Lilith Thornveil's Arc

Chapter 4 of 11

Lilith counted twenty-three red fruits in her cloak. Enough to keep Selene fed for days. Not enough to matter if she fell asleep at the wrong hour. The hunter would arrive by tomorrow. Selene could not stand. Lilith had not slept in two nights, and her hands were starting to miss the bowl when she set it down. She stepped out through the thorn arch and whistled low. A small shape dropped from the ravine wall and scurried to her boot. A second shape glided down after it, half bat, half mouse, wings folding neat against its back. She had raised them from pups. They knew her voice and the shape of her palm. "Listen," she said. She crouched on the amethyst floor. The crystals threw purple light up onto the creatures' faces. "One of you at the arch. One of you at the ridge. If a man comes, you run back and bite my ear. Not the hand. The ear. Understand?" They climbed her sleeve and pressed their noses to her jaw. She set them down and pointed. They went. She crushed two fruits into the wooden bowl and carried it to the alcove. Selene took it without looking up. Her hands still shook. "I set watchers," Lilith said. "I can sleep in shifts now. So can you, once you can stand." "You trust rats." "I trained them. That's different." Selene drank. Color came back into her mouth. "And if he comes while you sleep?" "They wake me. I whistle the bat down. We fly." Lilith walked to the pool at the center of the cavern. The water sat still over a bed of opal and amethyst. She had washed Selene's wound in it twice and watched the cuts close faster than they should have. She scooped a handful and drank. Her headache eased at once. She filled the bowl and brought it back. "Drink this too. After the fruit." Selene drank. She lowered the bowl and her eyes were steadier than they had been since the orchard. "My legs feel like mine again." "Good. Then you take the second watch." Lilith lay down against the wall, one hand on her knife, the other open on the crystal floor where the small warm body of the returning mouse-bat could find her. She closed her eyes. She slept four hours. No teeth at her ear. She woke on her own, clear-headed, and found Selene sitting upright at the arch with the bowl empty beside her and both creatures curled in her lap. "Nothing yet," Selene said. Lilith nodded. She had solved the wrong problem first. She could hold this cavern now. She could stay awake in turns and eat and heal. But the wind was moving north, toward the ravine, and it carried Selene's scent straight to whoever was walking into it.