Page 85 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
She listened to the snip of the shears, and the chamber air chilled her skin as her shirt was peeled back. The High Witch stepped aside so Bristol could have a full view.
She stared silently, her lips trying to move. Cold sweat sprung to her chest. She looked away. “Get it off,” she whispered.
“We will. Just give us—”
“Get it off me!Get it off now!” she screamed. Panic gripped every part of her. She wanted to run, scratch it off, tear her skin away, but there was nowhere she could go that it wouldn’t follow. Her arms shivered. The room was tilting, and she dropped to her knees and vomited.
CHAPTER 59
Tyghan stepped toward Bristol, but Dalagorn held him back. “Let the witch do her work.”
The knights were ordered to the far side of the room while Madame Chastain and Eris coaxed Bristol over to the exam table, promising her they would take care of it. Bristol lay face down on the same table where the High Witch had dug claws from Tyghan’s shoulder just weeks ago. He understood the claws. This he couldn’t understand. He’d never seen a tick that large. He hadn’t thought it was even a possibility. Madame Chastain stood back for a moment, eyeing the creature, and shook her head.
“She fainted from pain when we came through the portal,” Kasta whispered to Tyghan. “It had to be that thing.”
Tyghan remembered Bristol pressing her hand against her lower back on her first night there. He’d thought it was only a backache because she was unaccustomed to riding a horse. He had removed ticks from creatures before, even one from August’s fetlock. None of the ticks had ever been much larger than how they started out—about a half inch across and still only a smooth, pale shadow beneath the skin as they fed on their host’s magic, sucking up their innate abilities until someone removed them. The black shadowy creature buried deep under Bristol’s flesh covered her whole lower back. Its crooked legs were as thick as an ogre’s thumb and twisted across her spine. Its body alone was the size of his palm. The dark shadow shifted beneath her skin like it was settling in with a tighter grip. It knew it was being watched.
Bristol clutched the end of the table, her knuckles white, her hands shaking. The knights looked on in shocked silence. Even for them, it was horrific to see the creature squirming inside her.
Madame Chastain stepped over to where Tyghan and the others stood. “That thing has been on her back for years—long before she got here. I suspect that traveling through the portal into Elphame made the tick swell with twenty years of suppressed magic. I’m going to need help. See if Olivia, Esmee, or Reuben are available yet—or get another healer from the city.”
Tyghan sent the guard posted at the door to find them. With several injured in the battle, sorcerers with expertise in the healing arts were stretched thin. Even so, Tyghan had never seen the High Witch ask for assistance.
“It must have been Kierus and Maire who did it,” Cosette said. “No one else in the mortal world would have access to a tick.”
“What kind of parent would do that to their own child?” Quin asked.
“A desperate one,” Tyghan answered.
But Melizan voiced the truer answer. “A ruthless one.”
The same kind of ruthless person who would stab a fellow knight, Tyghan thought. One who would stab a friend. A brother. Because that was what they had been. As close as brothers.
He knew Kierus as well as he knew himself—at least he used to think he did. Did he ever really know him at all? What did he miss? His last moment with Kierus replayed behind his eyes as it had at least a hundred times before. He saw the unexpected embrace, the swiftness of Kierus’s hand, and then the blade piercing his side. The angle. The precise intention. The vicious upward lift. The shock he felt. The disbelief. The cold dampness of his knees as he fell onto the muddy floor of the forest. The fiery heat of the demon blade burning inside him, abandoned in his gut. The gush of warm blood through his fingers as he gripped his side.
Walk away.
And that’s what Kierus did, without ever looking back.
“But why would they do it?” Glennis wondered aloud. “What purpose—”
“Risk,” Tyghan said. His focus locked onto Bristol’s shaking hands. “Navigating a mortal world with a fae child is dangerous when you’re being hunted by two very angry and powerful kingdoms. It’s impossible to know when or where a child might use their magic and expose them. The tick eliminated the risk.”
Kasta shook her head, her lip twisted with disgust. “At least Eris must feel validated. She may be bloodmarked after all. Maybe in the end, this is good news.”
“Hmm,” Melizan mused. “Maybe . . . maybe not.”
Olivia hurried through the door and went straight to the exam table. She and Madame Chastain conferred and gathered supplies from the High Witch’s stock, and Eris stepped away so he wouldn’t break their flow of energy once their work began. The witches took positions on either side of Bristol and rubbed oil on her back.
The strong scent of cloves and roseclaw permeated the room. Olivia chanted a calming spell: “Ara mei ash a ash. Ara mei ash a ash.”
Madame Chastain chanted a summoning spell: “Ecktay ano umalu o nei. Ecktay ano umalu o nei.” The edges of the room dimmed, and the air pinched tight, as light, sound, and scent were focused deep within Bristol’s skin. Her face dripped with sweat, and Tyghan’s fingers curled to fists. It took every ounce of his effort not to go to her side.Do something.But he couldn’t. Any movement would interfere with the witches’ magic. It was already circling the room.
“Your job is over, pet,” the High Witch cooed as she gently pressed near one of the creature’s legs. “You are sated. It is over. It is time to rest. Time to let go.”
Tyghan saw the dark shadow wriggle beneath Bristol’s skin. One leg emerged, and then another. The knights breathed in as a whole, waiting. The High Witch took hold of the leg, gently coaxing it out, but then the other exposed leg retreated back beneath the skin like it sensed a trap. Olivia continued to chant and rub in more oil. Madame Chastain’s grip tightened on the remaining leg. “No, my pet, this way. This—”
The creature writhed, jerked, the leg thrashing back and forth, and then its screech shattered the air, flinging Madame Chastain across the room into the wall, a torn piece of the black leg still wriggling in her hand. Bristol arched backward, screaming in pain as the tick’s fiery blood trickled over her skin. Tyghan ran to her side, but she had already collapsed, unconscious. The smell of her scorched flesh choked the air.
