Page 97 of Fortune's Blade

I sat up, too, finding it impossible suddenly to just lie there. “I didn’t kill it. My weapons did. And my arsenal is now gone. So, what happens next time?”

“The next time you fight a dragon?” he lifted an eyebrow. “Are you planning on another?”

I glared at him. “I’m being serious! And how the hell should I know? I don’t know anything about what to expect here. But Steen is still out there, and apparently after Dorina. So, if we do find her, then yes, I might end up doing an encore.

“And without anything to save me this time—or anyone else!”

“We’ll find a way—”

“Don’t tell me that!” I wrapped my arms around myself, my naked skin breaking out in gooseflesh for more reason than just the cold. “I tried to tell myself I was fine without Dorina,” I said. “I told you that, every time you got a little too overprotective—and in our world, I was right. I can handle things there; I know how it works. But here . . ..”

“Here, you are still Dory,” he said, pulling the fur back up around me. “Nothing has changed—”

“Everything has changed!” I stared at him, and to my horror, felt my eyes getting wet. “What if I can’t get her back? What if I’m not strong enough?” It was the only thing I could think of anymore, despite what Claire had said. But look what had happened to Claire! “What if she’s already dead? What if I somehow survive this only to find her corpse? What am I supposed to do then?”

He didn’t answer this time. Just gathered me into his arms, gently in concession to my bruises, and then tighter when I fought him, even though I didn’t know why I was fighting him. Or what I was talking about, because we both knew I wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t just let her die, but I didn’t know what to do, or if there was anything I could do, and the events of last night were starting to hit hard.

My skin was a rainbow of vivid hues, and my cuts had been stitched up with some kind of black thread that left me looking like a rag doll sewn together from spare parts, a lady Frankenstein. My skin was cold even when I was properly dressed, and just about everything on my body ached. But none of those things were the problem.

This was the problem. The growing certainty that the best part of me had gone with Dorina, and that there wasn’t enough left to find her, or protect her if she was hurt. Not in this hellish place where even the flora was lethal!

I grabbed a knife off my pack and slammed it through a stalk of something that Claire had brought back from the forest, something that had crawled out of its basket and headed in our direction, slinking across the floor like a leafy snake. It writhed like one, too, after I impaled it, and was either stronger than any plant had a right to be or else I was weaker. But I kept up the pressure and twisted the blade, and it abruptly dissolved in a haze of black smoke and a few withered scraps on the reeds.

“What was that?” Louis-Cesare asked, sounding slightly weirded out.

Although whether that was because of the not-snake or the fact that I was systematically beating the remains with a shoe, I didn’t know.

“Dory,” he grabbed my shoulder.

“I don’t want to risk taking the knife out,” I panted, smacking it some more.

It looked dead, but around here, you just never knew.

“Dory!” he took my shoe.

I took it back.

“What?” I looked up at him through tangled hair, flushed cheeks and crazy eyes, which I could see for an instant when my vision switched over to his. I wondered if that had been on purpose, this time. If he’d wanted me to see how insane I looked.

Like that was anything new.

I abruptly got up, only to have him immediately pull me back down again. “Talk to me,” he said, and that was the wrong phrase since there was nothing to say. Not for him, not for me. My sister was gone, I was scared out of my mind, and for once in my life, I couldn’t seem to tamp it back down.

It felt like someone had a hand around my throat, and with every hour, it squeezed a little tighter.

Words were useless.

I needed to move, to walk, to hunt, assuming I could find anything to hunt with. I’d go round up breakfast for everyone, assuming they’d eat it cooked instead of raw and on the hoof. I couldn’t just lay here with my thoughts another minute or I really would go mad!

But Louis-Cesare wasn’t having it.

Louis-Cesare was putting his foot down.

Unfortunately for him, so was I, and a brief tussle ended with me socking him on the jaw. And immediately getting teary again, because I hadn’t meant to do that! I hadn’t meant to hurt him.

I hadn’t meant a lot of things, lately.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, panting slightly and staring at him. “That wasn’t—I’m sorry for all of it.”

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