Soulwoven

Chapter Thirty-Nine

~39~

The warmth of the sunset faded on Cole Jin’s face. A plain of waist-high grass drowned in an ocean of blue shadows around him. The ground crunched hard and unforgiving beneath his boots.

His feet fairly flew.

Somewhere behind him, Ryse was lying feverish and incoherent in Quay’s arms, or being carried on the prince’s back over the rough, undulating paths of the Forest of Lurathen. Somewhere behind him, Litnig’s face was gray and pained because she shrieked any time he came near her. Somewhere behind him, things had gone very wrong.

And Cole and Dil had been sent ahead to see if her grandfather could help.

Cole ground his teeth together. When he’d left the others, Ryse had seemed as sick as the plague victims he’d seen ten years before. Her face had been deathly white. Her forehead had been hot. Her fingers had been frozen. She needed real help, apothecary help, soulweaver help, Temple help.

And because they were in Eldan, they couldn’t get it for her.

His stomach twisted. He hadn’t thought about what it would be like to return home in secret when he’d agreed to leave.

He hadn’t honestly thought about what it would be like to return home at all.

The grasslands he and Dil were running through jutted out from the Forest of Lurathen and plunged off steep cliffs into the river that nourished the city itself. Just far enough from the cliffs to be safe, a wattle and daub cabin sat in a pit dug a few feet into the ground. Woodsmoke drifted from a small chimney that poked through its roof.

In front of Cole, Dil was moving through the high grass toward the cabin like a lion. Her hair drifted in the breeze. Her skin shone dusky and sun-kissed in the fading light.

Cole’s mouth dried up. He remembered the sticky warmth of her lips and the softness of her body in his arms.

Focus, he told himself.

Dil reached the top of the steps that led to the cabin. Its wooden door opened so quickly it should have banged.

It didn’t.

A hand snaked out and caught the door, and a tall, gaunt man with white hair and a severe expression emerged from the cabin’s firelit innards. He thrust his chin into the dusk as though he was sniffing for something. The last few rays of sun caught his eyes.

They were the same liquid gold as Dil’s.

Cole had once seen a tiger, caged in a traveling menagerie in Eldan City. He’d stared into its eyes, and he’d known when he did that it saw at a glance whether everything beyond the bars around it was its better or its equal or its prey, and that he had ranked as prey.

The old man’s eyes looked the same, and this time there were no bars.

Cole stopped at the top of the steps to the cabin.

“Grandfather!” Dil shouted. She jumped down the steps and threw herself into the old man’s arms.

Her grandfather pulled her close and smiled. His leathery skin creased into a hundred wrinkles. The predatory stare disappeared.

Just my imagination, Cole told himself.

But he didn’t believe the words.

Dil said something about Ryse, pulled out of the old man’s embrace, and pointed toward the forest.

Her grandfather nodded. He tousled Dil’s hair fondly and spoke in a voice that was soft and hoarse, like it had been stretched out over many years. Cole didn’t catch what he said, but it sounded loving.