These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2)(27)

“Leta runs the infirmary here,” Amira explains. “Many arrive from Arya’s camps wounded, and Leta nurses them to health. We are lucky to have her.”

Leta’s cheeks flare red. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’m honored to serve.” She swallows. “I’m sorry to interrupt Lady Abriella’s tour, but if you have a moment, there’s something you should see.”

Misha and his wife exchange a look, and then he nods. “After you.”

Leta leads the way to the infirmary, and we follow into the stone building and to a room in the back, where a row of beds is filled with sleeping children.

Misha frowns as he surveys them. “Have so many younglings taken ill?” he asks.

Leta shakes her head. “We don’t know what it is. It’s like they’re sleeping, but . . .”

He looks at her, waiting, and she turns up her palms. “They don’t wake up. Their breathing is shallow, their body temperature low, like they’ve entered some sort of odd hibernation.”

“Something contagious?” Misha asks. “Is it spreading?”

“Only among the children. The first were brought in yesterday and two more this morning. None of the adults show signs.”

Amira crosses to one of the beds in the center of the row where a young boy with short dark hair sleeps, curled on his side. If it weren’t for Leta’s explanation, I’d think he and the others were napping.

These children are different from the ones Lark showed me in my dream, but I can’t ignore the similarities, and I still don’t understand what she was trying to tell me.

They’re looking for you. You need to come home.

Did she mean this will be my home? That there’s something I can do to help these children? Then why did the image she showed me differ so much?

Amira brushes the boy’s hair from his forehead. “Hey, little one.”

“That’s Cail,” Leta says. “He’s three. He arrived at the settlement with his older sister about a month ago.”

“How’s the sister?” Misha asks.

“She seems fine. She’s worried about her brother, of course, but she shows no signs of illness.”

Amira drops to her knees so she’s face-to-face with the sleeping boy. “Cail? Are you in there?”

“We’ve tried everything,” the nurse says. “Perhaps it’s some strange sickness, but I’ve never seen children sleep so soundly for so long.”

Amira strokes the boy’s hair one final time before standing. “I feel him in there,” she says. “He’s not hurting, but it’s odd. I’ve never felt anything like it. Please keep us updated?”

Leta nods. “Of course. I am sorry to bother you, but I appreciate the time.”

“It’s no bother at all,” Amira says, taking one of Leta’s hands in hers.

Leta’s shoulders visibly sag, and her breathing steadies. “Thank you,” she breathes.

Outside, someone starts screaming.

Misha and Amira rush from the infirmary, and I follow them. The scowling little boy from earlier is standing alone in the street, screeching, as if he’s being attacked. The moment I see him, his terror washes over me as if it were my own.

Amira drops to her knees before him and wraps him in her arms. He continues shrieking, but he buries his face in her chest, as if he’s searching for comfort there.

The people around us look their way once or twice but don’t seem particularly alarmed by the child’s outburst.

Amira doesn’t pick him up, doesn’t tell him to be quiet. She strokes his back gently and repeatedly as he continues to shriek and scream.

Fear swirls around me, caging me in, and I feel . . . helpless. Utterly helpless at the sound of this child’s devastating cries. “What can I do?” I ask Misha.

He places a hand on my arm, and Amira meets my eyes and gives a subtle shake of her head.

Nothing. I can do nothing. Like always.

I step to the side. If I can’t do anything else, at least I can be out of the way.

The boy finally stops screaming, and as the silence falls, the fear in my blood washes away as if it were never there. Amira brings him into her arms, resting him against her shoulder as she stands.

“ Be right back,” she mouths to me.

I nod and watch as she carries the boys into a cottage several doors down. “What’s wrong with him?” I ask.

“We were able to rescue some children before they were put into the camps,” Misha says, watching her go. “That was always the plan—to find them as they came through the border and open the portal to transport them to safety here before the Arya’s guard could capture them. But Mordeus and the queen were both watching us. Mordeus didn’t want his subjects leaving, and the queen wanted any shadow fae caught in her lands to be working in her camps or dead. Our efforts at organization were undercut at every turn by our need for secrecy.” He nods at the house where Amira disappeared with the child. “Far too many of the children ended up spending weeks in the camps before we got to them, and some have never recovered from those days.”

“What did she do to them?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “We don’t know everything, but I know she sent them down into the mines.”

“The mines?”