got a free pass.
“What happened?” Holly asked, placing a palm over my forehead as if to check for a fever. To me her hand was scaldingly hot, but I didn’t stop her. Holly was a hugger type and the physical contact seemed to reassure her, even if it told her nothing.
“I was going to ask the same thing.” My words came out a croak, and I grimaced.
Rianna turned to a table beside the bed and poured a crystal-clear glass of water from a pitcher. I pushed up to my elbows. The world didn’t lurch or gray away, but the movement did cause several objects balanced on my chest to slide down. I glanced at the odd necklace of twigs, pinecones, and rocks. I hadn’t had those earlier. They hummed with magic, much of it familiar enough that I didn’t have to reach to recognize Holly, Caleb, and Rianna’s work. I couldn’t tell what the spells did without examining them closer. That could wait. I didn’t want to get hit with vertigo again like when I’d opened my shields a few minutes earlier. I could guess they were healing charms. They had that type of feel to them. I frowned. That was a lot of healing charms, and clearly cobbled together from whatever they could find quickly in the festival clearing.
Rianna handed me the water and I accepted it gratefully, draining half the cup in two large gulps. I could all but feel the water branching out, filling my parched body, which meant I was much more dehydrated than I should have been. I’d had almost no alcohol during the revelry and had stopped for water several times throughout the night. So why did I feel hungover?
And what happened? Had I passed out? It seemed that way. But why? My mind circled to the flash of red light that only I seemed to have seen. It was magic. It had to be. Had it caused this? There had been several minutes between seeing it and when I’d blacked out, but it was the only suspicious thing to which I could attribute this sudden sickness. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, not a little flash of light.
As partially sitting up had gone well, I struggled all the way up. The corset made it harder than it should have been, and Caleb grabbed my elbows, helping to pull me up. He cut his gaze over to Holly, who was biting her lower lip. She looked to Rianna.
I frowned at them.
“Anyone know what spell I was hit with?” I asked, but they looked away as I tried to meet their eyes. I looked up at Falin. He didn’t look away, but with the way his hands silently worked the empty air at his sides and the way his jaw clenched tight, I had the feeling he was barely resisting the urge to walk out of the tent and start killing things he could blame for whatever had happened. “What?”
It was Rianna who finally answered. “You’re . . . unwell, Al.”
“Injured?” I seemed to have all my normal limbs. My head was throbbing, and I was disoriented and exhausted. A concussion, maybe?
She shook her head. “Ill.”
I frowned. “What, like a Faerie flu?”
“Not a flu,” Caleb said, looking down at his hands.
It was the sorrow in his voice that scared me most.
I glanced around. My friends weren’t meeting my eyes again. Except for Falin, who still hadn’t said anything. So I turned to Dugan. He watched me with an expression I couldn’t read. There was some emotion in his face, just nothing deep enough to betray itself.
“Your magic is infected,” he said, and he sounded sorry for me. Not devastated like my friends, but the sad you feel for an acquaintance that is terminally ill. I was a political investment for him, not an emotional one.
“A magical infection? So like a curse? Or something that can be dispelled?” I asked, looking around. Why was everyone acting like they were already attending my funeral?
“Not a magical infection. It’s your own magic. It’s infected,” Rianna said, as if that clarified everything.
“Considering we are in a strange tent, I’m guessing the solstice festival is still happening. Almost every court is represented outside that door. Surely there is a healer who can—” I started, but everyone was shaking their heads.
“Every court sent their best healer,” Caleb said.
“None could do anything?” My voice sounded small in my ears, but all in all, considering what I’d just been told,