The forest man didn’t seem amused.
I was dragged to the muddy bank, then propped up against a rotted log that felt delightfully soft against my back. I was little more than an oversized doll, no longer particularly in control of my limbs. Or my thoughts, it seemed. Because those eyes were so familiar, the disdain in them comforting in their own cold way. I could have sworn, as the river rushed by us with a sound like laughter, that it was the ghost of Julian come to criticize me for not following orders. That was the kind of thing he’d do, I was sure.
“I’m not aghost.”
Had I spoken aloud?
Ezra worried at my hair, fingers searching around my scalp. “Think she hit her head?”
I smacked his hand away. My breathing came in coarse, sticky gulps. Little by little, each inhale filled me back up with the life force I needed to think straight and see that no ghost stood before me.
ItwasJulian, sopping wet with a rope coiled around his forearm. AndEzradidn’t appear to be particularly surprised.
With a growl, I launched across mud and stones on all fours, determined to kill one or both of them with my bare hands.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fortunately for Ezra and not-dead Julian, dizziness eclipsed my rage. Even with a barb of radiance jutting from my palm, I didn’t have the strength left in me to fight Julian’s iron grip on my wrist
“I just saved your life.” Julian rattled my arm until the radiance crawled back into my body, properly chastised. “This is a highly unreasonable response.”
“You lied to me!” My voice was something between a scream and a sob. I was shivering so hard, my knees threatened to buckle, but I pulled myself up to my full height and thought hard about kicking him in a soft place.
“Is that what I did? Are you certain?” Julian caught my other wrist, frowning. He looked over at Ezra as if hoping for some kind of support in the matter. His expression abruptly shifted to subdued horror, and he let me drop directly onto my backside in the mud. “Ezra. What did youdo?”
Stunned, it took a moment to see what he’d responded to. Ezra had stumbled back against a tree, his hand pressed hard to his middle.
“Ididn’t do it,” Ezra muttered.
A dark stain blossomed down his shirt, between his fingers.
“You’re bleeding,” I said on an exhale.
Julian caught him by the elbow as he swayed. “When?”
Humming thoughtfully, Ezra allowed himself to be directed to the edge of the bank, where the sand was dry and soft. “Before. Marshall and Ike.”
I crawled after them, shaking with more than a chill. Everything was happening too quickly for my mind to catch up.
I knew one thing clearly: We were all cold.
There were dry sticks and piles of dusty leaves on the narrow beach sheltered by a high bank. This was a thing I could do. This was a thing I could focus on. Scrambling around, I gathered a respectable pile of kindling and lit it with a modest plume of radiance. In moments, the flames cast heat and a small glow.
Ezra was pale in the firelight, gaze too unfocused for my liking. “No fire,” he mumbled. “Someone will see it.”
Julian glanced over his shoulder at me, surprise softening to gratitude. “Ignore him. Come here. I’ll show you how to cauterize a wound with radiance.”
“How to what?” Ezra’s attention snapped up.
I shifted to kneel beside him opposite Julian. “Won’t that hurt him? He doesn’t do well around radiance.”
“It won’t hurt him as much as bleeding to death will,” Julian said.
“His doesn’t hurt me,” Ezra said with a loopy, baffling grin. Absurdly, he winked at Julian.
“What—How do you two know each other?” I asked in a sputtering voice. I would have a thousand more questions once we were dry and no one was bleeding out, but this one felt urgent. I needed to know exactly how angry I should be at both of them.
“We don’t,” Julian muttered.
