Daughter of the Moon (The Moon People, Book Two) (67 page)

A fit of coughing racked Netya's body again, and Caspian's soothing touch brought tears to her eyes as he helped her upright and cradled her against his chest.

"You are just a spirit," she said in her native tongue, forgetting the words of the Moon People.

"I am no spirit." He gripped her left hand and brought it to his neck. His skin was soft and uneven, a fresh scar marking the place Miral had bitten him.

Netya's brow creased, her eyes searching his face for something elusive. It really did feel like she was awake. But it hurt to remember. It could not be real. It was another trick of the spirits.

"Spirit—" she began, but before she could say any more Caspian claimed her lips in a kiss, pulling her deep into his embrace and holding her there. The strength of his pounding heartbeat resonated against hers. His fingers ran up her back and pressed her forward. Passionate hunger. Intense longing. Love. She felt them all in his kiss. Her chest rose sharply with a sudden intake of breath.

She remembered fleeing her village. She remembered the way her mother's eyes refused to accept her daughter, seeing only a phantom in her place. That time, Netya had been the one pleading for someone she loved to acknowledge her. It was easier to let go, to accept that what had been lost was gone forever. But Caspian felt real. His kiss was real. And unlike her mother, no matter how much she had lost, no matter how bleak her existence had seemed, Netya realised that she still had it in her to hope. She remembered the woman she had been before the night of Miral's attack. She remembered her last night with Caspian, and the things he had told her. Part of her kept holding on.

"Caspian," she said through fresh tears, pulling away so that she could look at him. He looked real. He felt real. Curse the spirits—if this was another trick, then she would fall for it one last time. "You never left me."

"I never would." He kissed her again, easing her gently to her feet. She could barely stand, but he held her up. "How badly are you hurt?"

Netya tried to speak, but the words became lost and tangled in her throat. So much sadness and so much joy were never meant to be felt simultaneously. She buried her face against his shoulder in a fit of sobbing, releasing the trapped emotions the only way she felt able. For as long as she needed, Caspian held her in his tender embrace, letting her cry away everything inside her.

It was only when Netya's tears began to ebb that she realised his grip was not as steady as she remembered it being. His breath was short, and his body held cuts and bruises that matched her own. He must have thrown himself into the river to save her. Plunged himself into the same deadly current that would have killed most people. He knew the danger, and yet he did it anyway. He had managed the impossible task of swimming ashore not just by himself, but with her unconscious body in his arms. For an instant she began to thank the spirits for lending him their strength, before remembering the lie of her visions. The gratitude turned to ash in her breast. She could still feel the cramping pain in her lower belly.

"I killed Miral," she said at last. "I burned his body in spirit fire."

Caspian's heavy hand stroked the back of her head. "Good."

"No. I took a life. I— I found part of myself that could. When he said he would kill our daughter—" A hiccup interrupted her as fresh tears fell. She felt Caspian's body tense.

"You can feel no regret for putting down a beast like him. It is a horrible thing, I know, but sometimes there is no other way. I would have done the same. So would Adel."

"I am no warrior. And I am not like Adel." Yet, even as Netya said it, she knew it was no longer true. She understood now. She understood how pain and loss could shape a woman into someone like her mentor. She felt it within her, touching and twining and seeping into her soul. It was shaping her, too, though in that moment she had not the clarity of mind to understand exactly how.

"You are what you are, and that is all that matters to me," Caspian said. He held her for a moment longer, then glanced up as the distant howl of a wolf echoed over the falling rain. "We must go. If you slew Miral, then we cannot stay here."

Netya nodded. She tried to keep up as Caspian helped her away from the edge of the riverbank, but after three steps she fell to her knees.

"Can you call on your wolf?" he said, after checking to make sure she was unhurt.

"One of the bones in my arm is broken."

"Then ride on my back. Hold tight. We will not stop until we are far from here."

