Emerald's Fracture Page 9

  They joined the people on the beach, many who cried or comforted loved ones. A Temple priestess prayed over the large pyre. Natalie kept her head bowed, not just out of respect, but also because the flames licked and roared through skulls and around leg bones. Were her colleagues amongst this macabre pile?

  Tears flowed down her face. She wanted to collapse to the ground and rage at the sky. Where did she even begin with such a disease? A little over a year ago, she took a vow to save lives; to heal. The pile of bodies in front of her, stacked and burning like so much wood, taunted her. How was she to keep her vow when a disease killed so fast?

  Jules gently took her arm. “Come, Nat. Let’s go to Mistfell. There are no answers here.”

  Back at their campsite, Natalie and Jules made quick work of packing and loading their horses with their gear. Natalie avoided smelling her clothes for fear she might vomit again. The fresh air of the campsite did much to clear her head. She mounted Benji, fidgeting in the saddle while Jules finished getting ready. Benji, sensing her mood, tossed his head and pawed the ground.

  Jules secured the last of the gear to Elric’s saddle and then mounted up, looking down at her. “We’ll need to hunt along the way. Our food is almost out. Did you learn how to hunt growing up?”

  Natalie shook her head. “No. We always traded for the food we needed. Don’t tell me you learned to hunt in Roseharbor?”

  Jules laughed. “Oh, no. Mother would’ve died before letting us run that wild. A friend in the war taught me. However,” he added with a significant look at her, “I’m going to pass the knowledge along since I’m less handsome than I was in the war.” He waved his stump at her, grinning wickedly.

  Natalie snorted. “Only one less handsome.”

  Jules raised one eyebrow. “So you still think I’m half handsome?”

  Natalie rolled her eyes. “All right, enough puns. Why don’t you just tell me what I’ll need to do, Half Handsome?”

  Given the territory they rode through, the best game was rabbits and squirrels. A deer would be too heavy to carry.

  Natalie examined the plant life. “Luckily, it’s summer and there are plenty of edible plants to gather, as well. All right, how do I catch a rabbit?”

  They made camp that night within walking distance of a stream.

  “This is a good place. We’ll be far enough away that we won’t scare the game off as they come to take a drink, and there are good places nearby to set traps,” Jules explained. “We’re going to need several sticks about the length of your foot. I’m going to teach you how to build a spring snare trap.”

  Once they had sufficient supplies, Jules showed Natalie how to build the basic trap structure. They secured several of these structures in the ground near the stream, next to young trees that bent over easily when grasped. The trees would spring up when released, and thus the unsuspecting animals would be captured in the traps.

  The traps baited and camouflaged, Natalie squatted next to the stream and washed her hands. “You’ve survived using traps like this before?”

  Jules nodded, rinsing his hand next to her. “Yes. It’s not as quick as, say, a bow and arrow, but it works. We’ll check our traps in the morning. We’d better catch something; tonight, we’ll be finishing off all the food we brought with us.”

  “We won’t go entirely without. I gathered some food for us while looking for bait,” Natalie replied.

  “Good thinking. Gather as much as you can, in fact. Let’s think ahead going into Mistfell.”

  Natalie nodded. “I’d love a bath and to wash all my clothes as well.”

  Jules eyed her skeptically. “This freezing stream is all you have for a bathtub.”

  “I don’t even care. I’m tired of smelling foul.”

  “You do smell foul.”

  She splashed him. “Pot, meet kettle, Half Handy.”

  “Hey,” he ducked. “Keep going and you’ll get a bath and your clothes washed all at once.” Jules splashed her back and she shrieked as a wave of freezing cold water doused her.

  He splashed her again. “Shush, woman! We won’t catch any food with you screaming like a banshee.”

  She splashed him back. “You started it.”

  Jules shook the water out of his hair and helped her up. “Come on, Healer Banshee. Let’s move downstream a bit if we’re going to do some serious bathing.”

