AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nothing.
I drew a door, complete with a damned good version of a doorknob, if I do say so myself.
Nada.
I finally sat back and ate a pie.
This was starting to look like a waste of time—well, other than for feeding up the kid. Healing took food, and trolls weren’t like humans; soup wasn’t going to put flesh back on those bones. Cherry pie, however, appeared to be a hit. I watched as the rest of the pies and the platter they sat on were slowly pulled under the bedclothes.
I finished off my own snack, and contemplated my artwork. This was starting to look like a dead end. But like the stuff with Efridis, I just couldn’t let it go.
The kid didn’t know much English, and those weren’t survival terms that you’d prioritize: “food,” “water,” “bathroom,” “bed,” “medicine,” “help.” They looked more like words he’d deliberately tried to pick up, maybe even asked people about, despite the fact that doing so might earn him a beating. But he’d learned them anyway, possibly at different times, so as not to arouse suspicion, and then spoken them on what he thought was his deathbed.
Damn it, they meant something!
I just didn’t know what.
Like I didn’t know why Dorina had felt it necessary to send me another memory. I’d thought the point was the bones, and the fact that people were literally being killed for a potion ingredient. True, one time was vamp bones and the other fey, but the method was similar. Find a vulnerable community, people no one would miss, and exploit the hell out of them.
So what was I overlooking?
I reclined back against the trundle and rubbed my eyes. Come on, Dory. You’re better than this.
And, normally, I was. Normally, it didn’t take somebody hitting me over the head with a clue-by-four for me to figure out what I was dealing with. Normally, the problem was how to stop it, not how to find it, but this . . . I wasn’t getting this.
I’m tired, I thought at Dorina. Why don’t you just tell me?
Nothing.
Damn it, I know you can hear me!
Like she could probably hear Mircea last night. Because he didn’t get it: Dorina didn’t go to sleep anymore. At least, not like she once had. Every mind had to have rest, so there were times she wasn’t aware of what was happening, just like me. But there was no way to tell when those were anymore.
And she’d been aware enough to attack Efridis when she saw her, hadn’t she?
So she knew what Mircea was planning.
There was a mirror across from the bed—just a little thing, hung at kid height. One of Claire’s vain attempts to teach good hygiene to a couple boys who were happier splashing about in the mud. I doubted it was used much, but it was there and in my line of sight when I was sitting down. I caught my reflection in the glass, and swallowed.
Staring too long into a mirror is always a freaky experience, and that’s when you know no one is staring back. I didn’t know it now, and for the first time, I tried to get a glimpse of my other side. But the black eyes were the same, with no additional life experience that I could see. And so was the too-pale skin, the cap of dark hair, still slightly damp from the shower, and the teeth biting a lower lip in indecision. Damn it!
“I’m not going to do it,” I told her. “I’m not, okay? That was his idea, not mine!”
Nothing.
“He doesn’t speak for me—he never has!”
More nothing.
So we were back to not talking, huh?
What a shock.
“I’m still not,” I told her, feeling angry and frustrated and destructive—and mad at myself for it. Trashing the kids’ room wasn’t going to help. And neither was anything else.
Mircea could scheme all he wanted; she was going to do what she was going to do.
“Do what you want with your life,” I told her. “You have to live with it. I’m going to live mine—while I still have one!”