She looked him up and down, wondering yet again at the extent of his own injuries. From the way he was breathing and favouring his left side, she suspected he might have broken one or more of his ribs.

Seeing her hesitance, he gave her a weak smile. "I have carried you through worse, remember?"

"You have." She forced herself back upright, gripping Caspian tightly and pulling him into another kiss. Had she been able, she would have kissed him again and again until any doubts about his return had fled from her mind. But there was no time, and she pulled back after a few moments, watching as Caspian dropped to all fours and took the shape of his wolf. If the shift had been difficult for him, he showed no sign of it. Swinging a leg over his back, she twined her fingers into his fur and held on tight, fighting through the throbbing of her wrist. With a snort and a growl, Caspian hauled himself upright, shifting from paw to paw until he became accustomed to her weight. Another howl sounded in the distance, not so close this time, but it was enough to spur him into a loping run. They splashed through the shallows that had formed at the edge of the overflowing river, keeping to the wet ground that would mask their scent as they hurried deeper into the darkening forest. Netya did not fear their pursuers. Even though the rain would cover their trail and fool the noses of Miral's hunters, she simply did not have the will to live another moment terrified of what the dead alpha's clan might do to her. She had found Caspian again, but she had lost something else. A daughter, and a part of who she had once been. She could still feel the despair that had gripped her when she let the current pull her away from the rock. The emptiness of losing everything.

Anything Miral's pack could do to her now seemed pale by comparison.

They ran through the night as the sky darkened, its shroud growing so thick that not a single glimmer of moonlight managed to pierce through. Fitting, Netya thought bleakly, that Syr would hide her face on just such a night. At many points they ended up running through what appeared to be pitch blackness, but Caspian's night eyes and the nose of his wolf were able to find safe paths where Netya could see none. He stayed close to the edge of the river, taking care not to blunder into it in the dark, but keeping the sound of the water in earshot at all times so as to better navigate by its presence. It was not long before the rapids gave way to gentler water, but the rainfall continued all night long, making sweet, tinkling music of the river where a violent roar had once been.

The hours stretched by in another slow burn of discomfort. Painful and tense, but nothing Netya had not endured before. She tried to keep her right arm still and tucked in close against her chest, but the momentum of Caspian's body bouncing beneath her still sent shocks of pain jarring through her bones. If nothing else, her throbbing wrist helped to distract her from the cramps in her belly that came and went as the night wore on. At some point she had bled again, leaving Caspian's fur and the space between her legs sticky with unwelcome warmth. More than anything, she longed to know why. Why now, after all her visions? At first she had been afraid of having a child. Back then she might even have been glad to lose it. But then she had accepted, embraced, and even come to love the unborn daughter she saw in her dreams. The only answer she could conceive of was that it was her penance for taking Miral's life. If that answer was true, then she no longer believed the spirits who guided her fate were worthy of reverence.

As she held on to Caspian's fur she forced herself to revisit the moment she had plunged the shard of flint into Miral's neck. It had been no act of anger. She had known what she was doing, and she allowed it to happen. She had wanted it, even, perhaps ever since the moment Miral had killed her friends.

Why could I not do it before?
she thought to herself.
Was I just a coward, like he said? Would I have been grateful to see someone else kill him, so long as I did not have to do it myself?

For an instant, when she had felt the flint sinking into his flesh, it had seemed right. Not good, but... justified. She had taken a piece of evil away from the world, and she had avenged those she thought to be dead. Was it wrong to feel, even in so small a way, that taking a life was somehow satisfying?

No, it was a terrible thing. It always was, and it always would be.

Netya gripped Caspian's fur tighter, struggling to reject the person she had become in that dark moment. It was not her. It could not be. Some dark spirit had struck a pact with her soul, taken control of her body, and then stolen her daughter's life in payment for what it had done. The spirits were cruel. It was within their power to do such things. She repeated the thought over and over, and for a time it helped to quiet the turmoil inside her, but as dawn's first grey light began to seep between the trees the explanation started to ring hollow. She had changed. So much about her was different from what it had been just a few short years prior. Perhaps some dark spirit had influenced her, but it had been Netya who struck the killing blow.

