A Thief of Nightshade(17)

Jullian briefly toyed with the wings of the dragonfly on her necklace, his smile fading a little as he did so. “Appearances aren’t everything.”





Chapter Eight


Avalar


“WE HAVE TO GO TO RHEAVON,” AUBREY

SAID weakly. They had found temporary solace in a large rock formation and sat around a fire built in the shelter of the overhang. Aislinn and Lipsey had tended to the gashes on her back with what little they had, cleaning them with the water from a nearby spring and using the few clean strips of cloth from her bloodied shirt as bandages. She’d changed into the spare shirt Lilly had packed in her satchel.

“You aren’t well,” Aislinn said firmly. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

“The Fae know I’m here, who else would have sent the Wraith?”

Aislinn laughed humorlessly as he looked around them. “I’ve never doubted they were aware of your presence here.”

Aubrey struggled to sit up. “Then she will expect us to do nothing. She will think she has succeeded. This could be good fortune.”

Lipsey crawled into her lap and then looked at Aislinn. “She will think we can’t come for the Prince. She won’t send her spies.”

Aislinn growled, sending Lipsey to cower behind Aubrey. “Fortune? Na?ve human! Don’t you get it? You will lose more of yourself with every day that passes. Every breath you take will steal from you some memory of who you once were. You had little hope in defeating Saralia to begin with—there is no chance of saving him now. If we can find a way to get you home to your world, you might pull through...”

“No, you don’t get it. My life is meaningless in the greater scheme of things.” She stood then, fragile and in need of sleep, but angry at his attitude. “Stay behind. I can go alone. I never asked for your help.” She braced herself against the rocks to her left. “If Saralia thinks me unfit to fight for Jullian, that will be my advantage. If I fail, then I fail having done everything in my power to save Jullian.”

Aislinn blocked her path. “You’ll never make it, Aubrey. The Prince wouldn’t want you to suffer, surely if you were married to him you know this. He can’t stand to see anyone he cares about in pain and your wound will only worsen. It will never heal. You’ll grow accustomed to it in short order, but it will overcome you. Let me take you somewhere you can be made comfortable.”

He’d mentioned Jullian yet again in such an intimate fashion that she had begun to suspect that he knew him ... well.

“Comfortable? I’d rather die than live the rest of my life knowing I’d given up and placed my own comfort before Jullian’s.

He wouldn’t have given up on me. He didn’t give up on me.”

“Dramatic much?” Aislinn knitted his features in concern. “Then rest for the night at least, please.”

She would have refused, but her vision blurred and she had trouble keeping

her eyes open. “Then by morning light we go.”

Morning came quickly. The first shards of light sent sharp pains through Aubrey’s head worse than any hangover she’d ever had. She pressed her forehead into her cool hand as soon as she sat up. Aislinn stirred beside her and she realized he’d curled up next to her during the night and had kept her warm. Frost covered the ground beyond the rocks, kissing the grass with ice crystals. Lipsey, tucked under Aislinn’s arm so that only his tail was visible, had started to wake as well.

For five days they traveled, stopping when the sun went down and leaving the moment the world around them became visible again. On the eve of the fifth day as the sun sank below the horizon, Aislinn suddenly urged them on.

“We won’t be safe in the night,”

Lipsey whined.

Aubrey was more concerned they wouldn’t be able to see. They hadn’t brought any kind of lantern with them and her steps were unsure in the daytime, let alone in the dark of night. “Why aren’t we stopping?” As they came over the hill, Aislinn paused to answer what she had already discovered for herself.

“Because we’re here,” he said.

“Electricity?” she asked, stunned.

“Indoor plumbing, steam-powered engines, factories; all things forsaken by the animal kingdom for its relation to mankind’s indulgence and revelry. This hell hole is nothing but nightshade dens and whorehouses.”

“Nightshade?

Nightshade

is

poisonous.”

Lipsey leaped to Aislinn’s head and stretched on his toes to see more. The bear scooped him up and scolded him. “You’re gonna fall. You can see just fine from here. Nightshade is a drug, but it certainly isn’t poisonous. You have drugs where you’re from, don’t you? It’s how the Fae took our world so quickly. They brought with them vices that enslaved and Man bartered his freedom to keep them.”

Aislinn

paused

thoughtfully.

“We’ll

obviously be noticed like this. We’ll need to get you some better clothing and I’ll have to follow you best I can. Lips, can you make use of your thievery one more time for me?”

Lipsey rubbed his little hands together, a thief plotting his next heist.

“Nightshade is poisonous in certain amounts,” Aubrey argued. “And how is a little thing like him going to—”