‘Briar? My mother? Or Blayze?’ Leilani asks with a woeful attempt at a laugh, which fast turns into a dry hack.
‘All of them.’ My whisper comes out like the desperate prayer it is.
Leilani is paler than ever, the crescents under her eyes darker. Since that vision of the Queen, she’s even more distracted. Eyes forever glued to the small cabin window, inspecting the mountain. For what, she won’t say. Her nights are disturbed too. Bad dreams each time she sleeps, which is too seldom. Her fears for her mother, for Blayze, for Briar… for me. It’s taking its toll. Too much weight on those narrow shoulders.
But part of me is glad she suffers.
I study the dark ribbon snaking her hair, think back to my last conversation with Orthriel and shudder.
I shake those fears away. There’s no reason to fear the worst. Not yet.
Tansy approaches my bedside, clutching the life-saving blood to her chest. ‘I tried to take the least I could and still have enough to…’ She bites her lip, casts a look back at Briar who’s curled on the cabin floor, licking her wounds.
Leilani stands, eyes brightening. ‘Let’s go to him.’
I flex my hand again, use the ensuing pain to temper the wrench in my chest at the relief flooding Leilani’s face with the prospect of restoring the Clanschief back to health.
But if she can still care for others – even if it’s him – then, surely, she’s safe.
Orthriel was wrong.
*
THEPINEBRANCHBlayze is using as a crutch lands with a heavy thud on the cabin floor. The sound reverberates all the way up to the sleeping platform. Just what I need when my head is already pounding. Blayze grunts. In pain, in frustration, who can tell anymore? Grimacing, I huddle further into my furs. Such a blessing the Clanschief has been restored to us. Such a blessing that blood Tansy administered three risings ago worked.
Maris bends to pick up the staff. ‘I’m happy to help. I—’
‘I don’t want your help,’ Blayze says, seizing the stick roughly from her hands. He forces his weight onto it and shuffles away from her, to the corner of the cabin furthest from the door. The effort draws a fresh sheen of sweat on his brow, hoarse groans from his clenched lips.
Beside me, Leilani tracks his stilted progress with a pained expression. I don’t need a star-brand to read her thoughts.
Was Briar’s sacrifice worth it? Blayze is walking now, but barely.
I glance over to the far corner of the sleeping platform where the sylvanmare lies curled at Tansy’s feet as she prepares more of the foul-smelling salve for my arm. I must remember to speak to her about preparing a tonic for Leilani. Something to help her sleep. Briar is scarcely able to lift her head since the blood-letting. There’s no question of her continuing on our quest. She’ll have to remain in this cabin till we return from our summit attempt. Or if we don’t make it back, till she recovers enough to journey to Xylia on her own. It’s a mercy Tansy had the foresight to dry all those lilacs – that I was able to reclaim them in Galtair. At least the poor creature won’t starve.
Not that Blayze is anywhere near ready to scale the mountain.
Every moonsrising matters and eighteen have now passed since the lightning strike. I know Leilani is counting them. I know how worried she is about the Queen. The Outrealmers haven’t been told about the Sister-Stones, so they can’t understand her fears about not making it to the caves in time. I reach for Leilani’s shoulder, deliberately using my injured hand so she can see it’s improving. I bite back most of the pain, but not all, and compound the damage by coughing as I gulp too-thin, bitter air into my straining lungs.
Leilani turns her gaze to me now, eyes narrowing. And I know she knows.
The effects of the tincture are wearing off. A little more with each rising. It’s the reason for the headaches I can’t seem to shift.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Ready to venture forth whenever you tell me.’
She tilts her head, staring up at me like the Queen used to when I was a boy swearing blind I’d not spent all afternoon at the stables again, before she stooped to tug a treacherous fleck of straw from my hair. She was the only person to ever guess my secret – the reason I spent so much time with the horses. And she never breathed a word of it.
My chest clenches. I want to summit that mountain every bit as much as Leilani.
‘Truly, I’m fine,’ I say again.
‘Well,he’sclearly not,’ she says, gaze flitting back to Blayze’s abandoned nest of furs.
I swallow. There’s no point lying. ‘Give it more time. Sylvanmare blood is potent – look what it did for the Arx Magnum’s guards…’
I wish the words unsaid even before I finish uttering them. Her face hardens; she snatches her hand away, balls it to a fist. Peak’s sake! What happened to my silver tongue? Of course, she doesn’t want to remember those guards… what transpired on that mountain.
‘He was burning a fever only a few nights ago,’ I try again. ‘Barely able to move. Now look at him. Fever gone. Walking again.’ I don’t mention the fits that still grip him while he sleeps, the worrying way his temper flares, that he’s hobbling more than walking. ‘Your mother would tell you to have faith. Remember how she loved the tale of the Dawn Sister climbing the Astral Mountain to sing through the stars? Driven by blind faith her Beloved would know then that she’d stayed constant to his memory…’
