Wicked is the Curse.

21 | Heart

Chapter 21 | Heart

Aire woke that morning with nightmares clinging to the edges of her mind. The same old nightmares, of clawing hands and fire. They should have had no effect on her after all this time, but her sleeping mind paid no homage to the passage of time. In her dreams, those fires still burned and those people were in the final moments of life – and not long turned to naught but bone and worms.

She lay there, blinking at the burgeoning sky for a long stretch. The camp was silent, save for the soft rattle of Laochra's snore. Levrna was on watch, but Aire could not hear the woman making her walk around the camp. Cautiously, Aire stretched a hand on and touched the cold, hard earth.

With a shaking breath, she searched. It wasn't a conscious thing, but a sense or flicker of life. When she felt the earth, the rock, the wood under her fingers it was easier to find that spark. She felt swell of breathing, the shifting of feet. Levrna was on the camp's edge.

When her mind was scattered, the world felt dull. How had she lived without this before? The whisper of life, the hum of growth all around her. She would have grown flowers in abundance in her room down in the catacombs and slept on a bed of petals. How she could have used her spirits, and this ability to move through the city unhindered.

As Aire sat, she felt the weeks of travel pulsating up her back and hips. She rolled onto her knees; her head tipped back to breathe in a lungful of morning air. No one in the camp roused as Aire picked her way to the edge of the camp. The embers of the fire still flickered, but there was little warmth left.

Again, she tipped her face to the sky. The great towering walls of stone hindered the light, but dawn was stubborn in her rise. Light was creeping around the stone, slitting across their path. She was beginning to love these quiet morning hours, or the quiet hours of night when the world was still and silent. There was an undercurrent of magic woven into those hours, through the cold night wind or in the droplets of morning dew.

All these years of beauty – had she been blind to it with Eoban burning through her blood?

The thought of it caused a pulse of pure need, like punch to her stomach. Aire winced, settling a hand against it.

"You had a nightmare."

The voice jolted her.

The Bloodbound was there, tied at the edge of the camp. They had discarded the cloth around his eyes during the night. Aire wondered if it was because they could see where he was with those liquid silver eyes. Un-natural eyes. There were dried rivulets of blood on his throat, drying on his collar and his wrists were darkened with flakes of wine-red. He was secured to a tree, tied so tight that Aire couldn't believed that his limbs hadn't darkened and dropped away. As if she would be so lucky.

"Do not wake the others," She scolded, her voice low. "They deserve their sleep."

His lips curled into a salacious smile. "Ever the sweet one."

Again. Like a knife wedged into her, leaking poison of pure annoyance. "Stop calling me that."

The venom in her voice had no effect on him. "You always did hate nicknames."

The sound of his voice had shattered her morning peace – before that peace could settle into her bones. She felt a horrible mood falling over her. The kind that Aevran had always been able to sense – one that he entertained because he too had been prone to days of melancholy and moping. "You cannot make such assumptions about me."

Her tongue was fuzzy. Dry. Thirst sanded her throat, but she knew water would do little to quench it.

"You did not sleep well." His voice lowered all the same. No one in the camp had yet risen – the stone blocking the light warped their sense of time.