It was all just so hard to accept. She needed Adel's guidance and Caspian's support now more than ever. Then, perhaps, she could come to terms with what she had done, and what she had lost.

Once the sky had lightened a little Caspian found a safe place in which to ford the river, crossing over to the northern bank and following a small tributary away from the main watercourse. They were headed farther northeast, away from Miral's territory, but also away from their own. It would take a long time to circle around and come back through the valleys they had traversed half a year ago on their way to their new den, but perhaps it was safer that way. The farther they went to avoid the path Miral had taken to reach the valley, the better.

A light mist hung in the air following the previous night's rain, doing little to alleviate the chill that had crept into Netya's bones. Yet despite the damp, Caspian managed to sniff out a dry nook for them beneath the boughs of a fallen tree, and a few moments of foraging turned up a handful of plump edible grubs to take the edge off their hunger.

Even though he was clearly exhausted, Caspian did not rest until he had found stones from the river to knap into improvised tools, and while he was working Netya sought out a few pieces of dry wood from which they might kindle a fire. It took many attempts, but eventually Caspian found a stick firm but soft enough to whittle and drive against another flat branch until a coal of wood shavings began to smoulder in the groove formed by his repeated rubbing. With a little help from Netya's kindling they managed to coax a small flame to life, feeding it until they had a fire burning in the dry space beneath their fallen tree.

They spoke little, too weary, shaken, and drained to do much but remove their wet clothing and curl up together next to the fire. Caspian lent her the fur of his wolf as a soft blanket, but the thought of taking her own animal form unsettled Netya. She was afraid of what her wolf would say to her when she greeted it. The memory of cold, suffocating water was still fresh in her mind, and she had no desire to make her feral side revisit that trauma.

They slept for most of the day, occasionally jolting awake at the crack of a twig or a rustle of foliage nearby, but their trepidation proved unwarranted. They had heard not a single howl in the distance since leaving Miral's territory, and by now they were surely too far distant for even the most skilled of hunters to catch up with them.

The sun was starting to dip by the time they crawled out from the space beneath the fallen tree, hunger, thirst, and the necessities of their wounds forcing them to move. Caspian was eager to go hunting, but Netya made him stay put while she bound her throbbing arm between several straight sticks and checked him over for any serious wounds. His side was badly bruised, and after a little gentle exploration with her fingers she suspected that two of his ribs had been cracked, but they had not broken. Much like the bone in her arm, the injury would heal on its own so long as he was careful and kept pressure off it.

After another long embrace and a kiss on the lips, her male slipped away into the forest to hunt, while she placed a few pieces of damp wood they had dried overnight on the coals of the fire and set out to look for more. It was good to be out in the wilds by themselves. The necessities of survival appealed to the animal part of her, drawing her mind back to a primal place where only the present moment mattered. As long as she was doing something, she could try to forget everything that had happened. The only thing she feared was finishing her task, and sitting alone with her thoughts while she awaited Caspian's return.

Netya's wandering took her farther northwest, her feet carrying her through the falling red and yellow leaves of the forest until she came to the edge of a sheer cliff. The ground fell away before her, revealing a view so spectacular it should have taken her breath away. Beyond the precipice, evergreen trees stretched toward the horizon, the endless landscape accented with outcrops and lakes and waterfalls all shrouded in a sea of rolling mist. Somewhere far below she heard the throaty, warbling calls of herons. From so high up it seemed like she was looking out over the entire world, a space so vast it went beyond anything she had imagined as a young girl. Her world, once a small forest and the plains beyond, was now immeasurable. She had travelled so far, and still the horizons were endless. No one would ever witness it all. How could they? Even if they travelled for all of their life, there would still be new places to see.