Page 3 of Beneath a Shattered Sky
What is Danu playing at? Why give me one sword and then snatch it away again?
Fucking fairy goddess and her fucking games.
Water sloshes in my boots as I wade upstream. The pebbles underfoot are slippery, slowing me down, but my tactic works because the voices following us fade out soon after. Still, I don’t slow, taking the long route through the fields and rolling hills. At some point, when Rose begins to squirm, I rearrange her, so she’s cradled in my arms rather than hung over my back, but she doesn’t wake.
Finally, the ruined barn with its caved-in wooden roof and crumbling stone walls appears in the valley below. It’s been several hours since we split from Prae; hopefully she made it.
“Thank fuck,” I mutter.
“Are you taking me back to Elatha?”
How long has she been awake? Glancing down at her, I grimace as I note her glazed eyes and the lines of strain around her mouth.Of coursethat would be her first question.
“No.” I hesitate. “You’re healing.”
She looks pointedly at the blood dried over my arm. “So are you.”
So she’s not going to explain what happened? Fine. “Your fairy friends weren’t happy to see either of us.”
I kick in the door to the barn, noting Prae’s absence with a frown. She should be here by now. Shrugging it off, because she can take care of herself, I set Rose down and examine her properly.
“The worst of the iron poisoning appears to be over.” I’m talking to myself more than her. “Most of your scrapes are gone too. How are you feeling?”
She tilts her head like she doesn’t know what to make of me, then swallows and rotates her shoulders. “Sore… I don’t think my wings were really ready for flight.”
“You flew?”
That’s a good thing, right? Why does she look on the verge of tears? Fucking confusing female.
Wordlessly, I grab a pouch of nuts and dried fruit from my bag and hand it to her. It's not much, but she should eat.
“I’m not hungry. You should eat, though,” she whispers.
I shake my head, forcing the food into her hands. Her hunger is more important. She’s soft, pampered. A few days without food is nothing to me.
“When you finish that, you need to tell me what’s going on.” My tone brokers no argument. “The last thing I knew, your redcap had gone to fetch reinforcements. So how did you end up in the woods alone?”
If I’m protecting her against a threat that’s already taken out the rest of her Guard, I need to know what I’m facing. I’m alone, and ego aside, there’s only so much I can do.
To her credit, Rose swallows, takes a shaky breath, and nods, shoving a handful of food into her mouth. As she eats, her expression shutters slowly. The trembling in her shoulders eases, replaced with a rigid stiffness. Good. I don’t have the patience to deal with a weeping mess right now.
“We need to move!” Prae crashes through the barn doors just as Rose finishes the bag.
She’s got our gear, and two horses.
Wait… I don’t remember stealing a black stallion.
“That’s not my horse! And is that ahead?” I ask, frowning as I put myself between Rose and Drystan’s severed skull, so she doesn’t have to see it. “Prae, don’t?—”
“Shut up.”
The head talks—well, really, he snaps.
I don’t remember that being my experience of decapitation. Thankfully, I don’t remember anything until I woke up weeks later with a skeletal body. A moment of sympathy hits me before I realise that’s not blood dripping from the place where his neck should be; it’s shadows.
In fact, the only blood on him is the stuff dripping from a rip in his pointy ear.
Great. More fairy weirdness.
