Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(47)

“I’m … up,” he gritted out. His eyelids shivered wide. Cam’s dappled face swam into view, a gray dawn sky behind.

“Thank you, Noden,” she breathed. And finally, finally she stopped shaking him. “You really should be dead, sir, but you’ve the blessing of Lady Baile on your side.”

“That,” Merik croaked, his throat more wasted and sore than it had been in days, “or the Hagfishes think I taste bad.”

She laughed, but it was a taut sound. False. Then her words blurted out, too fast to stop. “I was so worried, sir! It’s been hours since we went to Pin’s Keep. I thought you were dead!”

Shame spun in Merik’s chest, while she helped him to rise. “It’s all right, boy. I’m all right.”

“But I saw you go upstairs, sir, and I waited … and waited—just like you told me to do. But then that white-haired first mate went up, and I thought for sure you were in trouble. Except nothing happened. The woman came back down, and … you didn’t.” Cam thumped her stomach. “My gut was sayin’ you were in trouble, but by the time I got up there, you were gone—are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Merik repeated, pulling his hood into place. “Just soaked through.” It was true; he was drenched all the way to his small clothes. And cold—he was cold too.

“Why did I just fish you from the Timetz, then? Where’d you go, sir?” She fixed him with an expression that was a cross between a glare and plea. As if she desperately wanted to be annoyed with her admiral but just couldn’t quite bring herself to it.

“I’ll explain once we’re back at the tenement.”

“Hye, Admiral,” she murmured.

Merik’s shoulders tensed for his ears. It felt like a lifetime since anyone had called him that. He didn’t miss it.

Motioning for Cam to release him—he could walk on his own—Merik set off for the stone steps leading out of the canal. He owed the girl an apology. But not, he thought, an explanation. Stacia Sotar and the Fury, a shadow man with frozen winds, a dead vizer in the greenhouse—it wasn’t a story easily relayed like one of Cam’s melodic tales.

Besides, the less she knew, the safer she’d be.

As he walked, Cam scurrying behind, he re-created the greenhouse in his mind. He re-created the shadow man.

That creature had killed Vizer Linday as easily as Merik might crush a spider. If Merik hadn’t fled when he did, he would have been next.

He hated that fact more than anything else, but there it was: he could not face that monster alone. He could not fight that dark magic, could not stop that wrongness alone. Yet his city, his people … They needed Merik to do something.

So what was left, then, beyond staying the current course? Only with an entire contingent of trained witches and soldiers could Merik possibly hope to face that shadow man. To gain an army such as that, he would need to gain the throne—or at least to keep Vivia off of it.

It was sunrise by the time Merik and Cam made it into Old Town. The first beams of pink morning light glittered on puddles left from the night’s storm. Water splashed up from Cam’s steps, and Merik realized, his earlier shame doubling, that Cam was barefoot. She had been for weeks, and not once had she complained.

He’d noticed, of course, but there’d been so many other things to worry over. Not an excuse. Frowning, he fidgeted with his hood before ducking into the tenement. The halls were more crowded now, people off the streets seeking shelter for the night, and as he knew she would, always, always, Cam scampered just behind.

Upon reaching Kullen’s low door, Merik kicked all thoughts aside and focused on tapping out the lock-spell. His knuckles hurt more than he cared to consider, and his fingers were pruned from all that time in the canal.

“Oh, sir!” Cam scooted in close. “You’re bleeding again.”

“Hye.” Merik sighed. So tired. Stix’s ice had shredded his right forearm, and who knew what injuries the escape from shadow man had opened up? He felt nothing, though. It was all old blood.

“I have an Earthwitch healer salve, sir. I got it at Pin’s Keep.”

Merik swiveled wearily toward the girl, with words of gratitude rising to his lips.

Cam misread him. Her mismatched hands shot up. “I didn’t steal it, sir! My friends at Pin’s Keep gave it to me!”

“Oh … I … thank you,” he said at last, and he meant it. Though he hated that her first reaction was defensive—had he truly scolded her so much over the last two weeks that this was her first reaction?

After shoving into Kullen’s apartment and hissing for the lanterns to ignite, Merik shuffled to the sagging table. The bread from yesterday had soaked up the water, and though by no means soft, now it was at least edible.

He bit off a chunk before removing the wet map from his belt and smoothing it across the table. Then he forced himself to say, “I’m sorry if I worried you, Cam. As you can see, I’m fine.”

“You’re alive,” she accepted grudgingly, “but I wouldn’t say you’re fine. Water?” Her shadow stretched over the map, and a clay cup appeared before Merik.

“Thank you.” He took it, only to glimpse Cam’s wrist, puffy with fresh bruises. A cut stretched down her inner forearm. “What happened?”