Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 37

Some twisted, horrible mortal part of me propels me forward. Some cruel, masochistic thing keeps me drinking water and sucking in breaths.

Every step I make, gravel crunching under borrowed boots, feels like a hunt now.

Only I am the prey.

It has been days since I was unceremoniously dumped at a dock fifty leagues down the gulf from Raith after a nauseating day on choppy storm-ridden waters. I still feel nightmares on my heels.

I’m a starving animal picking my way across lowlands and mountains. Hiding in the day, writhing in nightmares by night. Trembling in fear in the moments between.

Gulping down the last dregs of water in my water-skin, I thank the heavens for Rheol only a few leagues away. The heat of the summer boils my once-frozen blood. It makes me feel like a creature, foreign in this body of ice and otherness. It points out the blatant truth that I don’t belong.

Looking at the pasture before me I see Rheol in the distance, the snaking river Shana a shimmering taunt on the horizon. Its waters run fast, wide, and vicious—running from the frigid snow-melt off the Ghaels, through the center of Suri, branching off in smaller segments, webbing through the Wynedd forest, one such passing through Comraich itself, curving down to meet a delta near Tristram. Another branch meets a delta in Raith. It is the main vessel of travel and life through the country. The crossing in Comraich is modest and free moving. The crossing is Rheol is large and popular because of its central nature, sure to be bustling with people from all over.

The city is also swarming with Crows. Surely my description and news of my escape has reached the city on horseback. There is no way around it though, not one that I am willing to accept. It would take days to go around it, back through Comraich, going back the same way I came with the Fianna. The logical aversions to that route bring relief; the thought of going back to that place makes me break out in a cold sweat. Especially the thought of seeing a pile of ash where my childhood used to be. I fear one more anguish will make me lie down in them, burrow my useless body beneath what’s left of the town and just let myself end there. How fitting it would be.

But I think of Fionn and everything between us I can’t begin to name. Elva and her loyalty to me, her steadfastness and strength. Aine, somewhere coping with what she saw; coping with what her life now is. Armund and his sweet smiles and friendship. Even Konan, how he loves Aine. How he protected all of us, but especially her. I could not give up on any of them. I will find the allies they’ve always sought. I will find them. I will get Fionn out.

The other crossings are just as dangerous. I may have been able to sneak through the lowlands, largely made up of farmlands and large estates owned by the wealthy in Farus— the city I was dropped closest to a few days prior—but I can wield my way through, unseen. Surely I can.

Instead of eating, I pull energy from the grass, from the trees, their ancient power so large and sustainable I cannot resist the urge to pull from it, to let it power my solemn, purposeful steps. It isn’t a lot. I still tremble from hunger. I can still see my skin dulling, my hair beginning to pull out in stringy dual-colored strands—but it has to be enough. I haven’t the time to hunt, to steal, not when the energy around me will keep my feet moving forward.

I still haven’t derived the Pretty King’s motives. I peer behind me every few breaths, certain I’ll see a Crow or a hound lurking in the grass to my rear. The paranoia has a hold on me. I feel as close to mad as ever. Waking in the night only to pace around, spending hours peering up into trees and searching the shadows. Nothing is ever there, at least, nothing that makes itself known to me. But can it really all be in my head? And who’s to say that means it’s nothing? I can’t be sure anymore. I can’t be sure.

My sleep is haunted too. The Pooka. Fionn’s screams and his soft touches that only the two of us knew about. The purple hue of his face as he gasped for breath in the throne room, but in my dreams, he never gasps those life-giving breaths. Haunted by the look in his eyes right before he kissed me that first time. Haunted by the words he spat at me when he saw who I was. Haunted by every moment we probably won’t ever get to have.

I can’t tell which nightmares I prefer, the ones where I’m awake or sleeping.