She was only just stabbed down the road. Takes a whole lot longer than a couple of hours for a wound to look as fucked up as that.
Arwyn utters a single word in his language.
Samick’s grip on the tether tightens.
I look up at him. “What’s wrong with her?”
The frost of Samick’s eyes cut down at me. “Poison.”
I should maybe be startled that he even answered me. But it’s the answer itself that snags in my mind.
One of the fae stabbed her in the stomach—with a poisoned blade.
My face twists with the grisliness of it.
Because why the fuck do the fae have poisoned weapons?
Really, what’s the point of it if the people that the fae are here to kill are either held captive or killed on the spot?
Unless there are types of fae, those with a different kind of sickness in them, find it fun to cut a person, then let them run… let them think they got away…
But the poison gets them in the end.
A sadness settles in me.
Dejected, I watch as Arwyn throws off his satchel and it strikes the car with a clang, then he’s rummaging through it with an urgency that tightens his mouth into a twisted line.
I can’t look.
It’s too… gross.
But I hear it.
The sludge of open flesh with the clattering of phials and murmured words that I can only assume are curses.
And Ismellit.
The pus, the festering, the infection that sprouted in such a short amount of time.
I tuck closer to Samick’s side, the tip of my nose grazing his arm, as though it’ll shield me from both the sound and smell.
It doesn’t.
Not until Arwyn is done, and he has Mika in his arms again, cradled.
The torchlight glimmers over them, revealing the concern in his slanted mouth and icy eyes.
Samick is just as uneasy.
His fist is frost on the tether, his jaw clenched so tight that a muscle feathers on his cheek.
I don’t need to be told that this shit is urgent.
We move—and we move fast.
ELEVEN
The drizzle has been constant since the farm. It stuck around through the hailstorm—and even now, stagnant in the air, it’s starting to turn my nose raw and runny.
