Lunara gaped at her. “That could be hours!”
Hedda threw her head back and laughed. “No. I give you three quarters of an hour, at best.”
As it turned out, Hedda gave her too much credit.
Lunara made it twenty-nine minutes—zig-zagging all over the stars-damned place to follow those lanterns as they lit to the tune of Hedda’s bellowed commands and shrieking whistles—before her knees gave out and she was retching into the dirt.
“Not too bad, Sorcerit,” Hedda murmured, combing gentle fingers through Lunara’s hair to hold it back while she heaved. “You did better than I actually thought you would.”
Lunara listed to the side and rolled flat onto her back, lungs wheezing. “I’ll never… survive… this.”
Hedda hummed a low sound. “Not only will you survive, Sorcerit, but you’ll thank me for it someday. Now, come on.” Forthe second time that day, the Demon peeled Lunara from the ground and set her to rights. “I’m fucking famished, and you will be too as soon as you walk it off and remember how to breathe.”
Lunara wouldwalk it offthe minute she started feeling her legs again.
She was goingto murder whatever it was that kept poking her face.
Slowly.
Lunara rolled over and groaned, every muscle screaming at her for daring to disturb them.
She wanted to go back to two nights ago, to a mountaintop and hazel eyes, and forget yesterday had ever happened.
“Good morn-i-i-i-ng.”
Nyri’s sing-song greeting was the last thing in the realms Lunara wanted to hear. And there was no way it was already morning. Her body had just hit the bed a moment ago.
“I know how to make people disappear,” she mumbled into her pillow. “No one will be able to find you.”
Not technically true, but she’d gladly use the threat if it would make the Demon leave her alone.
The mattress dipped and bounced along with Nyri’s giggling. “Hedda sent me. I’m to inform you that you’re only a quarter of an hour from being in trouble.”
Lunara snorted. “That sadist is the only one in trouble. She made me eat eight eggs for dinner. Every bite. I’ll never forgive her.”
She jerked back when something prodded her in the nostrils. Lunara cracked an eye open to see one of her own chestnut curls poised an inch from her face, clasped in two of Nyri’s fingers.
Her arm was leaden as she batted it away, wrapping the sheet around her head. “Go away. Just leave me to die here.”
“She said you would say that”—Nyri got under the sheet and shimmied her way in until they were nose-to-nose—“and to tell you she has a tonic waiting to make it all go away,ifyou can get to her of your own volition.”
Lunara was fairly certain her soul left her body along with the sniveling whine that escaped her.
Hedda had forced her to walk around the practice field three more times last night and made her stretch again. Deeper stretches, holding them for longer, until she’d been nothing more than a quivering puddle by the end.
She’d then sat Lunara down in the empty main hall with a glass of milk and a pile of scrambled eggs that was as big as her head, and said, “Eat. All of it. You can get up and go to bed when you’re done.”
Nothing had ever tasted so foul as those last handful of bites. She wanted to vomit all over again, just thinking about it.
Never eating eggs again. Never, ever.
Still, the promise of a tonic?—
“I brought you proper clothes as well. We’ll match!”
Lunara opened both eyes that time and tried to see what Nyri was wearing. It looked much the same as what most of the others had donned in their practice yesterday. Not the strange fabric that welded itself to one’s skin, but linen. Loose and airy.
And not at all something Lunara could imagine herself in.
