Free Bones of Faerie03 - Faerie After by Janni Lee Simner Page B

true?”
    “I don’t know,” Allie said. “The squirrel—it was only its body crumbling away, not its … its essence. That’s true for fire fever, too. The man who died … what you would call his shadow, it left him. It didn’t unravel like his body was doing. But that’s also true for all sorts of illnesses that have nothing to do with the crumbling. Don’t scare me.”
    “I’m not saying it to scare you.” I was saying it because when Allie healed, she was touching the fire fever as surely as she’d touched the crumbling squirrel. “I’m saying it so you’ll be careful.”
    “Of course I’m careful!” Allie bit fiercely into the rest of her tuber. “But of course I’m going to do all I can, and not just because we’re trapped here and I have no choice. Nys doesn’t understand that. It’s so strange that he’s Caleb’s father, isn’t it? I think it’s because of Caleb he decided to trust me a little, but he doesn’t trust you. I don’t know why.”
    Perhaps it was because I would still take out his eyes, given the chance. I had little talent for hiding such things. I needed to learn to hide them. “You’re Caleb’s student,” I said. “And I’m Karin’s.”
    “I don’t see why—” Allie picked up another tuber, turned it in her hand.
    “I think faerie politics are complicated, and I think Caleb and Karin used to be on different sides of them.” I took a vegetable from the bowl, too, doing my best to ignore the slimy way it slid down my throat.
    Allie set her tuber back in the bowl, uneaten. “I’m so worried about them. We don’t know if Karin’s even alive, and Caleb—he’ll do anything to get to us.”
    “I know.” I rubbed at my shoulder, but I couldn’treach all the sore spots on my own. Lowering my voice, I said, “Matthew’s with him.”
    “Of course he is. Don’t need visions to see that.” Allie wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m tired, but it doesn’t seem right to sleep when so many people I care about are in so much trouble.”
    “If you rest, you’ll be better able to help them.”
    “I know that. I do.” Allie sipped from the wine skin. “You need sleep, too, Liza.” She handed me the skin.
    I drank as well. “I slept while you were gone. Go ahead.”
    “All right.” Allie pillowed her head in my lap, and this time she fell asleep as easily as after a day’s work in the fields. I brushed her hair back from skin clammy with sweat.
    I watched for patches of darkness, for any scent of decay, and most of all for Tolven to keep
his
promises.
    Tolven didn’t return. I kept watching long after Allie’s light went out, but when I saw new light in the distance at last, it was Nys, come to fetch Allie away once more.

Chapter 7
     
    A llie woke at that light, and we both stood to face the stone shaper. He ignored us, kneeling instead to examine the pile of gray dust. He tapped his belt, and one of the links took on a liquid brightness. He drew the link free, and it shifted into a sharp stone shard. Nys poked the shard into the dust, removed it, and, finding it whole, pressed it back into his belt, where it became ordinary stone once more. He put his hands to the floor on either side of the dust then, and that stone, too, turned to shining liquid. Sweat trickled down Nys’s face as the liquid rock flowed over the dust, covering it before hardening again.
    “That should hold well enough,” Nys said. “And so you see more of the damage the Uprising has wrought. Come, Healer.”
    Had the fires my people sent truly caused this crumbling, as surely as they’d caused the unraveling of fire fever? How could any fire hold that much power?
    Allie let Nys’s fingers wrap around hers. I wanted to throw up the sickly sweet vegetables I’d eaten. How many times would I watch, powerless, as he took Allie away?
    “Take me with you,” I said. Allie shouldn’t have to do this alone—and beyond this room, there might be some chance of escape. Tolven