Ice Country(89)

“One…”

I kiss Jolie’s head.

“Two…”

I close my eyes.

“Three!”

Jolie’s body shudders and my eyes flash open to Circ covering a deep stab wound with cloth, holding it in place with the heel of his hand. Jolie gasps suddenly, coughing in my face, her eyes shooting open, wider than the base of the mountain.

“Jolie? Jolie?” I say, holding her, but her eyes drift closed slowly, her head heavy once more. Lifeless.

But wait.

Wait.

Please, wait.

Her breath’s on my face. It’s weak, so frighteningly weak, but still there.

Feve pushes in next to Circ, lifts the bandages, which are already tinged with blood, pours clear liquid across the wound, refolds the cloths, and presses them back down, closing Circ’s hands on them once more. He looks at me. “To help close the wound,” he explains.

I want to know more, how he knows to do what he’s doing, how he’s going to save Jolie’s life, but not now. Now, all I want to do is feel her breath on my hand, on my face, as I watch her sleep.

Really sleep.





Chapter Thirty-Three





She hasn’t woken up and I haven’t left her side, sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair that hurts my back and my arse in equal measure.

Three days have passed with her little chest rising and falling, rising and falling, but other than that, she hasn’t moved more than a whisper, not even stirring for the dark dreams that surely plague her sleep.

Mother’s oblivious to everything.

I’ve held Jolie’s hand for hours and hours, just in case she can feel it and draw strength from me. And in case she can hear me, I speak to her, tell her memories of growing up together, when Father and Wes weren’t dead, when Mother wasn’t a ghost of a human. Good stories. Stories I can’t tell without feeling melting snow in my eyes.

Feve comes every day, gives her herbs in a drink that we dribble on her tongue, both for strength and for healing. I help him replace her bandages and watch as he sprinkles his strange medicines on her wound. Every day I hope it’ll look better, but it never does.

And every day I get plenny of visitors. Buff, Siena, Circ, Wilde—even good ol’ Yo from the pub comes by. My friends from fire country are staying at Clint and Looza’s with my mother. I never ask them how that’s going and they don’t offer the information.

Skye comes by more than anyone, at least six times a day. It’s weird, seeing her on a daily basis outside of the prison, outside of the woods, outside of battle. She can be so different when she wants to be. So much less strong, more tender. Sometimes she holds my hand while I hold Jolie’s, and I can almost feel her strength running through me and into my sister.

She might never wake up.

I think it all the time, but I won’t say it out loud, even when Feve cautions me that it’s a possibility. “There’s no way to predict how a body will react to something like that. And she’s so small,” he says.

“She’s strong,” I reply back, but still the thought is in the back of my head.

(She might never wake up.)

I’m so tired, so freezin’ exhausted, both mentally and physically, that all I want to do is curl up in a ball next to Jolie and sleep forever with her. But the bed’s too small and I’m too big and I’m afraid of crushing her in my sleep.

For the third night in a row and with tears in my eyes, I drift away into an uncomfortable sleep filled with dark riders, burning houses, and the king stabbing my sister.

I’m still sitting in my chair.

But I’m still holding Jolie’s hand, too.





~~~





I awake with tearstains on my cheeks and Buff punching me in the shoulder.

“I brought you breakfast,” he says, and he doesn’t even call me a sissy-eyed snowflake-lover for the tracks of white salt on my face. That’s how I know everything’s changed.

“How’s your gut-slash?” he asks, and I know what he means. It took him asking me that three times before I realized he was asking about Jolie, not me. After all, Jolie’s the gut-slash that hurts me the most, deep under the surface, in the pit of my stomach, worming and gnawing away.

“No worse, no better,” I say, my standard response that I hope will change one day soon.

He nods and we’re both silent for a moment, just watching Jolie sleep. “So, uh, you said something about breakfast?” I ask. I’m not hungry but I need something to distract me.

“Rolls again,” he says. “Harder than rocks. Less tasty too,” he adds with a grin. He hands me a hunk of bread from his satchel. It really is like rock.

For a few minutes we scrape at our rolls with our teeth, trying to get some kind of sustenance from them. Watching Buff gnaw away, I almost laugh, but my lips don’t turn up so quickly these days. “You make these?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.