Page 39 of Stealing Tink

When he doesn’t answer, my pulse heightens. I go to stand from bed. I have to get to my babies, but my feet can hardly support me.

I fall, but strong arms catch me before I do.

“I need the physician,” I gasp. “Please, go to town, find…” But no, I can’t finish that sentence. Can’t ask my husband to leave my children here unattended. “Get the neighbors. Ask them to run to town⁠—”

I can no longer see. Just feel my husband’s warm arms around me.

I whimper his name, and through the blackness, I’m convinced he won’t answer me.

Finally, he whispers in my ear. “I’m so sorry, Wanderer. They promised it would be peaceful.”

CHAPTER 18

Darkness envelops me. I can’t see. Can’t hear.

The only sensation my body can feel as it breaks down is his touch on my forehead.

I move to slash him away but am unsuccessful.

“Wanderer. Wanderer, wake up. You’re having a night terror. Whatever it is, it isn’t real.”

My husband’s voice, the same one that used to warm my skin, now sends my hairs standing on end.

Get away from me, I cry out, except no sound comes out, and my lips—they don’t make the correct motions.

I can’t see. Can’t speak.

All I can do is feel.

Feel him.

His hand that was just on my forehead has slipped down to the side of my arm, and how he’s gripping me firmly with both hands.

“Tink,” he says. “Tink, you need to wake up.”

I thrash about, panicked at how my limbs are restricted not only by his arms, but also the plush sheets of the bed.

“Wanderer,” he says, “it’s me.”

Something about his tone, the softness with which he says it, jars me. It’s not that it comforts me, but the gentleness, the sincerity of his usually carefree voice stuns my mind just enough.

This time, when I open my eyes, light breaks through. It’s just a sliver, the kind made by a cracked door, and it’s cutting across my husband’s face.

No, not my husband, though that’s exactly what he’d been in my dream.

The Nomad stares down at me, and he must glimpse the flicker of recognition in my eyes, because he sighs. I watch his chest fall.

“See?” he says. “Just a dream.”

I blink, then hurriedly push myself up onto my elbows, glancing around the room. There’s no one else here. It’s my room, not the Nomad’s, not the room we had shared in my vision when he and I…

“A member of the crew who rooms across the hall heard you and alerted me,” he explains.

I turn my head back toward him, still addled from the vision, still confused. My body is here, in the present, but my mind keeps shifting back and forth between here, in this room, and the future. It’s too close—the Nomad sitting on the bed with me, too close to the vision itself, and I feel my mind tottering between the two, the sight before me flashing back and forth.

Just then, something about what the Nomad said snags my attention. I wrench myself out of his grasp and grab for the quill and parchment next to my bed.

How did they hear me? I write. I can’t scream.