Followed by Fros(46)

On I walked, folding my arms against the cold, breathing through a dry, parched throat. I felt light-headed, but I continued onward, needing to get away. Needing . . . something.

Sometime in the day—I cannot remember when—my foot slipped off the ridge of a hill of golden sand, and I tumbled down, down, down the ripples of gold, landing in a void of black.





CHAPTER 19





I couldn’t breathe.

I woke up choking, coughing as water ran over my mouth, freezing in uneven streams down my cheek and neck. I felt so cold, a sculpture of snow, but with the weight of a boulder crushing me. Darkness. Gray. Darkness. My head pounded rhythmically, as if someone were pounding nails into my temples.

I heard shouting in the distance, then again right over me.

My eyes fluttered open. Storm clouds, orange light. Snow and sand. A blur of brown and black over me that looked remarkably like Lo. I heard his voice, but I didn’t understand his words.

Darkness threatened to descend again, but I fought through it and forced my eyes open. Where was I? A chill stiffened my back, and I coughed, droplets of ice hitting my tongue.

I heard Lo’s voice again, shouting to someone I couldn’t see. He disappeared for a moment, and then indigo cloth draped over me, covering my eyes. He pushed it behind my head. The snow and sand fell away from me, and I floated, cradled in someone’s arms. I bobbed and swayed in a sea of black, swallowed by the intoxicating scents of cardamom and sandalwood.



Again I woke up coughing.

Strength outside my own helped me sit up, and I choked and rasped through a cold and raw throat, as though I had swallowed briars. My head spun.

“She’s awake?” A female voice.

“Here, it’s hot.” Another.

Trying to swallow, I glanced up and saw two women I did not recognize: one in her midthirties with a heavy braid over her shoulder and a white head scarf, the other much older, with deep wrinkles and more gray hairs than black. I stared at them for a long moment, picking at my memories. Where was I?

My cavern, my bed, though the fire near the door burned brightly now, as did the oil lamp. What time was it?

I tried to ask my visitors what had happened, but my words were too hoarse.

The older woman held a tin cup in a towel, steam rising from its lip. She handed it to someone beside me—the one who had helped me sit up.

Lo.

I gaped, but he pressed the hot cup into my hands. It smelled like flowers—rose water—and still bubbled. They had boiled it for me.

“Drink,” he said.

I lifted the cup to my lips and drank quickly, the liquid filling my mouth and running down my throat. The last swallow went down the wrong pipe, and I coughed again, covering my mouth with a gloved hand.

“Slowly!” Lo said, exasperated. He handed the cup back to the woman.

I cleared my throat enough to manage an “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” he snapped. “You have proved yourself a fool, Smeesa.”

Those words stung me more than they should have. I glanced at him, at his hard eyes, his mouth set in a firm line.

Then I remembered. The desert, my fall. Lo. Lo had saved me.

Oh, how wildly I would have blushed if the curse had not hidden it.

The younger of the two women asked, “Can you eat?”

I nodded, and she handed me a steaming bowl of some sort of bland mush, but I hardly complained. Despite her warning to eat slowly, I shoveled the goop into my mouth as quickly as I could, partially due to hunger, partially because I did not want the food to freeze. Lo stood from his chair and ran a hand through his hair before pacing to the back of the cavern. The older woman set a mug of hot coffee in his place.

The last few bites of the meal froze to the bottom of the bowl, but I scraped them off with my spoon and crunched the almost milky ice between my teeth before reaching for the coffee. It was a different blend than what Lo had given me—spicier and less sweet. I coughed a little as I swallowed it, liquid, and then slush. My stomach turned into a rock inside me, and I winced at the nausea.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You should not eat so quickly,” scolded the older woman.

“There was no food in the cavern,” Lo murmured, low and quiet. “I found your supplies nearly a mile away.”

Biting my lip, I glanced over at him. His bronze arms were folded against his chest, and he glowered at me with a face that could curdle fresh milk.

The younger of the two women said, “Perhaps now is not the time—”

“You are excused,” Lo quipped, not taking his stony glare off me. I shrank under his scrutiny and wished I could disappear into the mattress.

The two women frowned, but they gathered their things and stepped outside into the calm falling snow. Judging from the light, it looked to be midday.

“Why were your supplies so far out?”

I looked away, not wanting to answer.

Lo slammed his fist on the table, making me jump. “Why were your supplies so far out?”

“Rhono left them there, but it’s not her fault,” I said, twisting the index finger of my left glove. “I scared her.”

Lo snorted. “And Havid? Aamina?”

“Aamina’s sister just had a baby.” I hoped everything had gone all right with the birth. What if it hadn’t? What if that was why Aamina had not been back to see me? A new sickness bloomed in my gut at the thought.