Page 98 of Faerie Fate
“This will get her nervous system under control,” Elfhame told the others. “It should have a rapid effect.”
My eyes fluttered closed. My breathing evened out and my heart returned to normal before I was able to shift back to human. My body lengthened, taloned claws turning back into legs and wings shrinking until my arms lay flung out at my sides.
“Just let me die now,” I garbled out. “Please.”
“No one is letting you do anything anymore,” Bronwen assured me. She crouched beside me and took my hand in hers. “I thought we’d lost you.”
“Was it…was it hard for you, too?”Or was it just me?I gulped over the rock in my throat and turned to look at her.
Her eyes widened. “Yeah, I wouldn’t wish that flight on anyone.”
The pixies somehow manipulated the earth under the river to force the boat to jettison over the rapids, faster than I’d ever seen a boat move. Several of them clustered at the rear and some at the helm, guiding us, keeping us from crashing.
River water splashed and soaked everyone through. But we’d already left the fae way behind. We were safe.For now.
I knew from experience it was only a matter of time before things went wrong again.
I curled on my side, drawing Bronwen with me, her warmth against my back as Mike settled at my front.
The two boatssailed side by side into the night. Several of the older pixies handled the navigation. Once I’d gotten warmth into my body, once the shivering stopped, Mike helped me into a cross-legged position and we shared our meager rations. The food didn’t go far, but pixies also didn’t eat much.
Noren lay at my knee, several of the pixie kids curled up in the fur behind his ear, and fell asleep. Exhaustion knocked me in the back of the head insistently, begging me to give in and sleep.Not yet.
Elfhame had already shoved two more hard morsana cakes into my mouth but after the initial one, the others didn’t really help more. I hurt everywhere. My throat burned too, which was one of my least favorite things, and probably came from coughing brown water out of my lungs.
It was just one more thing to suffer through. I kept those thoughts to myself. The others didn’t need me to be whiny and pessimistic. It wouldn’t help the general morale and it definitely wouldn’t help Mike, who watched me cautiously.
I would save him again and again, no matter how I felt when we were done. Hopefully he knew that.
I toyed with the knobby scar around my neck but caught myself, shoving my hand underneath my thigh to stop. Mike coughed. By the time I met his eyes, he forced his lips into a smile. His hair had curled awkwardly around his ears and across his forehead. Brown streaks that might have been silt or dried blood decorated his cheeks.
“Hey, stop.” His fingers caught me in the middle of rubbing the scar again. “It’s okay.”
I glanced down, too guilty to read his expression. An apology bubbled up but I wasn’t sure what it was for. I had no reason for rubbing the scar but I kept worrying about the scar as if the mate bond tugged at me.
Here, Kendrick was nothing but a bad memory. There was no deepening in my consciousness, no expansion in my head like I’d felt when he and I were in the same room.
The unpleasant sensation shifted and grew when Mike dropped my hand. “Try to rest, Tavi. You need it.”
He rolled on his side, his shoulders curved forward and his knees drawn up to his chest.
“I’m not breakable,” I whispered. To myself, to him, I didn’t know.
His shoulders stiffened but he kept quiet.
The longboats were expansive but there wasn’t enough room for anyone to stretch out or feel comfortable. If he managed to steal some sleep, then who was I to keep him awake and make him talk to me? To ask him to explain exactly how he felt when he saw the scar from the mate bond?
I lay on my back for a long moment until most everyone took their rest. Except for Poppy.
The young witch with the old soul only waited for me to glance her way before she huffed out something between a grunt and a chuckle. “What’s the matter with you? Something wrong?”
Oh yeah, a whole bunch of things.
“I made a mistake,” I started after a gulping pause.
“Just one?” She offered me a mocking smile.
With half her face in shadow and half in light, her hair knotted at the top of her head and her dress soaked through, Poppy was just a young woman. The fabric clung to her body and the river water turned the color dark. She wasn’t Mike’s grandmother. She was someone who might understand.
