Page 6 of A Song of Air
They took her away.
Within moments, her entire world had upended. An explosion and iron shards had taken away something vital and precious from her. Her family and her vision. And when she suddenly found herself without both of those things, she’d been lost in her own paralyzing fear. It was all she knew at first. Disorientation in a world that wasn’t familiar, with sounds and scents that were cloying and almost impossible to weave through.
When they shoved her into the iron camps, it had been worse. It suffocated her completely and she wasn’t only struggling to try and see, she was also struggling to pull oxygen into her lungs. Blood spurted from her throat with every hacking cough until she was sure she would die.
But she hadn’t died then. Even when she thought infection and malnourishment would take her. When she was beaten by power-hungry guards and shoved into wagons for transport, she had not died.
She’d been saved, though she wasn’t sure if it was by the grace of Mana or...
“Bryson!”
Arlo Blackwood.
He stomped loudly to get her attention, as though she couldn’t see his blurry figure approaching. As if the wind didn’t pull his essence towards her like the soft whisper of a warning. Sometimes, he still treated her like the young Fae with the broken sight he’d first pulled from that wagon. Not like the woman she was now. Healed, whole. Perhaps her vision would never be what it was before the accident, but at least she couldsee, at least she was alive, and that was more than she could say for others.
“Hey, Arlo.” Ev pulled away from her to meet Arlo in the middle and clapped him on the back.
“Any problems?”
“None. Bryson is a good shot,” Ev replied.
“The cargo?”
“Malika and the others are getting it organized as we speak.”
“Good,” Arlo muttered. “But tell me, why aren’tyouhelping them?”
There was a brief moment of silence in which Bryson almost flinched. She didn’t move, though. She kept very still. It was almost the norm that people treated her like she wasn’t there when they spoke. But if there was one thing they didn’t understand, it was that she wasn’tblind.
Nor deaf.
She wasn’t sure why they treated her like a piece of furniture.
“I—”
“No excuses, boy,” Arlo interjected. His tone wasn’t chastising, but nor was it kind. “Business first, celebration later.”
“Yes, Arlo.”
The subservience from Everette wasn’t surprising. Though a human, Everette was Arlo’s right hand and would one day take his place as leader of the camp.If he lived that long, a cynical and wretched part of her always thought but never voiced.
“Good. Now say goodbye to your girlfriend and see to your duties.” His tone mellowed out into a humorous one that made Bryson relax her shoulders a fraction.
Ev laughed. Then he rushed towards her. He didn’t say anything, though he didn’t need to, before he pressed a kiss to her lips then turned and jogged away.
It wasn’t until he was out of earshot that Arlo focused his attention on her. She always felt his stare like a heavy weight. What little she could see of it from a distance was piercing, calculating. Even through the blur, she could make out the black and gray of his hair and mustache, as well as the too-straight posture of his tall, wide body. A half-Fae, he had ears that were curved, but not quite as pointed as a full-blooded Fae’s.
Malika had often described him as, “Rigid, like he has a stick up his ass.”
Today, Bryson stared at the crooked nose that towered over the stern line of his mouth, with eyes bright like a hawk’s as he took her in. His hair was pulled back with a strip of leather, and if there was a strand out of place, she couldn’t quite make it out.
His clothes were clean. She always noticed he wastooclean, and that was on account that her sense of smell was stronger than anyone else’s. She smelled the soap on his clothes, and the careful precision with which he tucked flowers into his pockets. None of that drowned out his own natural scent, though. Like sap and dry leaves and a vegetable garden.
“How was the hunt?” He stepped towards her.
That’s what he always called it.
The hunt.
