Page 130 of Harbinger

“Your burns haven’t finished healing.” He reclines in his chair and crosses his arms, jaw setting in a rigid line, perfect mouth ready to deliver his next blow.

Bastard.

I plant my hands on his desk and glare back at him. “I’m fine.”

I’m using the balm. I don’t even need bandages anymore. Yes, the skin is still raw and pink, and there are a few lingering blisters, but there’s nothing to stop me from lifting a sword.

“They aren’t.” He nods toward my arms, then turns back to his work. “And I won’t put a blade in your hands until they are.”

Heat climbs to my cheeks. “You told me to earn answers,” I say. “How am I supposed to do that if you won’t even look at me for more than a minute at a time?”

Bishop lifts his head and makes a show of assessing me, his face a mask of that irritating composure. But his eyes narrow when they reach my hands. And he scowls.

I glance down at the bloody cuts and scrapes covering the backs of my hands, at the dirt caked in the webbing of my fingers. Some has spilled onto his very important desk. I draw back and tuck my hands under my biceps but don’t apologize.

He remains quiet for a moment, and when he finally speaks, a soft growl laces his words. “What have you done to yourself?”

“I’ve just been out digging my own grave,” I mutter, instantly regretting it when his forehead creases. “Seven hells, I’ve been in the garden. Is that not allowed? Was it finally becoming the shit pile you envisioned?”

“The garden?” he repeats like he heard me wrong. As if the activity is somehow foreign to him. Considering the state it’s in, maybe it is.

I roll my eyes and nod.

A faint wrinkle appears between his brows. “And why aren’t you using gloves?”

“I couldn’t find any.” Not that I really tried. But his attention stays on the hands still tucked under my biceps longer than necessary, and I sigh. “It’s just dirt. I’ll wash them, and I won’t touch anything until I do.”

He finally lifts his eyes to mine. “Ask me again when you’re in one piece.”

I choke back a scream and briefly consider throttling him but whirl around and leave instead. Because strangling him won’t do me any good. Bishop will always be around to make my life hell … even if I kill him.

But the next morning, there’s a clean set of tools waiting at the base of the fountain along with several pairs of gloves, all made from different materials and folded neatly.

I stand there longer than I mean to, something clogging my throat. Then, I swallow, pull on a pair, and get to work. But I listen for his footsteps, part of me afraid he’ll return to the garden.

Part of me hoping that he does.

TWENTY-FOUR

The winter rain in Vennaro has teeth. It bites spitefully at my cheeks, cold beads of it spilling down the back of my neck and soaking the collar of my thick sweater. It hasn’t stopped in the last three days I’ve been out in the garden. No wonder everybody gave up on tending it.

But after a few days of honest work, the overgrowth in the garden’s easternmost zone is almost gone. The ground is visible there again, the dark soil ready to be planted with bulbs and bushes and anything else that stands a chance of surviving if the ground freezes. It’s hard to say if winter will bring that depth of cold or just keep spitting rain at us. Much to the oscen’s annoyance, the dead tree bordering the garden edge is now a stump.

In protest, my shadow has taken to roosting in its neighbor’s branches and watching me. That tree shows signs of the same blight that killed the other. But I can’t find a damn thing to save it in the Icaros book. Not that I understand half of what I’m reading. Besides, I’ve yet to feel even a glimmer of magic waking in my blood.

The oscen dives right over my head when I drag my spade to the stump and lands in the tree next to it with a mournful caw.

“I’ll plant a new one,” I promise, wedging the spade under a half-rotted root.

I put my weight behind the tool, and the root shifts grudgingly, wet earth sucking at the blade. Leaning into it, I push harder until pain sears through my shoulder and my lower back strains. Until my entire body hurts.

But it hurts less than thinking, so I keep going.

A root snaps, and I stumble back a step. My breath fogs in the cold, and I rest against the spade to catch it. Above me, the oscen ruffles its feathers as if making its feelings on continuing this activity known.

“I’ll try to save that one.” I tip my head to the tree it’s sitting in.

Its beak opens, followed by a caw that’s shrill enough to make my jaw clench. Then it hops along the branch, moving closer to oversee the work like it owns the place.