For the second time in as many months, I left the fort at a dead sprint.
It’s you.
The words chased me to the edge of Tír na nÓg. They hid beside me in the underbrush by the Willow Gate. They chattered my teeth and shivered my bones and transformed the freezing hours I waited for Rogan into something unbearable.
I couldn’t banish the image of the Gentry guard’s expression when he saw my face. He’drecognizedme. He’d seenme. He’dknownme. How, where,why? I didn’t know.
But I’d swear it on Mother’s golden torc—if I’d stayed another moment beside that lough, he would have killed me for it.
It’s you.
By the time Rogan arrived at the gate with dawn at his back, I almost didn’t register that he was alone yet again. For a second time, he’d failed to bring Eala back. But I couldn’t question it—I had passed beyond shivering into a still, silent kind of trance. Rogan’s confusion slipped into concern when he took in my bare arms, the wet hair pasting ice crystals to my cheeks, the crust ofblood on my open palm. I tried to tell him I was fine, but my lips were too frozen to form words.
That was the only reason I didn’t protest when he hurriedly wrapped me in his own fur-lined cloak, flung me bodily over his shoulder, and carried me through the gray-lit forest toward home.
Chapter Twelve
Ruis—Elder
Early Winter
As if I had summoned it with my careless words to the Gentry guard, winter fever caught me up and dragged me down. Coughing racked my whole body, and I shivered and sweated as days blurred into nights. Between Rogan and Corra, the fires were kept roaring, and I was plied with peppermint tea for my throat and willow bark for fever and ginger and honey for the infection. But in the end there was little to do except wait for the illness to run its course, and hope I came out whole on the other side.
Mostly, I slept. And dreamed scattered, throbbing dreams.
I dreamed of Eala, except I was she and she was me. And when I tried to gather the starflowers, my fingers bled and bled until my hands were stumps.
I dreamed of dark water and iridescent fins.
I dreamed of black hair, moonlit eyes, and a soft, wondering mouth. Instead of asking me who I was, he already knew me. He spoke my name, again and again, but no matter how loudly he shouted it, I couldn’t hear him.
It’s you.
My fever finally broke one week before the next full moon.
I jolted awake from a nightmare—flocks of black swans were falling from the sky, their broken bodies black as ink against white parchment. I shook off the dream with my sweat-drenched blankets. Wobbly but blissfully clearheaded, I climbed out of bed and swathed myself in a fresh quilt. But a chill squirmed through me when I saw pale feathers kissing the window glass.
I padded to the casement and looked down. This was no muzzy, macabre fever dream. Those weren’t feathers. It wassnow.
I fell back asleep in the twilight of dawn, lulled by the muffled whispers of snowflakes against glass, then woke late morning to a sea of white beneath a cornflower sky. Weak but ravenous, I pulled on clean breeches, swaddled my feet in all three pairs of socks I’d packed, and went out in search of provisions. The fort was bone chilled and silent as a tomb—the fire in the hall little more than embers in the grate.
“Rogan?” My voice echoed, querulous. “Corra?”
But not even Corra dared disturb the delicate hush of new snow—perhaps they’d gone to ground with all other small, annoying beasties. The image of the formless sprite snuggling tight in a rabbit’s burrow had me smothering a giggle that quickly transformed into a coughing fit. But my lungs felt clearer, and the biting pain in the center of my chest was gone.
But where was Rogan? Not even he usually slept this late.
I tugged on the fort’s broad doors.
“Chiardhubh mustn’t go outside!” chided Corra, bursting sideways into the mask of a mournful, long-faced giant sloughing oak leaves from its skin. “’Tis cold and snowy, and there are foul spirits about!”
So much for burrowing away with the bunnies.
“Fouler than you?” My sarcasm was ruined by another coughing spasm that doubled me over.
“She isn’t well at all,” remarked Corra to the stone pillars.
“I’m feeling much better,” I insisted. “This is just lingering sniffles.”
