45. Twelve years too late

Ada dragged herself through the salt, shards of it piercing into her legs as she crouched over Raeph. His face was pale beneath the moon. She reached out a hand to touch his cheek and found his skin colder than a winter's frost.

Her fingers quivered as she peeled back his shredded shirt sleeve, its fabric clinging to the open wound. A hiss escaped his lips, and the air shuddered up from Ada's lungs. At least he was still conscious.

"Raeph?" she said, pushing a lock of hair, damp with sweat, out of his eyes.

But the man didn't respond, his breath no longer coming in laboured pants with his cheek pressed down into the salt. Ada moved back to his wrist, stripping away the wet cloth more roughly now.

"Raeph, you've got to stay awake."

She turned his arm over in the moonlight and smothered a gasp at the sight of his wound. It was a jagged thing, cruel and twisted. The seer hadn't cut cleanly. Her strike had been meant to cleave Ada's ribs, but had gouged into Raeph's arm instead, prising apart his flesh until it stuck out like scraps of torn leather.

Blood didn't seep onto Ada's hand, as the iron dagger had burnt the flesh until clots had crusted along its inside. Instead, tendrils of red fissured beneath Raeph's skin like a new web of veins, threading up towards his shoulder and down around his wrist. His hand was hot to the touch, as if all of the heat in his body was flooding out from the gash.

"Can you get up?" Ada asked, but received only a broken groan in response.

She gazed around with wild eyes, marking the burbling spring and the yawning mouth of the seer's cavern. The salt was coarse beneath them, and Ada's hand was growing numb as she held Raeph's arm up from the ground. The wind wheezed around the trees, like the laughter of some prowling shadow, and a shiver tingled Ada's spine.

"We need to go somewhere with better light," she said, and the wystwood leaves seemed to rustle closer. "I'm going to help you to your feet."

She shuffled around until she could sling his uncut arm over her shoulder. He groaned again, louder now as he dragged his eyelids open. Ada's breath came in huffs as she struggled up, tugging Raeph's body with her as his boots skidded on the salt.

She took a first step towards the stream and hissed in pain, scrunching Raeph's tunic into her cut palm. His head lolled onto her shoulder as she towed him along, and his breath was a whisper against her neck. His lips moved to form silent sentences, like his voice had been stolen away by the breeze.

"What?" she puffed.

Raeph sucked in a breath and said with a voice like the splintering of ice, "Why are you helping me?"

Ada almost stopped moving as her tongue fell stiff against her teeth. She couldn't conjure an answer. The very idea that she was now dragging out of the wystwood the man who had once threatened her within it was ridiculous in itself. A laugh huffed up her throat, raw and ragged.

"I need you to get me back into the city," Ada replied, although she didn't think she sounded particularly convincing. "I'm not going to make much headway in finding out your Lady's name if I'm stuck by the forest."

She had expected him to growl out some flinted threat at the mention of his Lady, but Raeph gave no reaction at all. She could feel her blood thrumming up her arms as she waded into the valley grass, mud tacking green ribbons to her boots as they stumbled together down to the stream. At a bend, the land dipped into a shallow divot, and Ada lowered Raeph until his back was cushioned against a tuft of grass.

Buttercups sprung up around the coiled ends of his hair, and Ada shrugged off her cloak, laying it beneath his wounded arm. Raeph's breath stuttered as a corner touched his leg, and Ada tugged the cloak back to see the lumpen outline of the pocketed daggers. She removed them and slid the iron dagger back into its wystwood sheath, then laid it down next to Solen's knife a short distance away.

Something smooth was curled against the cloak seam and Ada reached into the pocket again, this time withdrawing Min's sprig of calendula. Healing. The word rushed through Ada's mind, darting as quickly as the river current as she arranged it next to the iron knife. It looked phantasmal in the moonlight, like the burning debris of a fallen star.

With the silver dagger, she cut away what remained of Raeph's sleeve, letting the air reach his wound as she unknotted her own shirt's cotton ties. She severed their stitching, relieved to find their insides were relatively clear of dirt. Bringing one to the bank, Ada lowered the cloth into the stream, breathing a sigh as its water soothed her slitted palm.

Once she had wrung it out, she crouched back beside Raeph, holding his shoulder down with one hand as she swiped the wet cotton over his gash with the other. His eyes flickered open and a snarl parted his lips. But Ada held his forearm steady, wiping away the crusted blood.

