“Where is she? Is she okay?” I asked him as I threw myself at the bars, clutching them while I braced for bad news.
Kaelric peered from me to Tyrus as if in wild fascination.
“She said not to worry,” Tyrus mumbled, his voice barely audible, the swoop of his dirty blond hair hanging over his eyes, which were rimmed red. Had he been crying? Creator help me, he looked so much like my father right now, it was like a second punch to the gut.
“Tyrus. Why didn’t she come?” I wanted to reach through the gate and grab his ratty shirt collar and shake him.
“She’s fine,” he assured me. “She’s just got a little fever.”
I inhaled sharply. Fever.
“Rash? Cough?”
Tyrus shook his head, and I relaxed a little.
Okay… maybe that wasn’t so bad, though a fever could turn quickly in the Dregs with no doctors or healers to help.
I nodded. “I’ll skip the trial. Help tend to her and keep up her shifts.” I went to pivot and climb through the gap, but Kaelric reached out and yanked me back.
“Skip the trial? We aren’t skipping the trial!” he commanded. In one motion, he pulled me backward and yanked the backpack of food from my shoulder before tossing it through the opening.
“Food for your mother to help her heal. We will be back in two days’ time to check on her,” Kaelric told Tyrus.
My little brother eyed the wolfkin warily but nodded, bending down to pick up the pack.
I reached up and grasped the side of Kaelric’s beautifully chiseled jaw and glared into his wild green eyes. “You don’t tell him what to do. You don’t tellmewhat to do. Understand?”
As if watching a watercolor painting, his eyes went from forest green, bleeding through with color, until it was golden honey.
“Take your hand off my face if you want to keep your fingers,” he growled.
“Creator!” Tyrus hissed, stepping back a pace.
I wanted to challenge Kaelric’s threat, to squeeze his jaw harder, but the memory of my broken arm had me letting go.
“You want to get your family out of the Dregs?” He leaned in closer to me. “To raise them up to Elite status overnight? Then you have to get on that train with me right now and go to the trial.”
“I don’t want magic at the expense of my mother dying!”
“It’s a fever, Brynn. No cough, no rash. It’s just a fever,” Kaelric pleaded with me.
“Fevers take people in the Dregs. Fevers turn to blood sickness, and even if my mother survives, her jobs will replace her without a stand-in.”
“So make your brother go in her place.” He gestured to Tyrus.
I laughed. “He’s already going in mine!”
He sighed. “Who’s the next eldest?”
“Mira. She’stwelve. And my mother’s jobs are specific, Mira can’t handle it.”
“Didn’t you say you have a bunch of cousins and aunts and uncles?”
I wanted to throttle him. “They all have their own jobs, their own kids to feed.”
He grimaced. “Fine. I’ll call in a favor. Someone to cover your mother’s jobs until we get back tomorrow night.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know someone in Aerlyn who will take my mother’s dayandevening shift? They will have to know how to run an industrial sewing machine.”
