Asher Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The rabbit blood held for a day, then failed. By dusk the fire returned under Asher's ribs. The woman sat in the fuzzy orange chair, reading by the tall bookcase. Each time she turned a page, her wrist moved, and his fangs ached. He could not keep running to the woods each morning. One missed feeding and he would kill her. He needed something that lasted. He left her sleeping and ran to the wolf hut. Rowan met him at the door, ears flat. "Again," he said. It was not a question. "The rabbits fade too fast," Asher said. "By night I'm hungry again. I need a way to stay fed. A real way." Rowan's tail hung still. "There isn't one. Not from me." But he glanced sideways, toward a cottage bright with flowers past the trees. "There's someone who knows old craft. She won't like you." She was already coming up the path. Pink hair, pink wings that dropped sparkles with each step. She was a fairy, and she stopped short when she saw Asher, her small face hard. "You brought a vampire here," she said to Rowan. Her voice shook, but she planted her feet. "To my friend's door." "Roselyn," Rowan said. "He's trying not to kill someone." Roselyn looked at Rowan the way someone looks at the person they love. Then she looked at Asher and folded her arms. "Trying isn't the same as doing." "Please," Asher said. "There's a woman in my manor. A dragon bonded to her. I want her alive more than I want her blood. Give me a way to hold the hunger longer than a day." Roselyn studied him. The sparkles slowed. "You mean it," she said, surprised. She reached into her pouch and drew out a small blue blossom, frosted white at the edges. "Blush frost blossom. Boil the petals. Drink it after you feed on an animal. It stretches the calm from one day to seven." Asher took it. "Seven days." "If you're careful." She stepped back toward Rowan. "I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it so Rowan doesn't have to dig a grave." Asher ran home. He caught a rabbit in the snare, drank, then boiled the petals in the manor's cold kitchen. The brew tasted of ice and roots. He swallowed it down. The woman woke and found him kneeling by her chair. He waited for the fire. It stayed low, buried, quiet. He leaned close and smelled her hair and felt no craving. For seven days he could sit beside her like this. But the blossom was one flower. When it ran out, he would need Roselyn again. And Roselyn would only help while Rowan asked her to. His safety now hung on two people who did not trust him, and on a fairy who counted the days until she could refuse.