Brandon Ashveil's Arc

Chapter 3 of 18

Brandon made it half a day north before the bond dropped him. He was crossing a shallow creek when his enemy took a blow somewhere far ahead. His left knee buckled as if struck. He went down in the water and could not get up. The cold soaked through his leathers. His hands shook on the stones. He crawled to the bank and lay there watching the trees spin. He knew then he would not reach the sunken groves alone. Every mile the fae lord's fever pressed harder against his ribs. Every wound the man took, Brandon's body copied. If he collapsed in open forest, wolves or worse would find him before morning. He turned back. It took him until dark to stagger the road he had walked in a morning. Dayna's dog met him at the tree line and did not bark. She came out of the longhouse with a lantern in her hand, the small kind that held live fireflies behind glass. The bugs threw soft yellow light on her face. She looked at him, at the wet leathers, at the blood on his mouth that was not his. "You're leaking on my step again," she said. But she set the lantern on the bench and got under his arm. She hauled him inside and stripped the wet gear off him without ceremony. She put him by the fire and pushed a bowl of broth into his hands. He tried to speak and she told him to drink first. He drank. She checked his pulse, then his eyes, then the bruise blooming under his ribs that belonged to another man. "You can't ride him out," she said. "Every spasm he throws, you catch. You'll die on a road with no one to find you." "Then teach me to shut it," Brandon said. "Not sever it. Dampen it. Enough to travel." She sat back on her heels. She studied him a long moment. He had never seen her still like that. "I can dull it," she said. "Not close it. You'd feel him like a voice through a wall instead of a hand on your throat. But it costs. You'd lose the fine read. You'd know north. You wouldn't know how weak he is." "Do it." She worked past midnight. She ground root and bark and something that smelled like scorched honey. She painted a line down his sternum with the paste and pressed her thumb hard between his collarbones until he gasped. The cold weight in his side went quiet. Not gone. Muffled. He slept on her floor again. When he woke, she was already grinding at the bowl, the firefly lantern still lit beside her elbow though the sun was up. He watched her hands for a long time before he spoke. Something in his chest had shifted that had nothing to do with the bond. "I can walk now," he said. "I know," she said. "That's the problem."