Brandon Ashveil's Arc

Chapter 6 of 18

The mist did not lift when the antlered queen was gone. She had said her piece and walked back between the pale trunks, and the grove had closed behind her like a shut door. Brandon and Dayna were left standing on the last patch of ground the fireflies had marked safe. He could still feel the fae lord ahead of him, but only barely. A pull, the way you feel a rope tied to your belt from another room. Since Dayna had dampened the bond, that was all he got. Direction. No heat. No fever. No sense of how close. "He's moving," Brandon said. He turned a slow half circle. The pull slid with him and settled again, north and a little east. "Or I am. I can't tell." Dayna crouched and lifted the lantern. The fireflies burned steady over the moss at their feet and died the moment she swept them outward. "She salted the whole grove," Dayna said. "The safe paths are gone. We walk, we drown." "Then I walk toward him." "Toward what? You can't feel him proper anymore. That was the trade." She stood. Ginger curls stuck to her forehead. Her satchel hung heavy against her hip, the fae remains inside it her own reason for being here. "He's fevered. He could be ten paces off through those trees, or he could be a mile under stone in his tunnels. You'd pass him and never know." Brandon knew she was right. Before the dampening he would have felt the man's every shiver in his own teeth. Now the fae lord was a compass point and nothing more. If he wandered, the queen only had to wait. Her kin would sleep off his fever in some dark hole and slip away, and Brandon would still be walking circles when the mist ate him. He looked at Dayna. "Undampen it." Her face went flat. "That will kill you inside an hour if he's as sick as I think." "Not all of it. Enough to feel him. A crack in the door." "I don't know how to do half a thing, Brandon." "Then guess." She stared at him. Then she set the lantern down and dug in her satchel. She pulled out a stub of black wax and a pinch of something dry and brown. She made him hold out his wrist. She pressed the wax to the vein and crushed the herb over it and said three words he did not catch. The grove tilted. Heat rushed up his arm into his chest. His knees buckled. Fever, not his. Bright and sick and close. He heard himself gasp. He also heard, somewhere ahead and below, a man cough wetly in the dark. Brandon lifted his head. Sweat ran into his eyes. "Stone," he said. "He's under stone. That way." He pointed. Dayna picked up the lantern. "Then we find the door before it kills you."