Cassie could feel a cool breeze, which felt nice. It also felt like the world was bouncing up and down, which didn't. She was facedown, her body curved around something large, solid, and warm. Leaves were brushing past, dampening her with dew. She must be back in the forest. Tentatively, she opened her eyes, but could see little beyond short, brown bristles rubbing against her nose. Horsehair.
How had she gotten on a horse? And where was she going? Cassie tried to turn her head to see, but the slight movement awoke a storm of throbbing at the side of her head.
She groaned at the remembered blow and felt the steed's gait quicken. A large hand landed firmly on her back, steading her.
"Hold on," someone above her said grimly. "We'll be there soon."
Was that Avery's voice? Where was he taking her? A particularly painful lurch sent Cassie bouncing against the horse's side, reawakening the hungry darkness. It was eager to take her again, and Cassie was grateful for the opportunity. She would rather the darkness than the memories. She would rather death than the memories.
She had no way of telling how much time had passed when they finally came to a stop and the stillness woke her. Their environment had changed, grown noisier. The running water and muted hum of daily life sounded oddly familiar. Surely he hadn't brought her home?
Blinking slowly, Cassie raised her eyes as much as she could without lifting her head. They were surrounded by wooden buildings and staring peasants. Avery had taken her straight to the center of Telyre.
She could hear the confused whispers wrapping around them as the horse stepped nervously.
"What in the three kingdoms?"
"Rode straight through the pigsty. Never seen anything like it."
"Do you think it's an injured soldier from battle?"
"This far south?"
"Does he look familiar?"
"Is it a dead body?" This from a young child, who sounded far too excited at the prospect.
Tired of the suspicious and bewildered murmurs, Avery dismounted. With as much care as he could, he slid Cassie off the horse and tried to help her find her feet.
She did her best to stand, but her feet kept sliding from the ground. She had no strength left to support herself. Eventually, wearied by the struggle, she sagged back against Avery and closed her eyes. The sunlight hurt. Everything hurt.
By now the spectators had fallen silent.
Sensing her surrender, Avery looked at one of the peasants. "You," he said in a hard voice, holding Cassie up. "Get someone who can help her."
"Is that...?"
"Cassie?" Though the fearful word had been whispered, Cassie heard it perfectly. Wynne.
She should open her eyes for Wynne. She should stand, should respond to her friend. After a moment of lackluster internal struggle, however, Cassie gave up. She couldn't.
Wynne, thankfully, recovered quickly. "Fetch Eleanor," she ordered someone. Running feet instantly obeyed, but Wynne was already snapping out more instructions. "Robert, George, come here. We may need to carry her to Aldine's. And Leora..." She hesitated no longer than a second. "Go get James."
The world was going fuzzy, even the darkness of her eyelids growing somehow blurrier, but Cassie couldn't summon energy enough to care. If people would stop making such a ruckus, she could sleep. She wanted to rest so badly. Sleep would be peaceful, painless. If it kept everything else at bay, she would sleep forever.
Her body was being jostled, lifted, lowered. Different hands, more voices. Sleep. So much noise.
"Cass? Cassie?" Another familiar voice, worried and tense, was calling. "Open your eyes, darling. Look at me."
The order dragged her unwillingly back into consciousness and Cassie opened her eyes. James hovered over her, his torso curled over her protectively.
"Send for Skylar," James told someone beyond her vision. There was a murmur of protest, then he snarled, "I don't care! Find him!"
Why did he sound so angry? When had he gotten to the square?
She could still hear Avery's voice distantly. "...passed out on the battlefield; I haven't been able to keep her awake since. Her head took a pretty bad hit, but the bleeding should have stopped by now. I had to get her out of there before she was caught. The healers would have sold her out for half a coin."
"Battlefield? What are you talking about? She was visiting family." James was bewildered.
He wasn't supposed to know she had been in battle. Avery shouldn't be telling people. He was going to spill all her secrets.
Cassie slowly shook her head once. "Mmm," she mumbled, her brows drawn together with the effort. She couldn't get much else out. Her throat was so raw, and there was something else...wrong.
