Page 12 of Heart’s Rescue

Rowan

Hunting Monsters

“How’s he doing?” I ask, keeping my voice low as snow drifts down between us.

I’d tried not to hover this morning as Charay bustled about our little house, unwrapping Phaedron’s bandages, rubbing something thick and yellow on raw wounds that looked so gruesome I couldn’t even bring myself to watch, and then wrapping my brother up again like a trussed turkey. Helping him into a shirt, a shirt whose empty right sleeve still bothered me in some deep, visceral way. I’d tried to make myself useful by brewing tea, which boiled over, and heating biscuits, which I’d then had to toss out the window before anyone broke a tooth on them.

Charay caught my eye as she’d packed up her things, and I’d offered to accompany her back to the village with a cold, sinking feeling in my gut. If she was going to give me bad news—

But she wasn’t. She couldn’t. Phaedron looked fine. Or, not fine exactly, but he looked better this morning. A little better, at least. He was still alive, right, and he’d called me an asshole when I’d made a bedpan-related pun this morning, so that all had to be good. Right?

“Rowan.” Charay’s voice is low and serious, the kind of voice that makes me feel like I’m a kid again and she’d had Phaedron and me over for lessons.

I stumble on some frozen thing hidden in the snow, then catch myself. I can’t bear to look at her. I can’t bear to hear if something has gone wrong, some secret, hidden thing inside my brother’s body that’s going to kill him.

“More of them are going to come,” she says, in that soft, low tone.

I look up, blinking. Charay is staring off into the dead trees, the frozen forest, off in the direction where we’d run yesterday. Where we’d found the butchered bodies of three of our neighbors. And then Phaedron, unconscious and dying in the snow.

“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

Charay finally looks at me. “Your brother’s sentry job was important, Rowan.”

I frown at her use of past tense. “Yeah,” I reply. “I know.”

She falls silent, and once again I’m back at her house for lessons, listening to her little golden clock tick the minutes until sunset in the Worlds Above while Charay stares down at me, waiting for me to get it.

I shrug and try to grin. I don’t get it.

“Phaedron’s going to need a lot of care,” Charay says.

Relief hits me right in the chest. The feeling is so sudden and strong it almost forces the air from my lungs.

“So, he’s gonna be okay?” I stammer.

Charay’s lips curl into a tight little smile. “It looks… promising,” she says. “There are still a few things to watch, but he’s strong, and he’s healthy, and his wounds were closed—”

Her voice cuts off, and she turns away.

Yeah. That. I rub the back of my neck, wishing I could explain myself, my freak magic that Phaedron and I had tried so hard to keep hidden. Charay clears her throat.

“Your brother needs watching, and so do these woods,” she declares. She sounds like she has a plan. “I’ll come over during the day,” she continues. “You watch the woods. I’ll watch Phaedron.”

And there it is, the plan.

“What about at night?” I ask.

“I’ll go home at night,” she says. “I’ll leave you everything you need.”

“I mean, who’ll watch the woods at night?” I ask.

Charay’s lips curl into a hard little curve that reminds me she had a life before she was trapped in this dying world, and that life probably involved kicking her fair share of ass.

“The void beasts,” she says.

“Heh. Nice,” I reply, and I’m somehow grinning along with her.

“Now, I’m going home to fetch a few things,” she says. “You, suit up.”