Page 12 of The Unseelie War
Her knees buckled, and if Serrik hadn't caught her arm, she would have collapsed entirely. The world spun around her, colors bleeding together in nauseating swirls.
“Easy,” Serrik's voice seemed to come from very far away. “Breathe, Ava.”
She tried to follow his instruction, but her lungs felt like they were full of cotton. Using her power on him—reallyusing it—had drained her more than she'd realized.
“I’m okay,” she managed to gasp, though she clearly wasn't.
“No, you're not.” His grip on her arm tightened. “When did you last eat? Sleep?”
She tried to remember and came up blank. Everything was a blur of crisis and chaos. “I don't... what day is it? When did I wind up in Tir n’Aill and how long was I there for?”
“That is what I thought. You also have not stopped since you merged the worlds.” He looked around, taking in their surroundings with a tactical eye. “We need to find somewhere defensible where you can rest.”
“I can't rest,” she protested weakly. “People are dying. The world is literally falling apart. I have to?—”
“You have to survive long enough to actually help,” he interrupted. "Running yourself into the ground will not save anyone.”
It was then that Ava realized something was wrong. Not wrong in the general sense—everything was wrong—but specifically wrong with their immediate situation. “Wait. Where's Puck?”
They both turned, scanning the area around them. The silver-haired half breed was nowhere to be seen.
“Puck?” Ava called, her voice echoing strangely off the warped buildings.“Puck!”
No response.
“When did you last see him?” Serrik asked, though he sounded more like he was asking her where she’d last left her keys, not a person.
Ava tried to think through the fog of exhaustion. “He was right behind us when we approached the fae group. He had his tablet…”
“He could have gone anywhere.” Serrik shrugged. “Goodfellow can move through space and time. He may have been distracted by a piece of rubbish rolling in the breeze.”
“But why would he leave?” The question came out more plaintive than Ava intended. “Where would he go?”
Serrik's expression was grim. “In chaos like this? Could be anywhere, for any reason. Maybe he saw something we didn't. Maybe he grew bored. Maybe he decided we were moving too slowly.”
“We have to find him.”
“Goodfellow is fine. He will find us when he needs to,” Serrik said firmly. “And you are in no condition to go hunting for quicksilver. You can barely stand, let alone search a nightmare city for an invisible trickster who does not wish to be found.”
Ava swayed again, and this time her vision grayed at the edges. The exhaustion was bone-deep, the kind that sleep deprivation and stress and magical overexertion could create.
“There are trees that way.” He gestured.
“What?” She looked the direction he was pointing. It looked like the Boston Common. “What’s the Common got to do with anything?”
“The trees there are old and with strong roots. They will provide protection from whatever this place is becoming.”
She didn’t know what the tree’s roots had to do with it, but…whatever. And she still wanted to argue, to insist they keep searching for Puck, but her body was betraying her. Every step felt like she was walking through quicksand, and the nightmare city seemed to pulse and shift around her in ways that made her stomach revolt.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But just for a few hours.”
The familiar geography of Boston had been so thoroughly corrupted that landmarks she'd known her entire life were unrecognizable. The Common itself was familiar and a horror showsimultaneously—the trees were still there, still recognizably trees, but they were massive now, their branches intertwining overhead to form a canopy that blocked out most of the sickly sky.
“Here," Serrik said, guiding her to a spot where several large oaks had grown together to form a natural shelter.
Ava sank gratefully onto a patch of moss that was surprisingly soft and dry. Now that she wasn't moving, the full weight of her exhaustion hit her like a falling building.
Serrik paced around the trees in a large circle, some twenty feet around her, whispering something with his fingers out as if he were touching a wall. He went around three times before returning to her. “We will be undisturbed until morning. The trees and I have reached an accord.”
