Page 12
She chews the second tomato, her hands trembling so badly she nearly drops it.
“I was careful,” I insist. “No one saw.”
She grabs my hand in a death grip, her nails digging in. “You said that last time.” There’s sweat on her forehead, and I worry she may pass out.
I tuck another tomato under her pillow and bite into mine, wishing I could swallow my dread with it. We don’t speak. We’re fixated on the barn doors, waiting for the sound of wagon wheels crunching through the icy gravel, the thundering hooves of the king’s horses, or the booming truck engines as the Guard storms the farm.
When the door finally slams open, I shoot to my feet, pulse skyrocketing while Sable scrambles to hide the tomato stems and her juice-slick fingers in the hay.
The terror in her gaze doesn’t fade until Arlo steps into view, grinning in the doorway with wild eyes. He sweeps his blond hair from his forehead and pulls in a quick breath, clearly winded from running here.
“Arlo?” I breathe in relief, but then a new fear takes over as he steps inside and pulls his hood down. “Arlo, what are you doing? You can’t be here. What if . . .” He walks forward until he’s standing over me, and his silent grin turns my stomach upside down. “Claudia will . . .”
He grips my face with both hands, eyes locking onto mine. My mind goes blank.
For a heartbeat, the world narrows to his hands and my breath. His palms are rough against my cheeks, and he is close enough that the faint scar on his jaw—the one he received for talking back to Mr. Crawly—is visible.
“You will never believe this.” His mouth is so close to mine that I can feel the heat from his words on my lips. Sable’s ragged cough is what breaks our trance. I’m both thankful and devastated when his eyes turn to my sister. “That flu still got its claws in you, Sable?”
His expression hardens as he takes her in. Sable doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t need to. Anyone who laid eyes on her weak body would know she isn’t well. “I’ve spoken to Mom. We might be able to help barter with one of the healers in town for some antibiotics,” Arlo tells her before glancing at me. “Did you give her what I found?”
My jaw drops. How could I have forgotten about the stolen bottles?
“You went scavenging?” Sable questions.
“Yes, in the old mage ruins in the forest. Found some cough syrup, camphor, and foot fungus cream.” Arlo laughs. I swallow thickly at his lie. He has no clue how much that place haunts Sable and me or why. I quickly move to retrieve it before passing the small bottle to Sable.
She turns it over in her hands. “You found this?” she asks in disbelief. I snatch it from her, pretending to read the label. Sable has an uncanny ability to read a lie on me with one look, so I keep my eyes trained on the bottle.
“Yep, dropped it over to Ali this morning,” Arlo adds.
Sable’s gaze narrows slightly. “The bottle looks new.” Sable snatches it back, and the movement causes a deep, rattling cough to explode from her frail body. Her gaze meets mine, telling me she knows we went somewhere while she was sleeping. Arlo clears his throat.
“Yeah, seems luck was on my side.” He chuckles.
“Did Claudia see you come in here?” I quickly change the subject, eyeing the door behind him for a set of basset-hound eyes and a gray head of hair bobbing into sight. I could not bear to see him whipped again for disobeying her.
Arlo’s bubbling excitement returns as he moves slowly toward the door, one backward step at a time. “She sent me.”
My brows pinch in confusion.
Arlo slips out the barn doors and pulls his coat collar back up against the wind. “Come see for yourself. You won’t believe it!”
CHAPTER 4
• Alessia •
“WHAT IS IT?” Sable stands on weak legs and reaches for my hand.
Arlo’s already out the barn door without answering, bounding off through the mud and slush.
Sable puts one foot in front of the other timidly as we follow. He’s running so fast his boots slip on a patch of ice, and he almost wipes out. I have to grab Sable by the arm so her unsteady legs can keep up with me. I don’t like surprises.
“Alessia, the snow . . .”
The world outside is blinding, the thick layer of snow I had trudged through just moments ago has started to melt unexpectedly beneath the morning sun. The air is sharp with the scent of molding compost heaps, but there’s a whiff of something else on the icy breeze, a sticky-sweet sharpness that makes my head swim. I taste metal at the back of my throat as I chew the inside of my cheek.
We round the corner of the main house, and the sight stops me dead in my tracks. The fields—the ones that, just this morning, were teeming with dead vines and frost-burned leaves—are now alive.
