Fire & Water by Alexis Hall

Author:Alexis Hall [Hall, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2020-02-23T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Battered & Bleeding

Sometimes, it’s nice when things aren’t all about you. It means you can get on with your life without anybody dicking you about. Other times it means that people leave you bleeding in a park. Now that King’s men had gone, I figured I had a couple of minutes before whatever city-king-mist-magic mojo that had kept the members of the general public away from interfering in their little ambush wore off. The good news was that I didn’t think I’d been shot anywhere fatal. There was a reason they didn’t make bullets out of iron—they weren’t especially effective. I got up, and did the best I could to stop myself bleeding. This was one of those hospitals-will-ask-questions deals, which was awkward. And Elise was still tied up with Lisbeth, and Nim was tied down with the war. That made my options pretty limited, but damned near all of them involved not being face down in a rose garden with blood coming out of me.

This was going to hurt.

I dragged myself back to the carriage. Okay, more hobbled if we’re being super literal. The great thing about this city was that you could pretty much always be anonymous if you had to be. Even if you were a thirty-something woman with a fedora, purple eyes, and a near-debilitating injury. Hell, there was a non-zero chance I’d start a hipster fashion trend if I went into the right pub.

The horses seemed pretty unbothered, which I was taking as a win because I’d been laying fifty-fifty odds on the scent of blood making them go all mares of Diomedes. I’d been pretty explicit that I shouldn’t have to feed them anything weird but I technically hadn’t said anything about them eating people on their own time. When they didn’t flip out, I crawled in and lay down on the floor. Sitting seemed like too much hard work right now.

Despite being magic, horse-drawn transportation was way rattlier than I was currently up for. Also I really needed to contact Nim. Shutting my eyes, I tried to sort of bend my mind towards her. It felt weirdly like praying—not that I’d ever been especially religious. Nobody in my family was. I think my dad’s experiences with my mum had kind of put him off powerful supernatural beings, even the ones with really good PR.

Perhaps I was imagining it, but I felt a hand rest gently on mine.

“King is going for Fisher,” I whispered. “He’ll have the Tears soon and there’s not a lot I can do about it.”

I felt a brush of warm air, the ghost of a kiss. Maybe the message had got through. Maybe I was just way worse off than I thought. Wincing, I did my best to relax while the carriage clattered through the streets. I’d left Russel’s books in the park but fuck them. The world was better off without them anyway. We rolled on, and it dimly occurred to me that, while I never really knew where this thing was taking me, I normally at least had a sense of where I wanted to be.

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