Chapter 15
Fifteen
Neal
Sorcha grew worse as the afternoon crept toward evening—her first relapse was clearly imminent.
To complicate things further, the storm we’d spent the day outrunning was gaining steady and unmistakable speed, and the eldritch abomination had driven us almost two miles off course from our route to the mission.
We barely made it to the church’s arched doorway before the first crack of thunder rumbled and the desert grass began to undulate in the oncoming wind.
“This’ll be properly cozy,” Ansel drawled. “Oh and I grabbed some creosote along the way too. It’ll help with the fever.”
I pressed my cheek to Sorcha’s forehead.
“That’s coming back for certain now,” I muttered. “Here, give me your reins. Let’s get inside before you get any worse.”
Sorcha just nodded, cold sweat starting to dew on her skin.
“I don’t feel right,” she whimpered into my chest as I helped her off the horse.
Ansel was busy grabbing the rest of our bags, anything that could be ruined in the oncoming deluge.
I dragged the door open and stopped dead, hand flying up to cover Sorcha’s eyes.
Because there in the middle of the desert scrub and cacti colonizing the rotted, wood-plank floor, lay a dead body.
The dead man had pointed Elven ears, a leather satchel, dark hair, and a spike driven clean through his abdomen and into the floor, staking a file of papers to his corpse.
“Ansel, we have a problem,” I called over my shoulder.
“Neal, what’s wrong?” Sorcha asked, scrabbling to get my hand away from her eyes and failing entirely.
“Not entirely sure,” I hedged, dragging her back into the narthex before I finally took my hand from her eyes, strategically situating my body between her and any view of the corpse.
Ansel stopped dead in the chapel entryway, eyes fixing on the body. “Well shit. He’s one of mine.”
“Excuse me, what? Who?” Sorcha snapped. I sighed and finally moved so she could see. I felt her stiffen immediately.
“Go see who did it,” Sorcha instructed, swallowing hard then gesturing vaguely at the body. “See what the notes say.”
Sorcha and I sat in the narthex as the storm blew in while Ansel investigated inside.
“I don’t feel right,” Sorcha repeated. I just stroked her hair and held her closer.
“You’re okay,” I lied. It seemed counterproductive to say she was likely already running a fever that’d leave a human dead in hours. “We knew you’d relapse. And we’ve got everything to keep you safe this time.”
Her skin was getting drier by the minute as her fever crept higher. She startled and yelped as lightning struck outside. The air reeked of ozone.
“Hate storms,” she muttered, burying her face in my shoulder.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured, trying to soothe her chills as the fever-induced pain got so bad I felt tears through the thin cotton of my shirt.
Then, moments before I was sure pain and exhaustion and temperature would win and she’d fall unconscious in my arms, there was a stirring in the brush just inside the chapel proper.
Sorcha picked up her head, opened her eyes, and focused properly as a tiny, furry white bundle hopped out from between the cacti.
“Is that a . . .” I began but trailed off as Sorcha somehow found the uncoordinated energy to clamber out of my arms and scoop the little creature up.
“A jackalope,” she squealed.
“Sorcha, put him down, come back and sit,” I urged, but she didn’t even glance my way.
Instead she held the cryptid up so she could look it in the eye, I could see the pregnancy hormones taking hold and the logic leaving her expression. “I’m gonna call you Milkweed.”
“Sorcha, we can’t keep it!” I insisted as she finally glanced back at me.
“He is just a baby!” Sorcha replied curtly, tucking the jackalope into her arms and coming to sit with me again.
“But, Sorcha,” I protested. “My love, what are we going to do with it?”
“They’re smart,” she insisted, but her big green eyes, glazed with fever and fatigue and desperation, told a different story.
And even as she said, “They’re useful. They can mimic.
And they understand. He’ll be able to turn invisible when he grows up.
Won’t you, Milkweed?” I could feel the unspoken plea: He’s cute and small and warm and the last few months have been horrible.
“You’re a good boy. Tell them!” Sorcha urged.
“Good boy,” the creature repeated, matching her tone and timbre flawlessly.
Ansel finally emerged from the chapel, blood staining his hands, sheaf of torn and stained papers clutched in one fist.
“That was a warning,” Ansel said.
“About what and from who?” Sorcha asked, the little jackalope having seemingly dragged her out of the fever haze enough to be conversant again.
“About you running the Court,” Ansel said. “And who do you think? It’s from Iksura.”
“She killed one of our operatives?” Sorcha balked.
Ansel nodded. “I’d sent him ahead of us to New York to try and get a read on Iksura’s claim about your title’s legitimacy, your age. All that. Apparently she didn’t like it. Papers are more of the same she’s been sending. Get married. Take a regent. You know the drill.”
“But this time she murdered one of our men to make that same point,” I said. “She suggested we annul our marriage, then that we kill our baby, now she’s escalated to this?”
“But how did she know we’d be here?” Sorcha asked.
“I don’t think she did,” Ansel replied. “Note’s identical to the last one she sent. I think she knows we left, surmised we were heading east, and then sent out her inquisitors to try and scare us into giving in.”
“But how does she even know?” Sorcha protested. “How could she get word that fast all the way in Europe when we couldn’t even get to New York in that time? Even one of your men grabbing fresh horses every chance he could.”
“Never underestimate her,” was all Ansel said by way of reply.
“Need I repeat that she’s not only leaving copies of her demands scattered across the country, but that she left this particular copy staked through a man’s stomach?” I put in.
“Which only makes it more critical that we get the legal precedent airtight,” Ansel said. “And that we get somewhere with resources, security, and communication that doesn’t require weeks’-long treks through the bloody desert.”
