Page 227 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
On impact, I lost grip of Pete. And slammed sideways into a bed of jagged rocks hiding under the mud.
Now bleeding, shaking in shock, I flapped through the mire until I located Pete, then lugged him to shore. Breathing in stilted gasps, he was unconscious again, and no amount of poking, smacking, or shouting woke him.
“Goddess, Pete, do you have to be so fucking difficult?”
With no other recourse, I hauled ass out of the mud and grabbed him by his limp, slimy wrists. I lunged backward with the little energy I had left, my punctured side screaming, my legs stiff, aching.
Growling through my teeth, I towed Pete’s leaden bulk to the kirk, past its seemingly abandoned gate, and through the gorgeous rotunda beneath Adam and Eve’s watchful gaze. The moment we tumbled into everlasting twilight, I fell on my ass beside Pete’s sagging head and shattered paradise.
“Help us!” I screamed, gathering Pete in my lap. “Somebody help!Please!”
All of Eden came to my call. Several fae of differing races knelt with me in the flowering grass, their hands glowing white. Stem healers.
I wept when a kind-eyed drey touched my muddy, bleeding arm. “You’ve done right by him, child. Let us do the rest.”
Thirty-Seven
“Goodmorningtoyou,Amy!” Liatris called, fluttering past me on my jaunt through Eden. I waved as lightning bugs danced over my shoulder on a tropical jet stream. Carrying a foraging basket, I bustled past numerous friendly faces, all greeting me like their longtime neighbor. I was well known by that point, as it had been six weeks, if I’d tallied my sleeps correctly, since I’d taken over the warden’s responsibilities.
Because the warden himself was still down for the count.
“That particular bane bonnet germinated a phage—what Earthers call a virus,” Cissus, one of Pete’s many healers, had told me the day after I’d dragged Pete into Eden. We’d stood at the foot of Pete’s infirmary bed, where my friend hacked into a medicated cloth a hedge healer was soothing his lungs with. “A deathly phage too, I fear,” Cissus went on, gentle but forthright. “And while phages pose us no issue in fae sicklings, we’ve never cured a human of one. At this point, we can only manage Pete’s symptoms until his body trounces the illness.”
This had panicked me, so Cissus—a tall, charming Middling with a clavicle birthmark—had reassured me, “We’ll keep him alive, but it’ll be a battle.”
Cissus hadn’t been wrong.
On his worst days, Pete spent his few waking hours in bouts of coughing fits, vomit, and febrile delirium. After Alys’s spell had worn off on Pete’s tethers, things became dangerous for anyone trying to help the hallucinating SOB; he’d attack anything that seemed remotely threatening.
“He’s returned to his cage,” Morus remarked to me when I’d first seen Pete so lost. “Stay well back.”
Pete had torn his infirmary room apart, equating those helping him with Shadow Palace gaolers because they wouldn’t let him leave. If they had, Pete would’ve died. He’d needed a stem healer on constant call to purge his lungs of the pestilence suffocating him from within.
So, feeling trapped, Pete had devolved into his former hell. Hunched over his rumpled cot, he’d wheezed threats of evisceration to anyone who dared touch him. Angry as snakes, his shadow tethers had writhed about the shambled room, ready to enact his scared, frantic, brainsick will. Nobody, not even Morus, had the idiocy to approach him.
Nobody but me.
I couldn’t have said I knew what I was doing. Or that I was even being courageous. I’d just seen Pete falling apart, become so sad I burst into tears, and my heart spurred me toward him. I’d made it all of three steps before Pete had snared me in every velvety tether he had. He’d wrapped me so tightly, he could’ve broken bones or disjointed me with a jerk of his hands.
“You damned fool!” Morus had hopped on hooves. “We warned you, didn’t we?”
Others had leapt to help me.
“Stop,” I’d breathed, halting them as the predator’s black and blue eyes squinted at me over his scarred shoulder. I’d trembled, feeling hunted, but relaxed in Pete’s tethers. I’d become so pliant, so docile, that he’d realized I wasn’t there to fight him. His labored breathing had quieted. And he’d cautiously, curiously, tugged me toward him.
Only inches between us, Pete had studied me. I’d held my breath until, blinking, he’d shaken his tormented head. “Shorty?” My blood had rushed to circulate when his tethers unbound me. “What are—what are you doing here?”
Herehad meant the hideous mirage he was living in—Gentian’s fighting ring.
Tears dripping from my chin, I’d set my hand in Pete’s mussed hair, whispering, “I’m not, Pete. I’m safe in Eden, and so are you.”
He’d become as tame as a kitten after that.
Until his next delusion.
Eden’s healers hadn’t fought this battle alone. Spell casters had canvassed the infirmary, crafting charms to keep Pete’s fluctuating balance from skewing demonic. His rancorous ravings and explosions of violence had kept them quite busy.
Simple things, like getting Pete to eat, were a damn nightmare. Without smell, he’d had no taste, so he’d wantednothingthat we’d served him. He’d started dropping weight alarmingly fast. Eventually, Pete’s scary outbursts had subsided to crippling fatigue and long, terrifying lengths of frailty. Morus, the healers, and I had forced Pete out of bed every six hours to maintain his muscle tone, but he’d become winded after only moments and need another prolonged recovery.
