“Save your vigor, girl. You’ll need it when the fiends catch us,” her mother snapped.
“Have you seen her? Have you seen Elloven?” Jesstin’s slurred words blended with the rain.
“Ella Venn? Who’s that?”
“Elizabeth, never mind that!”
“Red hair... stays near here... beautiful...” Jesstin slumped again. The faint bickering of his saviors was somewhere else, filtered out by the fiendish chorus closing in.
“Stays where?” Elizabeth gave him a sharp tug to rouse him. “Stays where?”
“Hush now, girl. Can’t you hear them coming?”
“Are you looking for a redheaded woman who stays in a havre nearby, alone? Never speaks with anyone else?” Elizabeth asked.
Jesstin’s head jerked as he tilted it toward her. Elizabeth had four faces, all of them kind. When he blinked, she was down to two. She looked to be Elloven’s age, too young to have died.
“I think we’ve seen her, Mother. You even said?—”
“I know only one thing right now, girl. Just there now, go. Go!”
“He’s too heavy to go any faster.”
“If he’s too heavy, then we’re already damned.”
Jesstin awoke half-prone on a bench like a drunkard, one knee bent up, the other leg planted on the ground. Elizabeth and her mother were gone.
Lanterns were strewn above him, stretching from tree to tree. He was in some kind of courtyard, with shops and taverns on both sides. It looked more like home than anything had so far, and he was swept in the current of the idea he might never have left, that it had all been some strange dream.
“Right over here, come.” It sounded like Elizabeth. “Do you see? Just there. Do you know him?”
“Where? Oh... Oh!” What followed was a scream wrapped in a sob. “Jesstin? Where... Where did you find him? How did you know...”
Warm hope exploded within. She was there. His Elloven was there, the woman he’d flipped his life upside down for, the person he’d do it for a million times over, even if it ended in his heartbreak every single time.
It couldn’t have been real, but it was.
Jesstin had come, and it hadn’t taken weeks. It had taken him five days—days that had not been kind, from the looks of him.
Elloven was bursting with questions, but he could hardly walk to the market by himself, and they had to get him somewhere safe and dry.
Elizabeth helped her take him to a nearby tavern, and there Elloven rented a room in the inn for the evening. Unlike most indulgences in the Infinitum, it cost nothing, but no one could stay for more than a single night.
“Do you know what happened to him?” Elloven asked as they stared at him passed out on the small bed.
Elizabeth blew out a pursed breath, her hands looped over her head. “We found him like that, in the road. He was stumbling around, delirious, calling for you. Everyone else ran by, but I couldn’t leave him there, knowing what was coming. You said your name was Ella Venn?”
Elloven nodded. “Elloven. One word.” She couldn’t pry her gaze from Jesstin. He was smothered in mud, but not so much that she couldn’t see the scratches on his face. She recognized one of them, because she’d been the cause, after their heated exchange in the dressing room. His other injuries were obscured, but she’d watched how he’d favored one leg, how he’d clutched one side.
Elizabeth shook her head at the hulk of a man lying half on, half off the bed. “Husband?”
“Jesstin? Oh, no.” Elloven blurted a surprised chuckle. “A friend.”
“Hmm.” Elizabeth wiped her hands on her skirts and nodded to herself. It had been her idea to place the rags under him before laying him on the clean bed, and Elloven knew she’d be grateful for it later.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“My mother and I have seen you around. We didn’t know you’d be here in Everspell, but it was as far as we could go with what’s happening out there.”