When his arm was decently clean, Ada tossed the first cloth aside and picked up the other. She wrapped it around her palm and tied it under her knuckles, creating a makeshift bandage before turning her attention back to the calendula. She flipped the flower over in the half-light, her brow creasing as she unsuccessfully searched for its source of healing power. Raeph's eyes grew large at the sight of it, his lips curling back as if to snarl again.

"Not. Magic," he ground out, wincing as he attempted to drag his arm away.

"Don't be ridiculous," Ada snapped back, and ran her fingers through its petals. They stuck to her damp fingertips, falling away from the stem and clinging to her skin. She tried to rub them off, but at the slight pressure, they began to disintegrate.

Ada swore, trying to extract another petal from her wet skin, only to have it wrinkle away once again. But this time, she saw that as more of the petals mixed with the river water, they were thickening into a poultice on her hand.

"Hold still," she muttered, and before Raeph could respond, she brought her hand down onto his wound.

A growl erupted from Raeph's throat, eyes flashing brighter than the stars above as he struggled again to wrench back his arm. But even as he tried so desperately to stoke his anger, his breath began to even out, and the red threads trailed beneath his skin drew back their tangled fingers.

Within minutes, Raeph's body had regained its warmth and his lids began to droop. A hazy cloud of sleep seemed to be descending upon him, and his face was arranged in an unguarded manner that Ada had never seen before. The stream's babbling was peaceful now.

"Does it feel any better?" Ada asked.

Raeph gave a noncommittal grimace, but his head moved in something of a nod. Ada looked down at his cut, and though its centre still ran black and scarlet like some semi-festered animal hide, the poultice appeared to be soothing its scorched surroundings.

"Did you get the flower from that casting girl?" asked Raeph, and Ada jolted away from his arm. Her heart stuttered several staccato beats, but she quickly realised that there would be little use in lying. Raeph already knew it to be true.

"Yes."

He didn't reply, glazed eyes tilted to the sky and matching the night in their black vastness. Ada dug the toes of her boots into the soil, and felt the question that had been rooted in the back of her mind sprout past her lips.

"Was the seer speaking truthfully when she claimed the iron dagger was originally yours?"

Her words were whispered away across the hillside, and for many long moments, she thought Raeph had fallen asleep. His eyes were half closed and the sheen of sweat across his face had cooled to small droplets in the dusky air. When he did speak again, his deep voice quaked as though he were parting with a weight he had carried for a lifetime.

"I've been there before. In that cave." He took a shuddering breath. "Begging them for answers."

"When?"

"Many years ago," he said, and then his words rushed out of him as if drawn by the water's current. "When my father was ill, and the city had given up on magic. I thought asking a cure from the seers was the only way to help him, and I traded them the one thing I knew would have worth besides blood. I believed the iron dagger would be safer there anyway, trapped in a cave where it couldn't hurt anyone. But I was foolish and young, and thought I could outwit them if I was careful enough." A low laugh crackled out from him, cold and humourless. "They told me that a traveller from far away would arrive to bring back the magic that could heal my father, and I left contented. Little did I know that person would appear within the Wystwood twelve years later." His eyes flickered up to Ada, and her blood stilled within her veins. "My father died within twelve days."

Once again, Ada found herself lost for words. "I'm sorry."

"It's history now." Raeph returned his gaze to the stars.

Ada wondered if the pain had made him delirious, as she hadn't expected such candour so simply. She wasn't even sure if she believed him, or if she should want to believe him. There was a mess of contradicting thoughts and feelings flying around her mind, unwilling to settle for the shortest of seconds. When she finally looked back, she found Raeph's chest slowly rising and falling, a gauzy blanket of sleep slipped around him in their silence.

Suddenly alone, Ada stared out across the valley, almost expecting to see the pale glimmer of moonlight bouncing off the bone arch. But there was nothing on the horizon but a swarm of shadows. She knew the archway was there though, white and ghostly within the sea of grass. She knew its words would be there too, twisting and beguiling in their cryptic message. As above, so below.

The seers' cave stood behind her, and the snake-seer's final howl echoed around her head. But Ada cast her eyes instead towards the city, sprawled out within the valley like a toddler's building blocks. Raeph had said the salt line kept the sisters tied to their cavern, but the scaled-seer had spoken with such a wicked certainty that Ada found it difficult to doubt her taunting. If the seers truly were inside the city walls, then what was to await them on their return to Wysthaven?