“Steady,” Harkin murmured. His fingers brushed along the top of my spine, under the line of my hair. “Look at me.”
I laughed, though it quickly turned to a whine. “I do not want anything from you.”
“I can’t help you if I can’t see what’s wrong.” He raised a hand at my eager declination. “You need help, and I am the only one here. Look at me, Seren.”
I obliged, reluctantly, thinking at least if I should vomit it would be down his tunic instead of my own.
His face was so close to mine, too close. He regarded me, brown eyes dark beneath the shadow of the dense foliage. “Your pupils are blown,” he observed. “Are you dizzy? Nauseous?”
“Hmm,” I agreed, reaching for the place where his hand still rested upon my shoulder.
I latched onto him, grounding myself as my nails bit into the skin of his wrist. I squeezed until I felt the press of my bones on his—until it hurt. If I was to accept help from him, I decided, I needed him to hurt for it.
Kindness could not come free for either of us; there must be a cost.
“You’re mágik sick,” Harkin concluded. He pulled away, and I released him as if I had been burned. He rubbed the blood back into his hand, wordlessly. “I’ve seen it before, in soldiers that have spent too long on the Ordelésan side of the border. The mágik here is so much more potent, and you’ve had so little exposure. Your body is working to compensate for the flood of it.”
“Mágik sick.” I laughed, humorlessly. “Even my body is rejecting it. Just let me go.”
Harkin did not acknowledge the request. He only passed me a flask of water and a roll of crusty bread. “The sickness will pass. These will help.”
I held off as long as I could, suffering through the roiling nausea and my pounding skull, but I gave in eventually. The bread tastedlike ash on my tongue, poisoned as it was by his presence, but the water flowed crisp and cool.
Loathe as I was to admit it, my stomach did settle, though my head continued to ache as the sun rose high above us. It shone down between the thick copse of trees and warmed my skin, even as an icy draft bit through the air. In Ordelés, early autumn brought a chill, but it was far colder in the low mountains.
The stories my parents had told me when I was a child lingered in my mind, brought to life by the land before me. They had spun stories of mágikal forests teeming with all sorts of horrors and wonders, but I had not fathomed that reality could paint an even greater picture than the one I dreamed of.
A shiver rippled down my spine as I tried to shake the otherworldly memories of the previous day. The glowing orbs which had been so wonderful. The wraith which had shaken me to the core. The emotional whiplash alone would have been enough to make me sick, but the excess of mágik in my blood had tipped me over the edge.
I shuddered at the thought.
Harkin and I rode beneath thick boughs of a likeness I had never before seen, and they drew me from my musings. The trees in Ordelés were much thinner and shorter, almost stunted in comparison to the grove before me.
“The forest is so different here. Why is that?” I mused aloud. I bit my cheek hard, drawing blood, as I realized my mistake.
Fool, I chastised myself.Do not give him any opening for pleasant conversation!
“When the border was created, the bulk of Szrestian mágik was contained on the Acsillan side. The abundance of mágik nurtured these plants, encouraging them to grow far stronger than the scragglythings you’re used to in Ordelés,” Harkin explained. “It’s a shame, I imagine, to know so little of what this world is capable of. Whatyouare capable of.”
I had no response for that—no furious denial, no petty quip—so I said nothing at all.
As the day wore on, I continued to pointedly ignore Harkin. I forced my back straight, despite the ache that settled in my bones, determined not to let our bodies touch.
Harkin might feign kindness, but he was responsible for the end of my life as I knew it. I could never return to the Guardians. After the display he had manipulated me into at the promotion ceremony, I would be lucky if I were killed on sight. I feared a far worse fate would befall me, should I ever meet the Guardians again.
It was another home lost.
I was no longer welcome at my parents' home in Kis Temare. I could never return to the life I had built in the capitol. I belonged nowhere.
The truth of it threatened an emptiness that filled me with roiling anger.
Harkin may not have been the one to take my brother from me, to set off the sequence of events that had shaped me into who I was, but he was no better. It was clear to me that he had no regard for my life or my autonomy.
He was using me, but to what end?
I resolved to escape as soon as I formulated a halfway decent plan. It may be impossible to return to either of the lives I had known, but I could start again as I had done before. And if I could not escape from Harkin, then I would kill him.
I had slain dozens of Rázuri in my time as a Guardian. I knew how it felt to slice fatally through flesh and blood and bone, to watch the light leave dying eyes. I had taken joy in it once, as I had taken my revenge, but I was so tired.
