Shana woke up feeling like a grotesquely carved turnip, the kind she used to hollow with her father for Samhain. Everything ached, though her shoulder in particular was throbbing. Her head didn’t feel so good either, a headache puling at her temples. Not unlike the ones she got when her dreams seemed so vivid she almost doubted they were dreams at all.
The room around her was dark. She was no longer in the room with the swaying lantern that smelled of herbs, which she now recognised must have been the infirmary. There was much more space around her, in fact.
She groaned and rolled over onto her stomach. She would be content if she never had to move again. She was exhausted.
“I don’t understand why he wouldn’t tell me any of this,” Shana said quietly, her voice edged once more. “He tells me everything.”
“To protect you,” Maeve suggested, wishing she could just keep her mouth shut. Where had all the practise gone that she had gotten in when she was around Gareth?
A shadow of fury slid back into Shana’s posture. “Protect? Protection from what? Not knowing about a threat is as good as asking someone to put a blindfold on and walk into a cage with a chimera. You don’t know my father, he doesn’t lie to me. He wouldn’t conceal something like that.”
She had seen what these men were capable of unto other men. She hated to think of what would befall Cailean and the young man, as her father nor the crew seemed to believe them even human. Not worthy of any respect, not worthy of anything but suffering and death.
The cold rain seeped down to her bones, freezing her from the inside out, and she shivered.
Her father's hand clapped heavily upon her shoulder. She bit the inside of her lip so suddenly in her effort not to flinch that the hot, salty taste of her own blood flooded her mouth as she turned to her father.
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