“I’m here,” the stranger said. “Are you dizzy? Do you need to vomit again?”
Again? Had she already vomited once?
“I can’t see.”
A long exhalation. “It’s very dark here. Your eyes are probably fine. You’ve taken a blow to the head, but it would be unusual for that to take your sight.”
Not impossible. Unusual.
It was true even. She knew that from her mother’s lessons, but it didn’t help to reassure her when she couldn’t see so much as a shadow of gray in the darkness.
She turned her head in the direction of the voice, slowly opened her fingers, which had locked around a strong wrist. The chain that bound her wrists clanked against stone when she lowered them to the ground.
“She doesn’t use chains like that,” the voice said. “They feel like ours. Are you a witch? Why has she locked you in here?”
“I’m not a witch.”
Not really.
Not like he meant.
She swallowed down the nausea that rose in her throat as she turned onto her side, not wanting her wound to sit in whatever moisture coated the floor of this place. Was it blood? Was itherblood?
She tried to feel the back of her head, but it was hard to manage with the irons.
A hand caught her arms and lowered them. “Don’t mess with it. Your skull isn’t broken, but there’s a cut and some swelling. I’ve nothing to dress it with, but the bleeding has slowed.”
He didn’t say anything about blood loss. Or infection. Of course, if the witch had captured her, infection was the least of her worries. A fever that took her out of her head might actually be welcome.
The witch…
What happened?
Her head ached. Her thoughts were fuzzy. And the nausea wouldn’t let her so much as try to sit up. But she felt the need to move. The need to run trembled through every limb, singing through her veins. She tried to order her thoughts. To think it through.
“You’re Asher,” she said.
Casrian’s missing medic.
“Hmm.”
“I hit my head.” The stupid irons and the runaway horse. A familiar had come at them out of nowhere. Garin dropped the reins. She’d blacked out.
“Where are we?” Her voice trembled. She thought she knew. Now that she was coming back to herself, this place felt familiar. The darkness that was like an abyss, without bottom, just a drop that went on forever and forever. That smell…
“We’re in the dungeon of some old fortress,” he said. “Who are you?”
A trace of hardness in the question. Of course he was suspicious.
She rubbed at the ache in her forehead. “My name is Rowan. Rowan Yahl. I came here with Casrian. He was injured in the woods, and I patched him up. He hired me as a guide because I knew where the fort was. He’s been looking for you.”
There was a moment of silence while he processed that. “Why are you in irons?”
“Emrys. He put me in irons because…because he’s a suspicious ass who didn’t believe that someone like Casrian would have hired me as a guide.”
Asher breathed a laugh. “It does seem unlikely.”
“I’m a good guide. I got Casrian back to your patrol and gave them directions to the nest. I saved Sol’s life.”
