Shadow's Bane (Dorina Basarab 4)

“Here.” Mircea reached for him, but Horatiu shook his head. “Her first. After our tussle, she collapsed. I was afraid she’d choke.”

Mircea noticed a small piece of leather, from an old belt he’d broken and hadn’t yet had repaired, on the floor.

Bitten clean through.

“Go wash yourself,” he told Horatiu. “It’s easier to heal if I can see the wound.”

Horatiu made a disgusted sound. “It’s a little thing. She didn’t mean it—”

“I know that.”

“She was in pain, still is—”

“I know that, too.”

“Then help her! Or are you afraid, boy?”

No one else ever spoke to Mircea like that. But Horatiu wasn’t just a servant. The old man had been his tutor once, and more, since Mircea had rarely seen his parents while growing up. They were always busy with their own affairs, their own ambitions. Ambitions that had eventually gotten them killed. But Horatiu had made a fine enough substitute, and that was before the curse, and the butchering of Mircea’s family that followed it. When everyone else had attacked or deserted him; when his own nobles had tried to kill him and mobs of his people had chased him through the woods; when he was at his lowest, half-mad and starving, unsure who or even what he was anymore, only one person had been at his side.

The one glaring at him now.

For, as much as the old man loved him—although he’d never admit it—he loved Dorina more. Had done, ever since he first set eyes on her. He didn’t make a splash of it, but Mircea saw: the extra meat he pulled from his plate to give to the child, who always ate like she was starving; the vociferous haggling he did in the marketplace, shaving a few coins off the price of staples, here and there, to buy Dorina the sweets she loved; the way he painstakingly taught her to read, determined that the scion of the Basarabs would be no ignorant street child, no matter how much she seemed to prefer it.

The way he was looking at her now, the rheumy old eyes shifting from her tortured face to Mircea’s and back again, clearly saying: fix this.

Mircea knelt on the boards and gathered his daughter into his arms. It was easy for him to contain the thrashings that had almost overwhelmed his servant. And to cradle her head without danger, even as she gnashed her teeth and fought him. But while that might keep her from injuring her body, it wouldn’t help her mind.

Only one thing would do that.

The next moment, he was sinking inside the tortured brain, into darkness and odd flashes of light, and the vastness of her mental landscape—

And almost getting blown away.

Because he’d broken through into what felt like a hurricane. Exactly like, Mircea thought, as the winds picked him up and flung him what felt like a mile before he hit down, rolling. While overhead, a tempest raged, one as strong as the one he’d encountered on the voyage home—

No, Mircea thought, shoving the memory away. No!

But he wasn’t quick enough.

She ripped the imag

es from his mind, as easily as he could call them up himself. And the next moment, Mircea found himself slammed onto the deck of a ship lost in mountain-sized waves. They loomed on all sides, massive things that dwarfed the vessel that had once seemed so large, and now looked like a child’s toy.

One about to sink.

A wave slammed into him from over the side of the ship, washing him into the mainmast and threatening to crack his skull. He hung on nonetheless, trying to think, to concentrate, with waves lashing and winds tearing at him, trying to pull him away from his only support. And almost succeeding, but not because of the environment.

But because Horatiu had been right: Mircea was afraid.

Not for himself; he could leave whenever he chose. But for his daughter, who couldn’t. She was trapped here, in this hellish place, until the fit passed, assuming that it did this time.

But what if it didn’t? The fits were coming closer together now, and were lasting longer. Yet six months after they’d first started, he still didn’t know what they were, or why they were happening. Or how to stop them.

Other than the obvious, of course.

Mircea slid down the mast, while the winds howled and the storm clouds flashed, unleashing lightning bolts that illuminated the rain-washed boards beneath his hands. The storm was worse now, like it knew what he was going to do, and maybe it did. Because the storm was her, the other part of her, who didn’t like being caged in this little body.

The one who wanted out.