  Natalie tripped. Did he just say “we”? Bathing with Jules together? Is that what he meant? Blood rushed to her face and she prayed Jules wouldn’t look her way as she wordlessly went to get her bathing supplies.

  Thankfully, Natalie had thrown a bar of her own homemade herbal soap in her satchel before leaving the Abbey. She grabbed that and every single bit of clothing she owned and headed downstream. Jules, proving her imagination overactive, stayed at the campsite and built a fire.

  “You’ll need it when you get back,” Jules waggled his eyebrows at her.

  Nat turned and stuck her tongue out at him and then walked a safe distance downstream. She didn’t want to be out of earshot of Jules, but she wanted her privacy nonetheless. She selected a rock to work with and soaped and rinsed all her clothes, imagining all the horrors of the past week washing away downstream with the soapy bubbles. Clothes finished and hung out to dry, she herself stepped into the stream with the soap, letting out a long string of curses as she did so.

  Teeth chattering, she pulled her damp Healer’s cloak around her as best she could, grabbed the rest of her clothes and headed back to camp.

  Jules sat next to the fire and stared at her as she approached. She stared back, clutching her cloak tightly around her. She looked away first, warmth pooling in her belly. Thank Goddess my face is too frozen to blush. What are we to each other? Their relationship edged closer to a precipice every day. When she thought of what lay over that precipice, her breath caught in her throat. She wasn’t sure if it was too good to be true or if she should turn and run. What she wouldn’t give to talk to Em.

  Natalie hung her clothes to dry on bushes near their tent. Clad in only her cloak, she huddled close to the fire and tried to keep her teeth from chattering.

  After a few moments, she could no longer stand the weight of Jules’s stare. “What?”

  “You have an impressive vocabulary for someone who comes from a nice family in Mistfell and grew up at the Abbey,” he smirked.

  Natalie raised her chin, seriously doubting that’s all that was on his mind with her sitting there in only her cloak. “Well, the water is bloody cold. Best bathe fast so your bollocks don’t freeze off.”

  Chapter 12

  R

  N

  atalie startled awake the next morning as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Someone or something watched her. She opened her eyes and scanned her surroundings, only to find Jules staring at her with a bemused expression on his face.

  “Well, this is awkward,” he drawled.

  She was about to ask what was, and then she bit her lip. All her clothes—and likely his—were outside out on the bushes. Natalie thought back; she had gone to sleep before he did and climbed into her bedroll naked, but she did have her cloak nearby. She pulled her bedroll up to her chin.

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed. Two can play at this game.

  “Who is going to get out of bed first?” he taunted.

  “I don’t mind,” she retorted. “I’ve got my cloak in here.”

  “You act like you’ve woken up with a man before.”

  “So what if I have? I’ll bet you’ve woken up with women before. You were the one in the army.”

  Jules’s face darkened and he got up and left the tent, not caring one bit about nudity. Natalie sat transfixed by the lean muscles in his shoulders and back tapering down to his rounded, firm buttocks.

  Natalie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Hell in a kettle, she always spoke first and thought later around this man. It was one of the reasons they hadn�
��t gotten along since he’d returned from the war; her tongue always got the better of her. Whatever we were growing into—I’ve ruined it entirely. I’ll never get a chance to run my fingers along the skin of his back and feel those muscles or his skin against mine.

  Shaking her head, she stood, wrapped her cloak around her and exited the tent. Once dressed, she found Jules, fully dressed, down at the stream splashing his face off. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he cut her off. “We need to check the traps.” He began walking. She had no choice but to follow.

  When the first and second traps came up empty, Natalie began to worry. The third trap, however, had a rabbit dangling from it.

  “It’s still alive,” she covered her mouth with her hands.

  “Yes. Best kill it quickly,” Jules handed her his dagger, hilt first.

  She took a step back as if he’d handed her a venomous snake. “I can’t kill it.”

  Jules scowled at her. “Natalie, it’s suffering. Kill it before it suffers any more. You have two choices: break its neck with your two hands or slit its throat.”

