Chapter 13 #2
“I can consciously use the magic easily. Bigger animals are harder. Animals that don’t form bonds with humanoids?
Essentially impossible,” she replied. “If I get sick enough or scared enough I seem to summon large cats unconsciously. At least that’s what Nokona always told me.
Most notably? Apparently the night my mother died I summoned a jaguar.
Glen tried to scare it off, but it wouldn’t budge.
Slept in my bed for a month. I was a kid—thought that’s just what happened when you lost somebody important.
A big cat came to try and apologize. Haven’t been able to call a jaguar since though. ”
“That’s a fun little skill set.” Ansel chuckled. “Maybe it’ll come in handy.”
“I can keep the snakes away too,” Sorcha added. “I can’t get them to do anything. But I can keep them off the path. Notice how there hasn’t been a single rattler giving us trouble since we left Santa Fe?”
“Revising that to definitely come in handy,” Ansel said.
I banked the fire and washed the dishes, insisting Sorcha sit back down any time she got up and tried to help. Her side of the conversation remained as curt and professional as ever, but her posture was softening, just a bit.
“Why are you being nice to me?” she finally asked.
“You look like you’re about to pass out,” I deflected. “Can you get on the horse?”
“Probably,” Sorcha muttered. “Do I have a choice in the matter?”
“I can help you?” I offered.
Sorcha looked me up and down, brows knit together. “Fine.”
So I helped her into the saddle and tried not to think about how good she smelled even through the dirt from weeks on trail, letting my hand linger on her body just a few seconds longer than strictly necessary. She didn’t comment. She also didn’t pull away.
“It’s the altitude,” Ansel repeated for what felt like the hundredth time as we set off. “You’ll adjust.”
“Aren’t we lower than when we started?” Sorcha snapped.
I pulled Ansel aside. “Either she’s really not adjusting or something else is wrong.”
“It’s just pregnancy, boy,” Ansel said. “She’ll be fine.”
“Are we absolutely certain about that?” I hissed.
She made it until four o’clock, and honestly, I was impressed.
We’d just come down onto a set of mud-rutted switchbacks down a low grassy hill when Sorcha reined her horse to a stop, slid out of the saddle, and vomited into the dirt, not bothering to step off the trail.
She whimpered between heaves, hands pressed flat on the dirt, eyes screwed shut.
Ansel—on the trail ahead of me—pulled up his horse beside her.
“Rough day?” he asked. “We’re getting into mesquite country. Maybe your stomach will like that better than the pinon pine.”
“Do you want help, Sorcha?” I offered, dismounting and crouching behind her.
She sat back on her heels as I glanced at the mess in the dirt—mostly clear, entirely liquid.
Water. She was throwing up water, in the Texas heat, ten-days’ ride from anywhere, and with no actual plan to get a roof over her head or a healer any time soon.
We were flying dangerously close to the sun.
“We kiss next time,” Sorcha said suddenly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Excuse me?”
“Next time we sleep together,” Sorcha continued. “We kiss. We take off our clothes. We leave the lights on.”
“Sorcha, of course,” I said quickly. “I already told you that was a mistake. Sorcha, I just want to help. Please. Darling . . .”
And apparently that was what did it. What she needed to hear before she’d forgive me. Calling her darling.
“Help,” she said, voice cracking. “Everything hurts. And, Neal, I am so scared. Please help. I love you. I forgive you. Just please make this stop!”
I put a tentative hand on her back, dampened my handkerchief and wiped the sweat and bile off her face.
And then, softly, “You love me?”
“Since that morning you reorganized my office and built the little boxes for my cats,” Sorcha admitted.
“And you really forgive me?” I asked. “I’m not sure I deserve it.”
“You thought you were doing the right thing,” Sorcha said, curling up against my chest as I tucked the handkerchief away and offered her my canteen to rinse her mouth.
“I’ll take care of you,” I murmured, kissing her hair. “I promise.”
She was worse when we made camp that night—a half-hearted attempt to gather firewood left her trembling on all fours in the brush. It wasn’t just hormones and the altitude. Something else had to be wrong.
At least, I hoped. Because there was no way she was surviving this for another sixteen-odd months if there wasn’t.
I helped her up and guided her back to camp, murmuring reassurance neither of us actually believed.
We’d fallen into a proper, affectionate marital rhythm amazingly quickly.
And Ansel was eyeing the situation with growing amusement.
I helped Sorcha sit down on one of the saddlebags and handed her a cup of mesquite tea Ansel had boiled.
“Sit,” I said. “Breathe. Drink this. Don’t bend over. Don’t exert yourself.”
