2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

CHAPTER
50
I slept beside him, offering what warmth I could, monitoring the cave entrance the entirety
of the night. The beasts in the forest prowled past in an endless parade, and only in the
gray light before dawn did their snarls and hissing fade.
Rhys was unconscious as watery sunlight painted the stone walls, his skin clammy. I
checked his wounds and found them barely healed, an oily sheen oozing from them.
And when I put a hand on his brow, I swore at the heat.
Poison had coated those arrows. And that poison remained in his body.
The Illyrian camp was so distant that my own powers, feeble from the night before,
wouldn’t get us far.
But if they had those horrible chains to nullify his powers, had ash arrows to bring him
down, then that poison …
An hour passed. He didn’t get better. No, his golden skin was pale—paling. His breaths
were shallow. “Rhys,” I said softly.
He didn’t move. I tried shaking him. If he could tell me what the poison was, maybe I
could try to find something to help him … He did not awaken.
Around midday, panic gripped me in a tight fist.
I didn’t know anything about poisons or remedies. And out here, so far from anyone …
Would Cassian track us down in time? Would Mor winnow in? I tried to rouse Rhys over
and over.
The poison had dragged him down deep. I would not risk waiting for help to arrive.
I would not risk him.
So I bundled him in as many layers as I could spare, yet took my cloak, kissed his brow,
and left.
We were only a few hundred yards from where I’d been hunting the night before, and as
I emerged from the cave, I tried not to look at the tracks of the beasts who had passed
through, right above us. Enormous, horrible tracks.
What I was to hunt would be worse.
We were already near running water—so I made my trap close by, building my snare
with hands that I refused to let shake.
I placed the cloak—mostly new, rich, lovely—in the center of my snare. And I waited.
An hour. Two.