“So onward to New York?” Sorcha asked, brows knitting together as she gathered little Milkweed closer up against her chest.
“Onward to New York . . .” Ansel said, then trailed off, eyes finally catching on the jackalope in Sorcha’s lap. “What the hell is that? Where did you find a jackalope? Did you summon it in your sleep like the bobcat?”
“His name is Milkweed,” Sorcha replied, adrenaline draining, eyes beginning to glaze with fever again, body starting to shake with chills.
“And we’re keeping it?” Ansel shot me a puzzled glance.
“We are keeping it,” I agreed. “Now deal with the corpse. Her fever’s up, and I need a fire for yarrow tea and a place for her to lay down.”
“Place for her to lay down,” Milkweed repeated.
“Maybe I like you after all,” I muttered to the tiny cryptid as I helped Sorcha to her feet.
Ansel dragged the corpse through the storm out into the scrub.
He left it at the top of a nearby hill, surrounded by brush, a likely spot for a lightning strike and an easy one for vultures and carrion birds to reach the body—it was the closest thing we could manage to a burial as the derecho bore down on us.
I spent the night leaned against the chapel wall, with Sorcha curled against my chest, diligently pressing mugs of yarrow tea to her lips every time she roused enough to sip.
Milkweed hopped around for hours, repeating near everything I said, then eventually tucked himself into Sorcha’s dress pocket and fell asleep, only his ears peeking up above the muslin.
By morning the dry heat radiating from Sorcha’s skin had faded, albeit barely, and she was flushed and sweating again.
“Alright,” I said, dumping my saddlebags on a cleared patch of the floor and shoving the chapel doors closed behind Ansel as he went to cook breakfast in the remaining drizzle. “Clothes off. Bath. Now.”
Sorcha stared at the tub of runoff I’d hauled in from the wash earlier like it was poison.
“I’m fine, Neal,” she insisted. “I’ll just get some food, and if we rotate horses I can sleep in the saddle behind you and . . .”
“You smell like sweat and fever,” I cut her off. “Get the dress off and get in the tub.”
“That’s romantic and complimentary.” She rolled her eyes. I fought down the ghost of a smile as relief flooded through me—she felt well enough to be sarcastic, that was reassuring.
“You didn’t disagree with me,” I replied. “Now come here.”
“But”—she crossed her arms around herself—“I don’t . . . you haven’t . . .”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath—silently reminding myself that this inconvenient wave of awkwardness and modesty could more than likely be traced to my own failings in the first weeks after our marriage, my refusal of intimacy, the mistrust and discomfort that had generated.
“Sorcha, I held you half naked in the river for hours two nights ago,” I finally said. “You slept on my chest all night. It’s fine. We’re married. That’s my baby, in case you forgot.”
“But . . .” she tried to protest, but I didn’t let her finish.
Instead I changed tactics. “You can’t convince me you don’t want your first real bath in what, seven weeks now? You have to want your hair properly clean.”
She glared at me for a long moment, still and silent, before she finally got to her feet and turned around so I could reach the buttons down the back of her dress.
“Please.”
“Good girl,” I murmured, unfastening the buttons, hands lingering on her bare skin beneath.
A soft, half-choked sound escaped her lips as my thumb traced over her shoulder and I dipped my head to kiss the nape of her neck.
I wasn’t about to let anything remotely intimate feel transactional or procedural, never again.
I helped her into the tub, winced as she shivered, and wished I had a way to make this awful trip more comfortable.
As she settled in the water, I unbound her hair and smoothed water over her dusty, near-matted curls.
Milkweed hopped out from the pocket of Sorcha’s discarded apron, thumped his back leg and said, “Cleanliness is next to godliness” in a voice I’d never heard. Sorcha chuckled.
I leaned down and kissed her cheek, elated to finally see her smiling, and cupped water over her face, washing away the tracks of fever sweat and last night’s tears.
“You’re fussing a lot,” she said.
“I’m making up for lost time,” I told her, leaning in and kissing her forehead.
“I think I like it.” She cracked a smile.
“I think I love you,” I said gently.
She paused, smile growing. “You love me?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I love you. And I’m sorry again that I was an idiot who didn’t know how to say it.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “Now what can I do to make this better?”
“My back really is bad . . .” She trailed off. “And . . .”
“It’s stupid. Never mind.”
“What is it, love?” I prompted.
“I like it when you call me that.” She blushed and avoided my eyes.
“What is it?” I repeated.
“Sleep with me again,” she blurted out. “I want to wake up in your arms. Tomorrow and . . . the next day . . .”
“Every night,” I murmured. “Every night you ask—forever.”
My hands traced down the bare skin of her back, dipping below the water line and settling onto her hips. I paused, eyes fixed on her shoulder blades, her clavicle.
“You’re too thin.”
“Ansel says the puking is normal,” she deflected.
“I can count your ribs,” I insisted, hand tracing back up and dragging droplets along her skin.
“I can’t keep anything down,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.”
“You can’t keep going like this.” I hated the frantic edge I could hear in my own voice. I sat back on my heels. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll stop more often. Less time on a horse. More time sleeping and eating. We’ll get you healthy.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible, Neal.”
“We’ll get you healthy,” I repeated, as if somehow that would make it more feasible.
“I want a big healthy baby.”
“We’ll get there,” I said. “You’re not in this alone. Not anymore. And, Sorcha? Thank you for letting me in.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Even if you wasted a good few months being an idiot.”
“I’m your idiot.” I chuckled.
“Mine.”