Page 13 of Feralheart

I set the remaining bundle on the table and assessed what I had. Barley in the clay jar, enough for two pots if I stretched it. I poured half into our big pan and covered it with water. Carrots in the bin, still good. An onion. Half a loaf of bread. I could crumble some of it into the stew to thicken it. The meat would go in first, sizzled fast so the delicious smell would fill the room.

I counted the coal in the bin by the stove. Enough for tonight and tomorrow if we were careful. Four stubby candles sat on the shelf, each one burned down to almost nothing.

Counting was the math of survival, the numbers that decided whether we ate or froze or had light to see by.

A cough rattled from beside the heat stove.

I strode over and stooped down beside my thirteen-year-old brother, Tolross, resting on his pallet, an open book lying across his frail chest. He’d been pretending to read, the way he always did when he didn’t want anyone to know he’d been sleeping. At my touch on his shoulder, he tried to sit up, the movement too fast. A cough seized him again.

He pressed a hand to his mouth, his shoulders shaking, his breath catching and catching and not letting go.

I rubbed his arm. “Easy. Don’t fight it.”

He couldn’t answer. The cough owned him. When it finally released him, he slumped back, his face pale and slick with sweat.

I’d seen the bruises before, but they were worse now, peppering his neck and forearms.

His wrists were too thin. The tendons stood out as he turned the page of his book, looking brittle enough to snap if he twisted too hard.

Like I’d done a thousand times before, I touched his chest, willing my gift to come. Trying to make this curse the elite saw as a blessing do something good for a change. It had worked for a dying dragon in the forest, yet it still slept for my brother. My mother had never explained why it answered for some and not others. Maybe she hadn’t known either. Or maybe she’d known, and the answer was too cruel to speak aloud.

Tolross didn’t sleep in the second bedroom any longer, too tired now to walk the short distance. He hated that. His body had betrayed him, and he couldn’t do the things he used to.

He squinted at me, his mouth pulling into a smirk that didn’t quite land. “You smell like a drowned forge.”

“You smell like a poet who lost a fight with a dustbin.”

His grin widened, but his brown eyes, like mine, stayed sharp. He’d studied me while I’d studied him, noting the scratch on my arm and the too-casual voice I’d used. He saw more than I wanted him to. He always had.

I grabbed the small pillow from Father’s chair and tucked it behind my brother’s back. He suffered my help, his lips tight.

“Thanks,” he said it like a grown man would. Like me, he also hated feeling small.

I straightened and took the kettle from the top of the stove. “I’ll make you something.”

In the kitchen, I pulled the jar Silvie had given me from my pocket and set it on the table before gathering thyme, a pinch of dried chamomile, and a few shavings of willowbark. I crushed them the way Mother had taught me until they released their oils.

I poured hot water over the herbs and added a spoonful of Silvie’s onion-honey. The smell rose sharp and sweet, coating the air.

“You shouldn’t use honey on me,” he said. “It’s too expensive.”

“Silvie sent it. It’s free.”

“Nothing’s free.”

I walked over and handed him the cup. “Drink it anyway.”

He took slow sips that made his throat work. He tried to keep the cup steady but couldn’t. I hooked my finger through the handle with him. When he’d finished half, he set the cup on the small table nearby and reached under his book, pulling out a folded scrap of paper.

“I wrote this earlier today.” His voice had gone shy, the way it did when he showed me his work.

He unfolded the paper and read.

Today I put the sun in my pocket

to spend when the weather forgets me.

I counted how many breaths fit in a laugh: