Before I could respond, Kaelren re-entered the tent. His eyes swept over me, and something flickered in their depths. Not approval. More like… recognition.
“Better,” he said simply.
“I look like a walking bush.”
“You look like Wynmire. That’s what matters.” He moved closer, and I caught that scent of pine and leather and danger. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we fly to the Hollow. Try not to fall off.”
“What if I can’t sleep?”
“Then you’ll be tired and terrified tomorrow instead of just terrified.”
“Your bedside manner is terrible.”
“I’m not a healer. I’m a killer who happens to be keeping you alive.”
The distinction mattered to him, I could tell. He needed me to understand that he wasn’t kind, wasn’t good, wasn’t anything but practical.
“Your marks,” he said suddenly. “They’re spreading.”
I looked down. He was right. The vines had crept past my collarbone, starting to trace down my arm in delicate spirals.
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to cost him something. “Nothing about you follows the rules.”
“Maybe the rules are wrong.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and for a moment his guard dropped. I saw exhaustion, pain, and something else. Something that might have been hope if hope hadn’t been beaten out of him years ago.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. Then his walls slammed back up. “Rest. Tomorrow will be worse.”
“You really need to work on your motivational speeches.”
“I’m not trying to motivate you. I’m trying to prepare you.”
“For what?”
“For Wynmire. For the Hollow. For the truth about what you are.” He paused at the tent entrance. “The marks chose you for a reason. Tomorrow, we start finding out why.”
“And if I don’t like the answer?”
“Then you’ll join a very long list of people disappointed by destiny.”
He left, and I was alone with Peeble and the sound of the realm eating what was left of my human clothes. Outside, I could hear the crew setting upwatches—Bryx’s chittering laugh, Vashael humming a melody that made my teeth ache, Nimor’s occasional whispered observations, Eltrien’s gentle corrections, Sarnyx’s thorns scraping against something metallic.
They were a family, I realized. Broken and strange and dangerous, but family nonetheless. And I was the outsider who’d disrupted their dynamic, wearing marks their leader had carved into his own flesh trying to claim.
“They’ll warm up to you,” Peeble said, reading my thoughts. “Or they’ll try to kill you. Seventy-thirty odds in favor of warming up, though those aren’t great odds when your life is on the line.”
I lay down on the bedroll someone had left, probably Eltrien, since it smelled faintly of those healing herbs he carried. The material was soft, woven from something that felt like clouds and smelled like rain. Above me, the tent’s luminescent fabric pulsed gently, creating patterns that almost looked like constellations if I squinted.
“Peeble?”
“Yes?”
“Is Kaelren going to die?”
The beetle was quiet for a long moment. “We’re all going to die eventually.”
