Curse Breaker (2)

34

The memory lurches into something else, a noise. It's all too familiar, a noise that curdles my blood. Samu. The scream rattles the inside of my brain, coming from all around me, luring me outside of the walls of the tent. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to shove it out, but that only makes it louder.

Samu isn't here. He's safe. He's with Sanaa. He isn't here.

"How come you were okay that first time you rescued me from the cloud?" I ask. "Does it not affect you?"

"I wasn't exposed to it for long enough time. No one is immune." He pauses. "Except, maybe you."

I shudder. "I still hear them. Both Samu and my father. I hear them now."

"And yet you're still here, not out there in the cloud looking for them. Because you can tell it isn't real."

I tug my knees to my chest. "Who do you hear in the cloud?"

He hesitates. For a moment, I wonder if my question was over the line. But then, he sighs. "My family, mostly. The cloud chooses what's most cruel. What's most tempting. The dead are usually the most likely culprits."

"You once told me you weren't sure if your parents were still alive," I say. "Was that true?"

He nods. "I never saw them die. But sometimes, I wonder if their fate was worse than death."

An image rises to mind of that infected shifter, feasting on the horse carcass. "They were infected." He nods. "And you think I might be able to cure them?" I whisper. "That if the cloud goes away, so will the evocian?"

"Sanaa hopes so. I don't know."

The pressure of his words presses me into the ground, a weight so crushing it makes it difficult to breathe.

"Can I tell you something?" Killian asks, voice low. I nod eagerly. "Sometimes I wonder if... if even if you could bring them back, if you should."

I think of Cadence, what she did to Raven. What would she think if she knew?

"Nobody would blame them for what the cloud made them. They might not even remember the things they could've done. Like Cadence."

"Maybe not, but they'd notice that one of their children wasn't there anymore. And they'd ask questions where the answer could destroy them entirely."

I meet his gaze, his words settling in. In the forest, after what Cadence did to Raven, I had wondered based on Lei's reaction if something similar had happened to someone Killian knew. His words merely confirm my predictions. And despite all the lies and questions about the truth of what he tells me, sitting in the dead silence of the tent with only each other as company, I believe him.

"I'm sorry, Killian."

But no words can make up for the loss tugging at his heart. I know that from my father, from the way people treated me in the aftermath.

We settle into a silence far from comfortable, only disrupted by the distant, agonising screams from Samu.

I focus on the feeling of the earth beneath me, the small peddle stabbing into the skin of my shin. The screams don't dull. They don't become less painful, any quieter or less agonizing. But they're not real. I open my eyes, opening my hands.

Half-moons indent bloodied skin. My stomach lurches as I think of Casimir, Lei and Juem, further up the hill. The cloud had been rolling through the valley, but it was too dark to see whether it came across the top, too.

"If something happened, we would hear them," I say. "If they got stuck in it, they'd be screaming or something." Killian doesn't answer, barely moves. "Right?"