The small movement drew James' attention immediately. "Cassie?" he said, his voice breaking in relief. With quick, frantic fingers, he wiped the grime from her cheeks. "What's happened?"
His touch was soothing. Cassie blinked a few times, trying to force her vision to clarify, but it only blurred more. There was terror lurking in her heart, and she didn't want to be alone. She didn't want James to go away.
But she was so tired. Each time she blinked, it took longer and longer to open her eyes again, until she couldn't remember if she'd opened her eyes or not, until she forgot why she should, and sleep reclaimed her.
She woke to find that she had been tucked into her bed at Aldine's. The sun had set and her room was dark, but she could hear raised voices downstairs—or rather, one raised voice, and several frantic hushing ones.
For the first time in days, Cassie felt her curiosity stirring. It sounded like someone was tremendously angry. What could have happened? Considering the argument was taking place below her bedroom, Cassie reasoned she had a right to know what it was about.
As silently as the old wood allowed, Cassie cracked her door open and slipped downstairs. The voices grew clearer with each step she took, until she reached the bottom of the staircase and could hear everything being said in the living room. Carefully taking a seat on the step, she leaned back against the wall to listen. Head pounding and stomach mercifully empty, she had no energy to stand.
"How could you possibly think it not worth mentioning in the two weeks she's been gone?" James was demanding loudly.
"James, please," Aldine implored him in a whisper. "She's still sleeping."
He lowered his voice only slightly. "Two weeks, Wynne," he repeated. "We could have stopped her! Do you have any idea how many men die in these battles?" He sounded like he was sneering. "Of course, you're a woman, so I don't expect you to, but—"
"I am perfectly aware," Wynne hissed. "More than you, probably. You think I don't know? These are our men dying, our fathers, sons, our—" she choked on the last word, then forced it out, though it was subdued. "Our brothers."
"But you thought she would be able to walk away unscathed?" James said. "She's tiny, Wynne. Sunshine and rain, what did you think would happen?"
A quiet voice cut through the tension. "My lord, if I may chime in—"
"I'm not a lord," James said quickly. "Just a commoner. Everybody's poor here."
There was a weighted pause, then Avery chose not to comment. "If you say so, sir." How had Avery known? How could he tell? "I'm not sure how long Cassie has been in Telyre, but surely you must know how...headstrong the lady can be." Diplomatic of Avery. Her father would have used much more colorful words. "If she thought there was a chance of her getting caught, she would have been more likely to run toward the danger—not away."
"You think you know Cassie better than we do?" James said angrily.
"I've known her longer." There was no ire in Avery's voice, just simple statement of fact.
Aldine sighed. "I hate to admit it, but he's right," she said. "You've seen how volatile she gets when she feels pressured. Who knows what she would have done if we'd come after her?"
Wynne must have told them everything while Cassie was sleeping. How much had Avery also said? Had he only mentioned what had occurred in the two weeks she was gone, or had he revealed her entire past?
James, unwilling to concede the point, merely grumbled. He soon found more opportunity for contention. "Well, what is he doing with her?" he demanded of no one in particular. "A knight fresh from battle rides into Telyre with an unconscious Cassie slung over his horse like spoils of war and we're not supposed to find that suspicious? Why did you bring her back here? How do you know her? Where have your paths crossed?"
Despite having had plenty of time to do it, Avery hadn't given her away. He had yet to let her down once in her life.
"She trusts me," Avery said simply. "I cannot tell you her secrets."
James growled in frustration. "We're wasting our time."
"We're not asking you to betray Cassie," Aldine said quietly. "But we need some basic information. Why did she turn to you and no one else? Eleanor was able to get her wound treated, but what if it had been worse? What if she'd gotten—killed?" Her voice faltered. Cassie hadn't known that the seamstress cared so deeply.
"I think we can put some of it together ourselves," James said coldly. "If he's known her longer than us, he knew her before she came here. He knows who she is." Out of all the lies you've told, that is the biggest yet.
Avery hesitated, but did not lie. He was too forthright for that. "Yes."
"How?" Wynne asked.
