Page 112 of Circle of Shadows
He kept snoring quietly.
She turned him onto his back and tried to pry open his lips with her free hand. “Wolf. Open your mouth.”
“Mm mm mmmm.” He kept his lips firmly pursed.
Fairy swirled the vial of wood ear and swallow’s spit. Its odor had shifted from fresh dung to fertilizer now. Slightly mellower, but still awful.
“I don’t have the patience for this. Sorry. Again.” She kicked Wolf hard in the side, and he opened his mouth as if yelping, although no sound came out. She poured the contents of the vial onto his tongue. Then she smacked her hand over his mouth so he couldn’t spit it out.
He struggled but finally swallowed. She removed her hand from his mouth.
Wolf’s voice came back to him, a bit muddled, and he started singing nonsense. “Ba dij do, Ba dij pa-kow...”
“Come on, come on, come on,” Fairy said. “Please work.” She looked at her completely empty vial of wood ear, but even if it was enough to counteract the genka, there was stilla chance it wouldn’t work. After all, Spirit had been the one who was actually injected with genka.
Suddenly, Wolf gasped. He blinked. Then he looked up and smiled groggily.
“It’s really unfair that you’re so damnably handsome, even when you’re drugged,” Fairy said. “You’re lucky I have a great deal of restraint.”
He laughed, but it came out a bit sluggishly. “You made me a genka antidote.”
“You’re very observant.”
“And you’re awake. The rira wore off.”
“Again, very observant. It would’ve been hard for me to make you an antidote if I was in a coma.”
He sighed. “Glad you’re okay. You were so brave... at the bluff.” His eyelids fluttered shut. “Still sleepy. Miss the sparkly green dragons.”
“No.” Fairy shook him. “If you fall back asleep, I swear to the gods, I will kiss you against your wishes.”
“I should definitely fall asleep then.”
Fairy’s heart skittered, like a hound’s at the start of a foxhunt. Was he actually flirting back? Wolf never did that. He always shrugged aside her comments as if they were jokes.
She looked at his lips. They were very kissable. And then she remembered the day this past summer, when she’d seen him stepping out of one of the deep soaking tubs in the bathhouse (yes, she’d been in the towel closet with a conquest, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to look at other boys too). The water had beaded on Wolf’s broad shoulders and dripped off the planes of his chest down to where the towel was wrapped around his waist...
Stop it. He’s your roommate’s gemina,she told herself.
“Come on,” Fairy said, pulling Wolf to his feet. She retrieved another small glass vial from her belt, took his hand, and poured a small handful of what looked like little brown rocks into his palm. “Here, eat these.”
He wobbled while trying to stand. “What are they?”
“Cocoa nibs. Highly caffeinated.”
“Ah.” Wolf popped them into his mouth. The nibs would hopefully counteract the last of the genka’s effects.
He shook his head at the bitterness and blinked a few times, eyes bright and clear. Then he tilted his head as he looked down at Fairy.
She wrinkled her nose. “What are you staring at?”
“You’re alive. You’re awake.”
Fairy waved him off. “We already went over this.”
But he kept staring. “I worried...weworried that you might not have survived. I wanted to believe that you were safe, but we just didn’t know. And over the past few days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of you in my arms in the desert, the life in you like a flame, and I...”
A silent hum began to build in the air between them, the kind of subtle vibration that only the two people involved can perceive. The thrill of the start of a foxhunt flitted through Fairy’s chest again.
