Page 62 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

Sylvia gasped. “Yes! I thinkit’s—”

Before she even finished her sentence, Sylvia took off running. Lorelei followed close behind her, then immediately regretted it when her lungs seized. She doubled over to catch her breath, a headache pounding behind her eyes.

“Saints, Lorelei.” Sylvia circled back to her. Her tone was exasperated, but Lorelei did not miss the glimmer of concern in her eyes. “Are you drinking enough? Hydration is very important at this height, you know.”

“Yes,” Lorelei groused. “I’m aware.”

Together, they trudged onward. The cold wind sliced through Lorelei’s coat, and frost gathered on her eyelashes. Exhaustion weighed down her every step, but she kept her focus trained on thelean-to—andthe smoke rising from a dying campfire. Her blood sang with determination. If she could save just one person, perhaps it would be enough.

“Ludwig!” Sylvia called. The wind did its best to snatch her voice away. It tore mercilessly at the canvas tarp.

No motion came from within.

They exchanged a look. Lorelei dropped to her knees and crawled inside. Within, wrapped in no fewer than four coats, was Ludwig. His face was a horrible ghostly white, and his parted lips had turned blue. Her entire being recoiled from the sight.

Why are you doing this to me? Why do I survive when people die all around me?

There was no sense to be made of something so senseless,so—

No, she reminded herself sharply. There was nothing in this universe that was senseless, especially not violence.

She forced herself to look at him. A faint breath whistled out from his nose, ruffling the overlong hair in his face. Thank God. She glanced over her shoulder at Sylvia.

“He’s alive,” Lorelei said, once she swallowed down the emotion lodged in her throat.

Sylvia let out a sob of relief, crawling in next to her. She slipped off her gloves and rested them on his cheeks. Ludwig groaned. She sucked in a breath and brushed the hair back from his forehead. His blanched skin shone with sweat. “He’s running a fever.”

“Lorelei? Sylvia?” Ludwig’s voice was barely a rasp. With each rattling breath he took, Lorelei felt that low-banked hope within her settle into ashes. It sounded like he was drowning on dry land.

Sylvia rummaged through her bag and procured a waterskin. She held it to his lips and carefully helped him drink. After a few moments, she twisted the cap back on and turned to Lorelei with a troubled expression. “He’s been cursed.”

“Cursed?”

Sylvia turned over the palm of his hand and pulled back his sleeve. The tracery of veins in his wrist was green and thick against the pressure of her thumb. Roots, Lorelei realized after a moment. Her stomach twisted nauseatingly. Now that she was looking at him closely,she noticed the bark grafted onto his skin. It crept out of his collar and advanced determinedly toward his throat.

“How did this happen?”

“This is eschenfrau sickness. He must’ve angered them somehow.” Sylvia began pawing through his bag. She pulled out a thin strip of pale gray bark: a piece of an ash tree.

“He must have collected it as a sample. That fool.”

“I’m not so sure.” Sylvia turned the bark over in her hands. “Ludwig is more cautious than that. Besides, he would have put it in his vasculum if he wanted to preserve it.”

Dread settled heavily within her at what Sylvia implied. “But if someone else planted it on him, they’d be sick as well, wouldn’t they?”

“Unless the eschenfrau gave it freely. They do love mischief.”

Lorelei’s mood darkened. Ludwig wasn’tdead—notyet—butsuperstition lingered. Best not to discuss this where he could hear it. “Come outside.”

Outside, snow continued to fall, but she could hardly feel the cold. She drew it around herself like armor. When Sylvia spoke again, her voice trembled with fury. “Why would they do this to him? It would have been kinder to kill him outright.”

“Someone didn’t want him to find a way to the summit. They’re trying to delay us again,” Lorelei said lowly. “We pushed on after Ziegler was murdered, but they knew we couldn’t continue if he was this ill.”

When they returned to camp, there would be no waiting for the king’s paltry justice. She would kill Heike herself. She must’ve been wearing a particularly murderous expression because Sylvia tentatively rested her hand on her shoulder. “Lorelei . . .”

She shrugged her off. “Stay here and watch him. I’m going to find the Ursprung.”

“Oh, no, you’re not! He’ll die if he’s out in the cold much longer, and I can’t carry him back by myself.”