41. Chapter 41 #2
“I think I’m in love with him,” I said numbly, staring off into the garden where her lovelace was flourishing, and it didn’t occur to me to specify the who.
“It’s only been a couple hours since he’s been gone and I miss him so much it hurts.
All I wanted for so long was to get rid of him, but now I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to have him back. ”
The secret floated off into the wood surrounding her property. Unburdening myself didn’t soothe the ache of Remy’s absence.
Blathilde said nothing for a moment, but I felt her eyes on me, her strangely comforting presence. She asked for no specifics. I doubted she needed any.
“It’s hard to be alone with yourself,” she finally said, her wizened old hand in my hair.
She brought me inside, plied me with water and some crusty bread, scrambled a few eggs in a skillet over the hearth.
“Serich dragged himself up to my door just last night. Said you’d been separated.
I had him do a few things for me around this old place before he fell asleep right where you’re sitting now, and in the morning he left. ”
“I have to go after him,” I said, as she dumped the eggs on a plate for me.
“I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be going after anyone.
” She slid over the plate and wedged herself into the chair across from me.
“I gave him a cloaking draught; it should last him a while. He caught me at just the right time. Only the night before did the silverseeds mature, so I mixed it up for him and then off he went. Back to the village, he said. Between the draught and the alcerin I’m sure he’ll be fine. ”
“Cloaking,” I echoed dully. “What’s that? Will it make him invisible?”
“No, it’s not that strong. But it will help him blend in, and it’ll mask his smell. I’ve used it myself back when I still ventured out to hunt rabbits.”
“Was he hurt?” I couldn’t touch the eggs, didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry.
“Just tired and shaken. Needed a good, safe night’s sleep more than anything.”
“There was this awful mist.” I sniffed back a sudden onset of tears in a hasty gulp. “I don’t know what it showed him, but I only made it through it because of Remy, the—the demon, his name, it’s Remy—and I waited, but Serich never emerged.”
“He told me about it. Said it spat him out what felt like days later, only when he broke free it was on the wrong side, back in the gold place. Apparently didn’t trust himself to make it through the mist again. Thought he’d been in it too long and that you’d gone.”
“What did he see in there, did he tell you?” What had it shown him that had been so terrible he couldn’t break free for ages?
“Something about his father. Said he found himself back by his sickbed, plagued with guilt because he’d known his father had needed a healer, but the stubborn old goat refused to call one.
When he finally got up from his father’s bedside to leave the room, the mist must have decided he’d failed the test, so back he came.
” Her hands found her creaky knees. There was an impatient glitter in her black eyes as she looked at me from across her little table.
“Eat. Incubus blood on an empty stomach. I’ve never heard such a bad idea in all my life. Eat, girl.”
I did while she puttered about, tsking my idiocy and straightening her home.
I don’t remember if I finished the plate she’d given me.
I don’t remember what we talked about, if we even did.
There were many things I could have told her but I felt capable of articulating exactly none of them.
The last thing I remember seeing was her cheerfully crackling fire, which had reminded me forcibly of Finn, before darkness closed up over my head.
The icy black hours of deepest night pressed against her cottage windows when I woke with a squally stomach and a horrific taste in my mouth.
Blathilde’s ever-present fire from the hearth painted the walls in a sunset palette of yellow and orange, and her snores rumbled from the corner where her bed stood.
Too dark to set out, though I doubted I could manage to fall back asleep as I lay back down on the bench.
The last time I’d been here, awake in the night, it was Remy’s voice that spoke to me, kept me company.
Was it right here in this cottage that I’d begun to change my mind about him, see him as something not wholly evil? Had I ever thought of him as such?
Would something in me recognize him immediately, should we ever meet?
He would be pale, I knew that from the memory he’d shown me of his father’s death, the white hands I’d seen opening the gates of Hell.
All his brothers, the ones I’d met anyway, had dark hair; he probably would as well.
Tall, I knew that from the size of his clothes, but the face, the eyes…
I had no idea. I should have asked. It would have felt silly to question him about it, but I should have.
Now I might never find out, a prospect that seemed too terrible to consider.
I considered it anyway, feeling as threadbare as one of my blankets back in Monde’s End.
My eyes glazed as I stared into the flames and listened to the embers in the hearth hiss and snap.
I must have fallen asleep sketching the contours of Remy’s face in my mind. I woke to full gray light flooding the cottage.
“What time is it?” I asked when I spotted Blathilde creaking around in her kitchen, my voice as croaky as hers.
“Midday. I didn’t like to wake you. Seemed you needed the sleep.”
I lurched to my feet and snatched at Remy’s cloak, which Blathilde had hung from a peg by her front door. I’d wasted hours of daylight. Would I make it to Monde’s End by nightfall, even with the vial of Riquin’s blood to help me?
“You ought to eat before you take any more of that.” There was a furrow in her lone, long white eyebrow as she looked at the vial in my hand. “You don’t want to be sick again.”
I felt sick anyway, even after I’d eaten more eggs and bread.
What would happen to me when I made it back home, if I made it back home? I hadn’t the foggiest idea. If it looked bad for me, if it looked like the villagers would see me hanged, would I have enough speed left over from Riquin’s blood to see me back through the wood to Blathilde’s cottage?
“If the villagers don’t allow me to stay,” I said, hating the flush creeping up my cheeks, the vulnerability in my voice, “would you let me stay with you? I’d help in any way I could, with your chores, the gardening. I could even try to learn to hunt.”
Was that pity in her eye? She was grinding the heel of her hand against one of them, so I couldn’t be sure. “You don’t want to come back to me, girl. I wouldn’t wish that on you.”
“I would rather be with you than working in a brothel or camping on roadsides,” I said, stabbing moodily at an egg.
“It’s a lonely life.” One of her fingertips glided over a loose strand of hair to tuck it behind my ear. “I’m better built for it. You would be miserable.”
“I wouldn’t be lonely. I’d have you.”
“If you had no place else to go and no better options, I would take you,” she said. “But there’s a whole big world out there, and I wouldn’t like to see you shut it out in favor of this old place.”
She’d meant it as a warning, but I felt better already, knowing that I would have a place with her if it came down to it. And when I’d gotten down the warm breakfast, she pressed a waterskin into my hands and saw me off.