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Wyn still mostly looked like herself, but the inky color on her hands and lips seemed to cover much more and spread further than ever before, though maybe I'd only seen her with her glamour partially down. I wasn't sure and it wasn't really important anyway, at least not right now.
"Are you okay?" I asked quietly as the men set about cooking some food.
"Yeah. I'm okay." Her tone wasn't exactly clipped, but I knew she wasn't being completely forthcoming either.
"How long have you been out?"
"About a week," she said hesitantly, glancing at me before returning her gaze to the fire. "My sleeping schedule was kind of messed up at first since I emerged in the middle of the night. How long have you been out?"
I didn't miss the way that her gaze locked onto the side of my face before jerking away as though there was something there she wanted to examine but couldn't bring herself to ask about it.
"A few hours," I said, feeling bashful about it for some reason, probably because Thorn and Ronan had made it seem so unusual.
Her jaw dropped. "That's it?"
"Yeah. I don't know what took so long." I picked at my nails. Not that there was any dirt underneath them.
We both lapsed into silence, though knowing Wyn it was because she had too many questions filling her mind and couldn't decide which one to ask first. "So you're taller, huh?" Wyn asked, clearly trying to lighten the mood and make me less worried.
I shrugged, giving her a small smile before I went back to picking at invisible dirt on my hands. "I guess I don't really understand what's happened. We haven't exactly had a chance to talk about it."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Thorn asked, shattering any illusion of privacy we'd had. I'd been aware that they were probably listening in, but it was still uncomfortable to hear him just butt into the conversation.
He came and sat down opposite us on the other side of the fire. "It's good to see that you survived, Wyn," Thorn said, his tone sincere.
His words seemed full of truth and yet I couldn't help but wonder if this was all just an act.
"Thanks. Though it would have been easier to survive if we hadn't had to go into the veil at all." Wyn sounded slightly bitter, which was surprising for her, but not unexpected after everything she'd probably been through.
"Agreed," I murmured.
Thorn sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "There's only so much I can hide from the King's eyes, and unfortunately, I was not notified of the report until it was too late to stop it. I had no choice but to go along with the King's wishes."
"You could have just let us go," I snapped.
He sneered slightly. "So someone else could find you with that mark on your back?" He raised an eyebrow at me. Clearly challenging me.
I wasn't about to back down though. "I survived this long. I could have survived longer."
"You know that mark was growing, right? There was no way you'd be able to hide it for the rest of your life, unless you moved to the woods and became a hermit, at which point you'd probably be accused of magic usage anyway. Either way, you'd be executed for it." He sounded so matter-of-fact about it, like executing people was just a task on his to-do list.
"So kind of you to be concerned," I snarked at him, that fury rising to the surface once again.
He turned away from me. "Anyway, I'm glad that you survived, Wyn. You know Ronan from the ride up and this is Trevor, who is—was—also in the Royal Guard back at the castle. He's also a member of our little brigade. When I let him know that we would be returning to the fae side of the veil, he asked if he could come along. I am not one to deny somebody that kind of thing, so here we are."
Neither Wyn nor I said anything, which made the pause more than a little awkward.
Thorn cleared his throat and continued, "Now we've got something akin to bore for you guys to eat. There should be enough for all five of us, and then I suggest we bed down for the night. We have a long road ahead of us tomorrow."
"Why? Where are we going?" My words were punctuated like arrows thwacking into a target, each one seeming to wound Thorn.
"We can talk about that tomorrow with clearer heads. For now, why don't we just enjoy some food and get some rest? I'm sure you both are probably quite tired. Going through the veil is a strain, even for those of us familiar with it."
Ronan grimaced at his friend's words, before reaching out toward us with a pile of material. "You can have these blankets if you want, ladies."
"Help yourself to the food," Trevor said as Thorn pushed to his feet and wandered off with Ronan following just behind him.
The two of them sat a little bit further away from the camp, clearly having a private discussion. They were drawing things in the mud on the ground with sticks. Maps? That would be my first guess. Were they trying to decide where to go? Where to take us? What were we on this side of the veil? Were we free? Were we still prisoners? Could they sell us? I honestly had no clue what was going on, but nerves made my stomach ache. Or maybe that was hunger.