  Natalie stared up at the thrashing animal. Its panicked eyes begged for her help much as the rabbits in Healer Bowers’s animal sanctuary had. She could not kill this rabbit; she simply couldn’t.

  Jules rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “You mean to tell me you grew up on a farm and never killed an animal? You know where the meat in your stew comes from, right?”

  “Of course I know,” she snapped. “I just never did the killing.”

  “Well you’d best do the killing now or you and I will starve to death. That’s one thing I learned the hard way when I was in the war, Healer. When I had to kill so I could live another day.”

  Natalie stared at him. She turned back to the rabbit, which writhed in pain, and swallowed with some difficulty. Mother or Da had always killed the farm animals when she was growing up; she’d always cried and hidden in her room. But it had meant Aaron and she could eat. Now she and her partner needed food. She had to do this.

  She closed her eyes in a brief prayer for strength, then held out her hand for his dagger. “I’m sorry. Thank you,” she told the rabbit. With hands that only shook a little, she slit the rabbit’s throat.

  In all, they caught three rabbits. Clenching her teeth, Natalie killed them all, then did her best to follow Jules’s instructions on how to skin them. Tears stained her cheeks. She did not wipe them away and Jules did not mention them.

  When the silence between them grew too much to bear, she left Jules turning the rabbits on a spit over the campfire and went to gather some fresh, edible plant life. She found a patch of wine berries and picked amongst them, tears still streaming down her cheeks.

  She’d taken lives with intention for the first time in her life. What did that make her? A killer? A survivor? A hunter? As a Healer who’d made a vow to do no harm, she hoped she’d not betrayed her oath today. It was a fine line between killing an animal yourself for food and letting others do the killing and eating that food later. But Jules was right; they would show signs of malnutrition if they didn’t replenish their meat supplies today. Much to her dismay, her stomach growled at the thought of roast rabbit.

  Judging by what he’d said, Jules had had to kill more than animals in the war. No wonder something inside him had broken. She’d always assumed he’d only been a Healer for the soldiers; she’d never imagined him in a position where he’d had to kill another human being. Had he?

  Natalie gathered more edible plants than strictly necessary, delaying the inevitable return to camp. But her satchel was full and she decided she might as well face him and get it over with.

  The sight that greeted her upon her return to camp stopped her in her tracks. Jules sat at the campfire laughing—with two strange people. She wanted to turn and disappear into the forest again, but Jules spotted her.

  “Nat, come meet my friends, Anli and Onlo.” He waved her over, grinning.

  He was calling her Nat again, was he? Natalie plastered a smile on her face and approached the campfire. The woman sitting next to Jules had sleek, dark hair, brown eyes and an olive complexion, indicating she hailed from the northern part of the main continent. The man on Jules’s other side had dark skin and long ropes of hair, meaning he was from much farther east on the continent. They wore black cloaks. Did Attuned from Obfuselt randomly materialize out of the woods? She held out her hand to the woman first. “Hello, nice to meet you.”

  “Hey.” Anli nodded curtly and did not take her hand.

  The man took her hand instead. “Nice to meet you.”

  Natalie liked Onlo instantly. His voice was deep and his eyes were merry.

  Jules began removing the rabbits from the fire. “I met Anli and Onlo in the war.”

  “Met,” Anli scoffed. “I saved your life.”

  “True,” Jules shook a cooked rabbit at her. “But I seem to recall saving your ass a time or two myself.”

  Anli laughed, a beautiful lilting sound that, for some reason, grated on Natalie. “True enough.”

  Jules passed the rabbits around and Natalie gave everyone a portion of berries and vegetables. They ate while Onlo, Anli and Jules traded war stories. Natalie sat off to the side, chewing moodily on her food.

  “I didn’t realize Obfuselt took such an active part in the war,” Natalie interjected at one point.

  The three veterans grinned. “Obfuselt is why Lorelan has never invaded our country by land,” Anli said, her chest swelling with pride.

