Drone (Deridia Book 7) by Catherine Miller

Author:Catherine Miller [Miller, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-10T18:30:00+00:00

11. Rite

The walk back was quiet.

As was the food preparation.

He did not ask for her help, but she didn’t expect him to.

She sat numbly in the chair that he placed her in, her thoughts muddled, her emotions too near to the surface, and she feared what might happen if she opened her mouth and what might pour out of her.

She had never been so unsettled before, and she felt almost unhinged. Perhaps... perhaps she had damaged herself, in some way. The moment she had rebelled, she’d given in to some sort of madness, and the calm she’d always known was suddenly... gone.

She blinked, not realising Gesper had approached her, his hand outstretched with a cup of something that gave off wafts of steam and smelled richly of...

Her breath hitched.

She didn’t know what.

Because she knew next to nothing of this world. Didn’t know if it was soup, or more of his medicines, or just something hot to drink.

Her eyes welled.

A hand clamped over her mouth because he would think her a fool to cry over such a thing, and maybe she was.

He sighed deeply. “Gwynn.”

She rubbed at her eyes and accepted the cup without truly seeing it, and she even murmured thanks because that seemed to be what was done here. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she confessed, taking a sip and finding that the warmth was a balm to her ragged emotions, so she took another, deeper pull.

He took a seat across from her at the table. A great cook-pot had been placed over the coals and she could smell something simmering within, but she had not registered any part of the making of it.

“You’ve been hurt,” he offered, and she could not help her scowl.

“That was days ago. Maybe longer, what do I know.” She shrugged her shoulders for it was true. Time was strange up above, stranger still with the storms. With the not-quite light that came and went, the dark that seemed unending but might have been night, might not have been.

Gesper drummed his fingers upon the tabletop, his head tilting to the side. “And you think that is all it takes to mend?” The sharp line of his brows rose in question, and she paused briefly, a sharp retort at the tip of her tongue.

The back of her skull was still tender, that was true. A scab had begun to itch in places where a gash had been, covered neatly by her hair. The soreness from travel had lessened. What more was there?

“Gesper,” she countered, trying to infuse some of the patience he so often gave to her. “I’m hurt all the time. Doesn’t mean I cry over nothing, and panic over gates and doorways, or am afraid of getting my foot chopped off by a smithy.”

Gesper looked at her with something near to alarm. “That is what you thought?”

“That is what I feared,” Gwynn corrected. “Which is what I’m trying to tell you. I’m usually much more...” she groped for a word, but couldn’t find the right one.

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