“Don’t,” I warned. Her words shoved into the soft spots between my ribs.
“I’m not here to rehash a past I know you’d rather forget, but seeing you this time reminds me of the Mav I used to know,” she said softly. “You didn’t need moonbeam elixir to sleep through the night. You’ve actually had an appetite. And there’s a little light back in those miserable eyes of yours.”
“None of that has anything to do with her.” The words spilled out in a jumbled rush.
Thistle gave me a slow, knowing look. “That’s the most convincing lie I’ve heard all day.”
“I’m not—” I broke off, rubbing the back of my neck. “Weare magically indentured to each other. I don’t think I’m supposed to like her.”
“You know, Mav,” Thistle began, as she pressed a small pouch of travel rations into my palm. “Just because you never ask for what you want, doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.”
No response sprang to mind, leaving my mouth hanging open without words to fill it.
She brushed a stray leaf from my arm. “Don’t make a mess of things.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Exactly,” she deadpanned. “That’s what worries me.”
Thistle moved to finish preparations for her horse while I stood steeping in her words. My fingers curled tight around the rations pouch, the faint scent of dried apples and rosemary rising through the fabric. “It doesn’t matter. Two weeks, and she’ll be gone.”
“And you’ll be back to brooding in a chair with a bottle of regret,” Thistle said over her shoulder. “You don’t have much time to figure out if this could be real.”
As if on cue, Quinn stepped through the door of the cottage and into the yard. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, fair eyes squinting against the brightness as if she had not quite gotten used to the world again.
Truth wrapped its spindly fingers around my throat.
As much as it irked me to admit it, Thistle had been right about two things.
The first: I did like Quinn, an absurd amount for someone I’d only met four days ago.
The second: I was already making a mess of things.
The horses drank lazily from the stream, tails flicking at flies. We rode for an hour or two in companionable silence, then paused to water the horses. Quinn stood a few paces off, borrowed boots pressed into the moss-damp earth, arms crossed tight as though holding herself together by force alone. Her cloak stirred faintly with the wind, shadows feathering her profile. She was frowning again—not at me, I hoped.
I stepped closer, careful not to crowd her. “You all right?”
She didn’t look at me. “I am awake for fourteen days. No more, no less.”
I waited.
“During such time, I am meant to aid someone,” she said finally. Her tone wasn’t angry, but there was an edge of disappointment to it. “And you…” She turned then, meeting my eyes squarely. “You do not seem to have a quest.”
Ah.
There it was.
I shifted, pretending to check the cinch on my saddlebag. “So I’m your worst prospect?”
“You are no prospect at all,” she snapped, shoulders lowering an inch. “I do not mean to be ungrateful. It is only…every time I wake, I have so little time. I need to matter to someone. To fix something.”
There was nothing sharp in her voice now. Only exhaustion. Frustration without a place to land. I bit my lip, fighting the instinct to bristle. She wasn’t wrong. I didn’t have a quest, not in the heroic sense. I wasn’t hunting a beast, or claiming a crown, or righting any great wrongs. Most days, survival was the goal: keep my boots dry, my ribs unbroken, and my head above water. But hearing the truth of it reflected back to me made it all sound rather pathetic.
I looked at her and found something I hadn’t expected. Hope. No—that was wrong. It wasn’t hope at all. It was thecomplete absence of it. As if she’d stopped expecting to find meaning here, and I was another wasted hour on a ticking clock.
Maybe I was.
But I didn’t want to be.
