Page 45 of Hunted By Fae
I sit up on my own bed, leaned against a stack of pillows. The raspiness of my breaths grate through me. There’s a faint whistling hitch to my inhales, and I feel it, sharp, like ice all the way down to my lungs.
It’s almost like I can’t quite get enough oxygen, and sometimes my brain feels a little fuzzy, and I’m hit with waves of dizziness, then my sight starts to distort.
That’s why I can’t go out there with Bee to find more supplies, more food.
All I can do in those hours she’s gone is stare at the doors, waiting for her to come back.
I watch her now, freshly returned from her scavenge of the nearby houses.
She scoops up foil packets of noodles and potato chips, then carries them to the foot of my bed. “Pack these.”
The packets spill over the knitted blanket. Not just instant noodles and chips; there are some sauces, too. Little ketchup and mayo sachets.
Guess we’re about to be that desperate for calories.
I give a faint nod and force myself off the pillows. The loss of the cotton-stack as my support spurs the ache through my back.
That fucking ache.
It’s not my back, not really. It’s my lungs.
Bee tugs the backpack strap off her shoulder. It still has the tags dangling from it, recently stolen from a shop nearby in this shithole of a town.
“Pack it well,” she tells me, then tosses the bag onto the pile. She lingers a pointed look over me. “Think you can manage an attempt at tidiness?”
My smile at her lame joke is fatigued.
Bee doesn’t return to her bed, lined with organised piles of packing to be done. Instead, she lingers at my side, then reaches a hand for my wrist.
“How are you?”
I lift my gaze to her. “Tired.”
“And your chest?”
“Tight. It’s like…” I rub my hand over my breastbone. “Constricted, and it aches. And… like the breaths aren’t enough.”
Bee considers me.
I shrug. “My lungs are fucked.”
She slips her fingers away from my wrist, where I’m certain she was discreetly checking my pulse. “Do you think an inhaler could help?”
“I don’t have asthma,” I say, then flick my hooded gaze over her shoulder.
Ramona is approaching, her weight leaned on the thud of a crutch. Her thin face looks gaunt in the dim candlelight. The glisten of sweat is brushed over her cheeks—and I study it for a moment before I realise the glisten isn’t sweat.
It’s tears.
My heart sinks.
Bee traces my gaze over her shoulder. She turns, pressing her back into the edge of my bed, as Ramona comes to stop.
“Ruby’s dead.”
There it is, my heart sitting in my wormy gut, my chest hollow.
Bee dips her head for a moment, as if about to fall into a moment of silence out of respect, but I see on her profile that her face tightens, frustration she tries to hide behind a mask.
