Curse and Crown: Marie and the Mouse King, Book 3 by Irene Davis

Author:Irene Davis [Davis, Irene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skookum Creek Publishing

Chapter Nineteen

“Do something for her,” Lang demands.

“I’ve already done all I can,” replies Trudy’s voice.

Lang makes a sound of frustration, and Trudy continues. “I took out the bullet, but the bones are shattered. There’s nothing more to be done”—she pauses, and I hear the creak of floorboards, as if one of them is pacing the room—“except to take off her arm.” She stops again, and now there is dead silence.

“No,” Lang says, while I’m still working out what it would mean to take off my arm. No arm, no wing, no flight. I’ll be trapped on the ground forever. I don’t want to be trapped.

“If the wound goes bad,” Trudy says, “it will kill her. You know it. You must have seen it happen to others.”

“No.” This time Lang’s voice breaks on the single word.

Where is he? I open my eyes and see a whitewashed ceiling above me. I have to concentrate very hard to turn my head to the side, but there they are: my best friend sitting wearily in a straight-backed chair while my lover paces.

“She’ll never fly again,” Trudy says, “but at least she’ll be alive.”

Lang reaches the end of the small white room and smashes his fist against the wall. The plaster cracks and dribbles to the floor.

“Stop that,” Trudy snaps at him. “This is no easier for me than for you, but I’m not going to break my hands over it.”

“This is all my fault,” he says. “It should’ve been me. I swore an oath to protect her.” He turns toward me, meets my gaze, and rushes over. “Marie,” he says, reaching out to touch my face.

I can barely feel his fingers. They must have given me the laudanum after all, for my body is flat and numb, as if I’m not quite connected to it.

My thoughts, too, scatter like a flock of songbirds beneath a stooping hawk. I struggle to catch one and hold onto it. Hawk?

“You brought Mademoiselle Wendelstern to us,” Lang says. “She dressed your wound.” He hesitates, then says, “You will recover, and all will be well.”

But all will not be well. Not if I am to lose my wing. “Hawk,” I say. I want to fly.

His mouth twitches, then he flattens his expression, hiding his emotions. Ah, my love, always with so many worries weighing him down. I want to fly with him, the way we do in my dreams, with no earthly cares. I would shift right now, if I had the strength.

Trudy appears next to Lang. “Don’t try to move,” she warns me.

There was something—I almost had it, but her words distract me and my mind can’t catch whatever thought I was close to grasping.

“You will be a hawk again,” Lang says, and that’s it—that’s the thought.

“Hawk,” I say. I need to be a hawk. I clutch at the thought, dig my talons into it so it can’t get away. I need to be a hawk. “Change me,” I say.

“No,” Trudy says. “You’ve only just stopped bleeding, Mariechen.”

I’ve

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