“I brought you some remedies that might help,” Wren said.
Ferren looked out at the passageway, then gestured us in.
Aether suffused the room, glittering like dust motes in sunlight. Pain stabbed through my chest in response, and I pushed the palm of my hand against my breastbone to ease the tightness. Wren put a hand on my arm.
“I’m fine,” I whispered. She did enough to protect me, and I wouldn’t let this become her problem. But each pinch seemed a little more painful than the last.
The room inside was small, simple, clean. There was a fireplace, not burning. A low table with a cup and plate and a round of bread, a couple of chairs, a rug of knotted fabric. A ladder led to a small loft above, probably for sleeping.
Innis lay on a bed of thin blankets on the floor. The room was cool, but wet cloths were draped across the man’s forehead and bare chest. The Aetheric haze across his skin was fainter today but still visible, like an old stain on linen.
“There’s rumors of an evil Anima,” Ferren said quietly when she’d closed the door.
I nodded. “We think an Anima possessed your husband.”
“Possessed?”
I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. We weren’t certain what was happening, and I didn’t want rumors to start a panic in the stronghold. But this had happened to her and her family, and while I doubted the practitioner would bother them again, she deserved to know.
“We think someone may have used an Anima to take control of your husband and use him to attack the prince.”
“May the gods preserve us,” Ferren said, and glanced up at the Terran gods—the gods of land, air, water, and fire—painted high up in the room’s corners, where they could stand their quiet watch over the family.
Wren pulled packets of waxed fabric from her bag. “I made a poultice for his wound and a salve of mint and chilling elderbalm. It might help reduce the fever.” She unfolded one of the packets, revealing a paste that smelled as green as it looked.
When Ferren nodded, Wren moved to Innis and knelt besidehim. Gingerly, she pulled away the linen covering the man’s wound and looked it over. “It’s good and clean.” I looked away when she began to spread greenish paste over torn flesh.
“There’s more injuries,” Ferren said quietly.
I looked up. “More?”
She pushed up Innis’s sleeve, revealing a cluster of small dark bruises—as if someone had grabbed his arm and squeezed hard. Maybe the practitioner, when forcing Innis to undergo the possession. Spreading from the marks were jagged green lines that looked like lightning beneath his skin.
“The bruises will disappear soon enough,” I said. “I’m not sure about the other marks. Do they seem to hurt him?”
Ferren shook her head. “Not as bad as the wound.”
“Fox,” Wren said, still fiddling with the wound I didn’t want to see. “Open the other packet. Put it on his forehead and his cheeks.”
This one was greasy and smelled like mint. It chilled my fingers when I touched it, but I could still feel the heat of Innis’s skin. The Aetheric—or the Anima—had done unkind things to his body.
The sudden knock at the door nearly had me jumping.
“I’ll get that,” I said, folding up the packet and setting it aside. I rose to answer the door, pulled it open…and stared.
I’d known that guards were going to visit Innis and Ferren today; I’d warned Wren about it. But I hadn’t expected it would be him.
And yet Nik stood in the sunlight that managed to slant through the narrow alley, blue eyes shining. His dark hair was untied today and fell to his shoulders, framing the line of his jaw and sharpening his features. It made him look more dangerous—as did the narrowed suspicion in his eyes.
“Fox,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
I didn’t mind getting another look at Nik but was feeling protective of Ferren and Innis; they’d been through enough. I stretched an arm across the doorway.
“Helping strongholders. Innis is still sick, and my friend Wren knows how to make remedies. A little early for the prince’s henchmen to be pounding on doors and harassing people, isn’t it?”
Nik glanced back at Galen, who stood behind him. “Did I pound on the door?”
“I heard a very polite knock.”
