Wystwood

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.