"I served her, before she fled into the forest."
"Who—"
James interrupted her. "You're the one who trained her. The one who taught her how to fight."
"Yes," Avery admitted.
"Can't you tell us—"
"I've been here too long," Avery said, forestalling anymore questions about Cassie. "I should have reported to my commander within hours after the battle. Now that I know Cassie is safe, I need to return."
"She will be well looked after," Wynne vowed fervently.
"Good," Avery said. The purposeful footsteps paused. "If you're able, keep me informed on how she's doing. I'll feel better knowing this isn't the last I'll hear of her. I'll be going between the army and the king's fortress frequently, if you can get a message there."
Wynne agreed. "Lily's sister works in the kitchens. I'll send word through her."
"Thank you," Avery said. "And tell Cassie..." He hesitated, as though unsure of how to say goodbye. "She's strong," he ultimately said. "Stronger than she knows. She will need reminding of that in the coming days."
"In the coming days?" Aldine repeated. "Did something happen?"
There was something wrong, something evil, hovering outside her mind, waiting to strike when she allowed herself to remember it. A whisper of a scream floated by. Cassie flinched.
"There was...an accident," Avery said, choosing his words carefully. "The tide turned so quickly, there were some people caught in the crush who should not have been. She had been close to...Cassie found the body."
The body.
There it was—the memory that she could not remember without dying.
The screaming that filled her head was deafening, mind-splitting, soul-shattering. It was like getting pulled to pieces and then slammed back together over and over again.
Cassie contorted her body urgently, trying to escape the shrieking. Her entire soul was suddenly in agony, and there was no relief from it.
But there were no tears. It was interesting, in a detached sort of way, that she could not cry for her sister. There was, however, the undeniable fact that a hole had been carved from her chest. The gaping emptiness chewed at her, trying to eat the rest of her body, so that in the end she would just be a hole—an ugly, jagged, black hole.
Cassie wrapped her arms around her torso in a desperate attempt to contain the pain. There was no help for it, no cure—nothing but the agony of the pit where her heart had once been.
The hole took up so much space that there was none left for breath. Cassie was almost glad of that, even as she futilely tried to draw air into her lungs. It meant that she would be able to disappear into the numbness of the unconscious world once more. It meant some measure of relief.
Still her chest spasmed, instinctively seeking air. By now she was rocking back and forth on the staircase and had long since lost any ability to hear. The world could crash down on top of her right now and Cassie would be glad of it.
Avery's words existed only to mock her. The body.
A wild, tortured noise tore itself from Cassie's throat. No. No. She couldn't be dead.
"What was that?" someone asked, but Cassie couldn't tell or care who.
There were footsteps growing louder, then she thought she heard her name.
"Great dragons—Cassie!" Was that Aldine?
At the exclamation, the others came rushing out. Suddenly there were far too many voices and hands approaching Cassie, but she couldn't pay attention to any of them. She was too busy trying to hold herself in one piece.
"She's not breathing!" Wynne's voice rose in alarm.
James shouldered Aldine and Wynne out of the way and knelt in front of Cassie. "Cassie, look at me," he demanded. "What is it? What hurts?"
She barely had the strength to move her head, but she managed to lift her gaze somehow, egged on by the edge of desperation in his voice. James flinched when she looked up, but he held her gaze.
"Breathe," he ordered her. "Watch me. Like this, see?" He took a slow, deep breath in, then let it out. "Breathe with me, love," he said.
She blinked, focusing on those achingly green eyes that were bright with a helpless fear, and to her astonishment felt the pain get shoved back a millimeter. It wasn't much, but it was enough that she could take a breath, and then another.
It gave her the strength to choke off the screaming in her head. Finally, there was silence.
The tension in his eyes eased slightly. "Good," he said, taking the next deep breath with her. "There's a girl. Now, what hurts?"
Cassie opened her mouth, tried to answer, but had to close it again when nothing came out. The hole had expanded in her chest until it had reached her throat, and the pressure was so great that no sound could escape. She could not speak, could not cry, could not mourn. It was preferable to the pain eating her alive.