  Natalie shook her head in confusion. “I thought King Gerhard and Queen Phillipa’s navy kept Lorelan from invading. And, growing up, my da would tell us stories of great sea monsters sinking Lorelan ships.” Though truth be told, she’d always found those stories a bit far-fetched.

  Onlo nodded. “That’s what we want people to think.”

  “The Attuned shipwrights of Obfuselt build ships that are light, fast and hard to see in the dark. Attuned sailors, who have an easier time spotting ships at night, sail those ships with great skill,” Jules supplied.

  Anli threw a rabbit bone in the fire. “Over the centuries, we’ve made an art out of sabotaging Lorelan’s ships at night and getting away unnoticed. It’s Obfuselt’s best-kept secret—even Their Royal Majesties don’t know.”

  Natalie’s eyes widened. Well, that changed a lot of the history she’d learned. But why were they talking about long-kept secrets in front of a complete stranger? “Why tell me?”

  Jules and Onlo glanced at each other. “This war is different,” Jules began. “The war Lorelan waged on the Isles two hundred years ago was, shall we say, a much more straightforward war. Lorelan tried to invade us for our resources, and after seven years, they gave up thanks in large part to Obfuselt.”

  Anli’s grin had a hint of madness in it.

  “But this war …” Jules began.

  “There are some folk in power from our country—on at least one Isle, maybe more— working with Lorelan.” Onlo continued when Jules could not.

  Natalie’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  “One of them is Healer Aldworth,” Jules said. Anli spat on the ground.

  “Not possible,” Natalie scoffed. “He was my mentor during my apprenticeship. He’s a great Healer.”

  Jules held up his missing right hand. “He’s responsible for this.”

  Natalie’s stomach clenched and its contents rose. No. No, I don’t believe it.

  Anli hissed. “Jules was on a mission for us when Aldworth kidnapped him. At the time, we didn’t know Aldworth and his associates wanted to abduct descendants of the mages who created the megaliths on the Isles. We also didn’t know Jules was one of them.”

  Natalie’s jaw fell open again. “You’re a descendant of Bridhe herself?”

  Jules raised his eyebrows and smirked. “Apparently I have green eyes for a reason. Anyway, Aldworth is trying to create a new megalith in Lorelan so Healers can Heal on t
he continent.”

  Natalie rubbed her face with her hands. “He’s trying to duplicate our megalith? Did he succeed? Is there a megalith on Lorelan now?”

  Jules sighed. “Well, it didn’t quite go as he’d planned. I didn’t cooperate as he liked, so he drugged me and held a knife to my throat. Then, during the ritual, when they made me do my part, something happened and the megalith burned my hand off and knocked us all out.”

  Natalie felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She’d worked with Aldworth for a year and learned so much from him. He was a good man. She … she thought he was. How could he have done that to Jules? Why hadn’t Jules told her this sooner?

  Natalie put her hand on the back of her neck. “Why didn’t you tell anyone about Aldworth? Headmistress Gayla, Healer Hawkins, someone needs to know.”

  “He’s one of the most respected Healers at the Abbey and the head of the Council of Healers.” Jules sighed. “And I have no proof.”

  “You have our word,” said Onlo.

  “Would my word, yours and Anli’s be enough to convince the entire Abbey of the depth of his treachery?” Jules shrugged. “At any rate, that’s why I sent word to you before we left the Abbey. If an epidemic sweeps the Isles, we’ll be weak, especially with our own working to take us down from the inside.”

  Natalie’s jaw dropped open. “You three planned to meet up here?” Yet another secret he’d failed to share with his partner. Natalie snapped her mouth shut and glared at Jules.

  Jules shrugged. “We need Obfuselt to know what’s going on. I asked Onlo and Anli to meet us in Whitestrand, but here we are instead.”

  Natalie frowned. “Whitestrand is a point of weakness—perfect for a land invasion. It’s a port city, and its remaining inhabitants are children and the elderly.”

  Onlo glanced at Anli. “We should get word to our Naval Guild to send the coast guard there.”