Blood fills my mouth, and I try to swallow it, I try, but it surges up, hot and explosive. I lean over the bed and vomit red onto the floor. Then my shoulders are being pinned to the mattress, cool fingers bracketing my forehead.
“You will stop that,” Kassandra says. “You will stop trying to break the blood oath or I will knock you unconscious, and then we won’t be able to hear your message. Do you understand?”
I think I see fear in her eyes, but perhaps it is mine. She brushes hair from my forehead like Maxian did and I wince. Her eyes scan my face. “Do you understand, Avery?”
I nod through my tears, my head pounding with pain.
“Where’s that fucking parchment?” Kassandra calls over her shoulder. A day servant trips over something in the parlor, silver clattering to the floor. “Planes-pickled idiots,” she mutters, looking back at me. “Turns out you’re hard to replace.”
I hiccup, a pause to my crying.
“That’s right. Breathe, Avery,” Briar says, but I flinch. Her face goes dark. “I’ll grab water and medicine.” As she turns, she mutters to Kassandra, “This is an assault.”
“I fear this is not the worst of it.”
“No,” I cry. “He didn’t put—”
“Quiet, Avery,” Kassandra says. “That’s an order.”
This is about Lila—
Briar swears, then exits as another faerie comes in, handing Kassandra parchment and a quill. My fae scratches out a note,and when she is done, she crumples the paper in her hands, closing her eyes. When she opens her fist, it’s gone.
I stop crying altogether.
“Mistress?” the other faerie asks.
“Leave.”
When they do, Kassandra turns to me. “Turns out you were right. I can send an experience along the plane, an Illusion that does the job, but sometimes I need help from the real thing. A hobby I’ve picked up recently since you’re not around to excessively annoy me.”
I want to ask her how and when someone taught her. But my throat is raw, my tongue cut up, my teeth aching. In slowing down, my awareness has shifted, less a cornered animal and more an exhausted one. The aching in my stomach increases. My mouth feels full of drying clay.
Kassandra ducks her head, leveling her eyes with mine. She wipes a thumb across my chin, across the tender bruise.
“He grabbed you in many places, didn’t he?” she whispers.
New tears spring to my eyes.
“But that’s not all,” she says. “Something has happened to Lila. Do not confirm it, it will only hurt. Something has happened to Lila, but help is almost here. That is what we’re going to focus on now. We will figure out the rest later.”
When Briar returns, she cups a hand under my neck, tilts my head. Still, my muscles give out as blackness spots my vision.
No,I think.I must hold on.
Briar dips a cloth in the water and squeezes it onto my lips. It burns, but enough times, and the drying blood gives way as they work in tandem, Kassandra blotting while Briar rinses. I swirl water in my mouth and when I spit it out, a tooth comes with it. I blink in shock, but Briar pockets it and they move on.
Finally, I try riddles. I think of Lila’s gold ring, the wings that represented her spirit. A hummingbird.
“The hummingbird…”
Kassandra and Briar do not glance at each other, though they both believe they’re the only ones to know up until now.
“Your friend, this hummingbird,” my mistress prompts.
“The eagle…the eagle froze the hummingbird. He, the k—”
“The eagle,” Briar interrupts. “Stick to the riddle.”
