Fear of Fire and Shadow (The Fade #1) - Samantha Young Page 0,84

off her jacket and tugging me into it. She buttoned it for me. Up close now, I could see her eyes. A multitude of emotion lived in them. She wasn’t as unaffected by the state she’d found me in as she’d like me to believe. I stumbled forward on my blistered feet, and L exhaled again, throwing her father a look. “Ma will need to be sortin’ her feet out, too, if this one is to be gettin’ to the Pool.”

L and her father reached to help me out of the shack, their arms around me as I hobbled along with them. L’s comment meant she knew who I was and why I was here.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked wearily as we wandered into the woods. I numbed myself to the pain, only focusing on my relief.

L’s father answered, “Back to our home so ye can get cleaned up. I’m Jonas, by the way.”

“Hello, Jonas. Thank you for rescuing me.”

L coughed.

“You too, L.”

After a moment of silence, the numbness and overwhelming relief gave way to a need for answers, for more reassurance. “Where is your home? What else do you know, L? Is it—”

“Questions later, Lady Rogan.” L sniffed. “Let’s just be gettin’ the blazes out o’ here.”

I obliged her, not once looking back.

Chapter 25

L and Jonas guided me onto the trail and my magic hummed with relief as we headed in the right direction. I hobbled between them, attempting to bite back whimpers of pain and not always succeeding.

“We be headin’ near the outskirts of Shadow Hill,” L whispered abruptly. “Ye need to be keepin’ that pain quiet.”

I didn’t reply. I just heeded her warning.

Sometime later, when I heard voices way off in the distance, I guessed we were at Shadow Hill. Jonas and L had grown tense beside me and walked with a stealth I tried to mimic. I could tell they were worried I’d somehow give them away, but after what I’d just gone through, I had no intention of putting myself in a position to be abused again.

There was a horrible moment when we heard crashing of bracken in the woods to our right; the whips and rustles of trees and plants, the hard thud of a heavy foot in the soil. My rescuers looked at each other wide-eyed and then quickly pushed me behind a thick tree trunk, warning me with their eyes to stay still. They scurried off to find a tree each for cover. I didn’t dare peer around the tree. My heart thud-thud-thumped as I heard a man whistling and humming under his breath. I then heard a hissing noise and saw L roll her eyes from her place behind the tree across from me. I think perhaps the man was relieving himself.

After a while, the whistling and noise of him crashing through the woods faded into the distance, and a grinning L came out into the open, Jonas following suit. I glowered, wondering what she had to be so carefree about when I was a nervous wreck. I’d never met a girl as cocky as this one. Without a word, they put their arms around me, helping me, and we set off again.

Half an hour later, quiet tears rolled down my face.

I was in agony.

The back of my head throbbed, my cheeks were stiff and bruised, and the cut on my lip stung. The knife injury on the rise of my breast pulsed painfully and my wrists were raw, the pain from the broken skin sharp and nipping. My ankles were the same. And my feet. They felt shredded and swollen.

I expected L to make a comment on my tears but she just looked at me and increased her pace. I tried to keep up, and as dark fell over us, L and Jonas led me off the trail path into the thick of the woods. Wariness clung to me, but I tried to shrug it off. L and Jonas were helping me. I really believed that but the fear and suspicion seemed like leftovers from the shock of my ordeal.

We walked perhaps another hour, this time deviating enough from my magic for it to tug at me, like a child pulling a friend’s hair in frustration. I didn’t care this time. I needed to rest. Just for a minute. Only a minute.

Finally, a well-built shack appeared in a tiny clearing in the woods. There was a vegetable garden and a goat tied to the wooden framing of the