“Oh? You mean the single bite you took before falling asleep?”
I frown at him. “Yes.” I was not aware he had been paying attention to my eating habits.
Harper retraces her steps through the brush, glowering at me from a patch of sunlight. Zephyrus catches my chin. He stares into my eyes, but I struggle to focus, so I look at his nose. That impossibly crooked nose, a blight on his features. Strangely, it comforts me.
“You have lost your appetite,” he says.
What does that have to do with anything? “We’ve been hiking all day. I just need to rest for a bit.”
Prowling over, Harper circles me, black hair freshly combed despite the long, sweltering hours trapped in Carterhaugh’s humidity. “I said if you fell behind, I would not wait for you.”
“It’s probably a cold,” I say, slumping forward to rub at my pounding head. “It will pass.”
The West Wind continues to study me. He does not seem to notice Harper’s proximity, much to her frustration. “Are you injured?”
As usual, he thinks he knows things. “All my limbs are in working order.”
“You’re certain you weren’t hurt during the chase the other day?”
“Are you suggesting I don’t know my own body?” I’m too fatigued to put any heat behind it, though it irks me all the same.
“No.” He exudes a calm that is quite unlike him. “But it was dark. Our eyes miss things. And yours are very mortal.”
An oversight. No fatal wounds or severed appendages, but a scratch. A hairline cut parting the cotton of my dress.
Fumbling with the button at my collar, I slide it from the eye loop while the forest respires in great warm heaves around us. Harper leans closer despite feigning disinterest.
We’ve traveled so quickly, and I’ve been so weary, that I haven’t paid much attention to the ache at my sternum. My arm twingesas I awkwardly tug the sleeve over my shoulder, the skin across my chest tearing painfully. When I reveal the slice above my breastband, Zephyrus pinches his mouth closed.
Yesterday, the scab had been intact, stretched by the yellowing pus gathering beneath. It has since burst, widening to an open wound stuffed with graying flesh. A subtly sweet reek lifts from the sore. Harper gags.
My fingers quaver as I trace the sooty black veins branching from the glistening wound. The salve I slathered on it has cracked, leaving behind a white residue.
“It looks infected,” Harper states.
“It’s not infected,” Zephyrus says. “The creatures you fought are called darkwalkers. Brielle has been envenomated.”
This news… it sounds serious, and yet I feel nothing. I’ve been sucked dry of emotion. Not even Harper’s sharp gasp can rouse me.
“That explains why the salve didn’t work,” I murmur, carefully buttoning up my dress. I’d rather not look at the gruesome display. “How do we treat the wound?”
A restlessness stirs the air despite Zephyrus’ lack of movement. “There is no cure, Brielle.” A woeful tone. Harper’s gaze cuts to me, but I can’t look at her. I’m afraid of what I’ll see. Satisfaction. Pleasure, even, at my misfortune.
“How long?” I whisper.
He rubs at his jaw. “It takes around five days for the venom to work its way through the system.”
We have been traveling together for four.
Sadness passes as a cloud over my heart, for I am helpless to turn back time. It is done. Soon, I will be, too.
“These darkwalkers. What are they?” Not that it matters. With my fate carved in stone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge will make no difference. But it comforts me, knowing the what and how and when.
“They hail from the Deadlands—my eldest brother’s realm. In simplest terms, they are the corrupted souls of the dead.” He toes the ground with his boot. I’m watching his face, witnessing pain he seeksto keep hidden. What tortures him? “Last I heard, the darkwalkers had been cleansed from Boreas’ territory. It seems some managed to cross into Carterhaugh.”
Deadlands. Darkwalkers. I’ve never heard of this place, these creatures. “The Deadlands? They don’t come from Under?”
“They do not. The Deadlands is where those who have passed on await Judgment. There, they find their final resting place.”
