Page 24 of Invoking Ruin

It’s terrifying, exciting. Dizzying. The air slapping against my face is a relief, keeping away the worst of the nausea, but the acid in my stomach still rises until I’m leaning over the side and emptying the thing once more.

I catch Vita watching me worriedly as I return upright. Whatever she might say is snatched away by the winds. It’s for the best. I’m not sure how much more evasion I can endure tonight.

All too soon—or has it been forever?—Vita pulls us to a stop.

Below us I can make out mountains covered in trees, jaggedness breaking into rolling hills, and in the distance, shining like an oblong bowl, a city full of lights. People.

“Where are we?”

“Florence.”

We’ve gone nearly three hundred kilometers in minutes. Traveled as fast as an airplane. Faster, even. “Are we meant to be here?”

Vita shrugs. “It’s not my first choice, but you need to rest. We can’t go any farther tonight.”

I can’t disagree with her. My stomach is empty, but it still squeezes and jumps, as though it might find more to give. My head is starting to ache.

I touch my hair and pull it away from my forehead, which is wet and shining in the moonlight. The blood on my fingers doesn’t look as dark as it should be.

Vita grabs my hand and wipes the blood away. “Don’t do that. You’ll make it worse.”

The world spins, and I can’t disagree with her. I’ve never liked the sight of blood, anyway. “I’m going to be sick again.”

“Not a surprise.” She guides Pegasus lower, into a clearing in a forest, dark, unseen. “Just a little longer. We’re almost there.”

The rest passes in a blur. She must have landed the horse, and gotten me out of the chariot, but I don’t really remember any of it.

What I do remember is her charming the front desk clerk of a hotel lobby, and him passing her a key.

We go up the narrow stairs of the hotel. I lean against her with all my weight, which isn’t nothing, but she doesn’t seem bothered by the extra strain at all.

The room is small but clean. A fresh breeze is wafting in from the open windows. It’s warmer than it was in Lake Como, almost too hot, but still pleasant.

She sits me down on the toilet seat in the small bathroom and kneels down in front of me, frowning.

“We need to clean that,” she says nodding towards my head.

“Do I need a doctor?” I try to touch my head again, but she grabs my hands and keeps them in my lap.

“Probably not. Head wounds often look far worse than they are.” For a woman who’s been remarkably into me since we met, she doesn’t seem all that concerned about my potentially life-threatening injuries.

She rises and finds a small towel, wets it, and returns to me. “We’ll clean it up and decide what to do from there.”

It’s not like I can or want to say no. I nod, and she applies the cloth to my head. I hiss, more at the cold of the water than any pain, and she makes a soothing noise in response.

“Not so bad,” she murmurs as she sponges the worst of the blood away from my head. “How do you feel?”

I press my lips together. She never mentioned that she had any kind of medical training. Only a vague talk of consulting for… some company, I guess. As I think back on it, she never ever said what she did, or who for.

What do I know about this woman?

“I feel like an idiot who’s been taken for a ride today,” I say.

She huffs, a sound suspiciously close to laughter. “Momus has that effect on people. He makes everything feel as if it’s your fault.”

Momus isn’t the only one making me feel like a fool, but here, in such a vulnerable position, I keep those thoughts to myself.

“Will you tell me who he is, now?”

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