Sorcha nodded. “Dizzy,” was all she said in reply. “Very dizzy.”
I reached out and touched her forehead with the back of my hand. Too hot, but still sweating, her lips dry and cracking.
“We’re going to take care of this,” I said. “Just stay still. Don’t faint.”
“No promises.” Sorcha managed a half smile.
“I think that tick was carrying something,” I called over to Ansel. I watched Sorcha stiffen at those words, then kissed her forehead and pulled her in close, wishing it was enough to get that scared, vacant look off her face.
“She’ll be fine,” Ansel insisted. “Just let her sleep it off. Elves don’t die from a little fever.”
“Even ones as young as her? Do we know that for a fact?” I snapped.
“She’ll be fine,” Ansel repeated. “You’re wound tighter than a snare, boy.”
I scowled and turned my attention back to Sorcha. She looked unsteady, like even sitting up was putting a strain on her equilibrium. That wasn’t right. But Ansel seemed so certain. I shook the thoughts out of my head.
“You want dinner?” I asked.
“You know that’s a stupid question? Right?” Sorcha asked earnestly.
Ansel suppressed a laugh.
“Fair point. Water?”
“I threw up water two hours ago, Neal,” Sorcha reminded me.
“Right,” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Sleep?”
Sorcha nodded. “You’ll hold me? I’m all shaky. It doesn’t feel right.”
“I’ve got you,” I said gently, settling next to her, both our heads on my pack. “Always.”
I woke to Ansel shaking my shoulder, hard. Rational thoughts took a moment to catch up with the utter panic I could hear in his tone. Sorcha wasn’t in my arms, instead sprawled on her back closer to the fire, where Ansel was tugging off her boots and stockings.
“Neal,” Ansel snapped. “Up. Now.”
“What’s wrong? Why’d you take her?” I groaned, rubbing my eyes.
“She’s sick,” Ansel said curtly.
“That’s not news, Ansel,” I protested. “Bring her back here and let her sleep.”
“She’s burning up. How did you sleep through that?”
“What?” That brought me fully awake. I was on my feet and moving closer in an instant.
“Tick bite,” Ansel said. “Awful rash. Fever’s spiked. Don’t know when. Colorado River’s close—get her there. Now!”
“So the tick was carrying something?” I asked, voice flat, crouching beside Sorcha and going to brush stray wisps of hair back from her forehead, before recoiling at the heat.
That was bad.
“Most likely,” Ansel snapped, slicing through the front of Sorcha’s dress then her corset. “Before you say anything? Yes. I know. You were right. I was wrong and stubborn.”
“I was right, and your stubbornness might kill our sovereign,” I retorted.
“Get her to the water,” Ansel urged, pushing Sorcha’s limp form into my arms. “There’s an army encampment probably twenty miles east. I’ll head there and see if I can get a medic with proper supplies. It’ll take a few hours though. So water. Now.”
“Will that bring her temperature down?” I asked, pulling Sorcha against my chest and getting back to my feet. She was dead weight in my arms. Her skin felt like fire. Panic lanced through me, so intense that it made it hard to breathe.
“Just go!” Ansel barked.
I reached the riverbank and stumbled into the water, lowering Sorcha into the current.
She stirred a little as she hit the water, and a spark of hope lit up within me before flaring out again.
She didn’t rouse. It was likely just an automatic reaction to the painful contrast of the snow-fed water on her burning skin.
One hundred and twenty-three years I had lived on this earth and I’d never felt a fever that high.
I settled on a boulder along the shoreline and held Sorcha’s body against me, wondering vaguely if I should be getting her farther away from my own body heat as I tilted her head carefully to make sure she didn’t choke.
The last thing we needed tonight was a near drowning.
“You’ll be okay,” I murmured, over and over, cupping water in my palm and dousing her hair, the flushed skin of her face. She stirred a bit but again, didn’t rouse. My heart clenched.
“You’ll be okay,” I repeated, voice breaking. “You’re not gonna die on me.”
I swallowed hard.
“Not here,” I said, carding my free hand through her wet hair. “Not now. You’re not gonna die on me.”
I pulled her closer until my lips brushed her forehead. My hands were shaking, from cold, yes, and fear. But love too—so much love for her.
“I wasn’t supposed to feel like this,” I murmured into her forehead. “I just needed to protect you. Take care of you.”
I went back to methodically pouring handfuls of water over her burning skin, not sure if it was doing anything against the fever but convinced it would ground me enough to get the words out.
My fingers were going numb. My toes felt frozen.
She should have been freezing too. But the waves of heat kept radiating off her skin.
“I didn’t need to get attached.”