“How do you mean?” He blinks, rubbing his eyes.
“I’ve been back to your room over and over since the other night, but you weren’t there,” I tell him. I even tried tracking Finch down to find him, but he’s also been awfully elusive of late.
There’s more rustling from the trees, as though there’s an animal caught up in the branches.
“I think I might need help,” Kit says, right as a raven drops from the tree. Its small body lands heavily on the ground, lying there motionless with a fabric bag beside it.
The raven gives a very un-ravenlike groan before shifting into Jack’s usual form. His eyes flutter open, and he gives a wide, goofy smile before promptly passing out. There’s blood on his bare torso, and Aster crouches down beside him, inspecting the wound.
Almost as though our heads are joined on a string, we all turn to look at Kit, who’s looking even more confused than ever.
“Is this what you need help with?”
Kit shakes his head with a wry smile. “Would you believe I had nothing to do with that? I’ve been having some, er, issues,” he rasps. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve not been around much recently.”
Aster snorts, grabbing the bag Jack dropped while Torin hefts Jack’s body into his arms.
“You’ve been busy,” I reply gently.
“I have been,” he replies. “I think. I’m not sure what I’ve been doing since I’ve been having some... memory issues. Jack seemsto think I could have accidentally cursed myself.” He turns to Aster. “Have I? Can you see if there’s anything wrong with me?”
He holds his hand out to Aster, who looks so calm and collected. Nothing like the guy we first met all those weeks ago.
Now Kit seems to be the desperate and terrified one.
I reach out and push Kit’s arm down before interlinking our fingers together. “What are you doing?”
“Can you scan my body or something? Check my aura and see if there’s something wrong with me?”
I quirk an eyebrow. “You’re the cursebreaker. Not us. Can’t you just look and see if you have a curse lingering on you and then break it?”
Kit closes his eyes in defeat.
“You’re right. Of course, you’re right,” he says. “I can’t see anything. But there has to be something wrong with me. I’m losing days with no idea where they’ve gone or what I’ve been doing.”
My stomach twists with guilt as I pull leaves from his hair, inspecting the bleeding graze on his cheek. “Let’s get you both inside.”
Aster
“I THINK I MAY NEEDsomeone to follow me around for a while,” Kit says, running his hands through his hair as he takes a seat inside my room at the top of the house.
The poor guy looks even more rundown than I feel. All his wavy brown hair is a mess, as though he’s been running his hand through it, and his shirt buttons are all done up wrong. My chest squeezes as I take in the state of him.
“Whatever you need, I’ll help you.”
Even if Kit hadn’t helped me when I needed it the most, I’d still agree to help him do just about anything. It blew my mind when he accepted me as a fellow mate to Reva in no time at all. No one has ever accepted me just like that. Taken me as I am and wanted nothing from me.
“We’ll all help,” Torin says. “What exactly are we helping with? Have you been sleepwalking or something?”
“Something like it,” Kit replies. “It feels like I’ve been sleepwalking while I was awake. My brain seems to shut off to conscious thought and I wake up at the other end of the island, with no idea how I got there.”
That... doesn’t sound good. Not good at all.
I wish I could just mix him up a potion like he was hoping, and tell him exactly what’s wrong, but I have no idea how. Most of the potions I’m mixing up are basic. Stuff that I learned by growing up on the farm to fix up my siblings and neighbours and sometimes the goats next door. I’m not exactly a well-educated guy.
While I might not be able to detect curses like he can, I do have something that might tell us if there’s magic at play here. The same blue potion I used on Torin’s hands should work, and I should have at least a little left.
“I might have something,” I tell Kit.
