Page 13 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

And Streja fucking knew.

Was there something in the stew? Or maybe that awful, acrid spirit?

But what about everyone else who’d indulged in both? They all seemed fine, laughing and dealing cards around the fire.

Fuck, it could’ve been something in my waterskin.

Whatever vessel transported it didn’t matter anymore, because my body was dead weight, and pin-prick numbness trickled through my nerves.

My heels kept catching as Streja dragged me through the dirt right past my tent, mumbling under her breath the entire time. I wasn’t sure where she had taken me, because I lost the battle to keep my eyes open.

They slid back open a sliver when I landed hard on something plush—a bedroll, maybe—but I lost that hazy visual as I was rolled to my side, my arm pulled over my face, and a weighty darkness settled over top of me.

“I’m so sorry, Nor. He knew how much you trusted me, and t-they threatened my fucking mom,” came Streja’s teary rasp, but it sounded so far away. “But I…I’m going to fix it. I’m going to take your tent, and it’ll be over soon, okay? I promise you.”

I couldn’t have responded if I had wanted to.

The most profound confusion I’d ever experienced warred with a hazy twilight in my mind as the sounds of objects moving all around me mixed with muted thuds and choked sobs.

Darkness won that brief, ruthless battle.

A violent cough rattled out of my lungs, and they burned when I tried to fill them again.

Gods, so did my eyes. My leg ached something fierce too.

But no matter how much I hacked or shifted or tried to blink away the foggy mess of my vision, none of it would ease. Neither did the searing heat that pressed in on me from all sides.

Coughing. Burning. Aching.

Coughing. Burning. Aching.

Over, and over, and over.

Realization came at me like a crack of lightning across the ridgeline.

It wasn’t fog obscuring my vision—it was smoke.

And the heat searing my skin? Fucking fire.

Profanities sputtered out of me with those violent coughs, and I clambered to get my limbs under me, fighting with tangled linens to get up and move. A nearly impossible task with arms and legs as heavy as sandbags and lungs that couldn’t get a proper breath of air.

Up onto all fours was as far as I could manage while I struggled to tug my shirt up over my mouth and nose. Little good it did, with how thick, acrid smoke had consumed every bit of breathable air in the space, courtesy of a wall of flames eating away at the opening of the tent and engulfing everything in its path.

Including the bedroll beneath me.

And my fucking leg.

I scrambled to the corner furthest from the flame as the taste of metal coated my tongue, and my eyes refused to even crack open against the bite of smoke. My fingers scraped across rough, gritty ground, fumbling until I felt the edge of the tent pulled taut against the earth. I gave it a few desperate but exhausted yanks and dragged myself through the gap.

I crawled for as long as my body would allow, which couldn’t have been more than a few paces before the agony in my leg had me collapsing into the dirt. It took everything to shift onto my back and glance down.

Bile surged in the back of my throat as I took in the singed and blistered mess of my calf—blackened not only from burns, but from the reinforced fabric of my boots and pants fusing into my skin. Skin that was still smoking and producing the most putrid smell.

I barely turned my head in time as I voided the contents of my stomach in a couple of violent heaves—onto tree roots.

Trees.

We hadn’t set up camp near any trees, had we?