failing to comprehend it.
He took a deep breath, his gaze glued to my face, squeezing me hard enough to hurt.
“You must tell me if it becomes worse,” he said, clearly struggling to keep his voice even. “If…if you feel the need to vomit, or if your head begins to hurt…you must tell me immediately.”
“I will,” I promised, but the terror now coursing through me was just as likely to cause such things.
Wroth raised his oversized hands, cupping my face, claws brushing at my hair, and I froze in place.
“Don’t you dare fucking die on me, fel Arron.” He was only inches away, those blue eyes spearing right through my soul. “Don’t you dare, when I’ve only just found you.”
I wanted to ask why my life was so important to him, outside the promise to my father; I wanted to know what he meant by ‘found me’.
Because I was protected by blood. I could not be taken by him.
But the way he stared at me as though memorizing my face, like I was the last thing he ever wanted to see…I couldn’t summon the words.
I could only promise, and do my best to give him what he wanted.