27 Chapter 27: Pure and True (1/2)
ELINA: I didn't lie to him. Not fully. Not completely. I just didn't tell the whole truth. Because it wouldn't work to my advantage. It'd make it hard to get what I want.
I glanced at him. I wonder how he'd react if I told him the whole truth. Exactly what I did to scare Julia. Would he fear me? Would he try to kill me?
The rain continued to pour. Heavy drops battered the roof, the ground, everything around us. Like the sounds of a thousand pebbles falling, every moment, incessantly.
There was something about sitting together like this. A roof under the rain. You are trapped here, but it wasn't boring like being alone. Time felt different. It's slower, gentler. The clock has gone to sleep with the rest of the world.
I sneezed.
I sniffed and pulled the cape around me. I wonder if this is what it felt like to always have a human body. The cold surreptitiously crawls on your skin, into your body. No magic to warm you.
Salem got up and looked around.
”What is it?” I asked.
”I can't have you catch a cold. We've still got eight days of traveling before we reach Merkelborough.”
He pointed at the back of the hut. He said, ”There's another room.”
He pushed past the shelves and a door in the back creaked open. Then he came back.
Salem said there is a fireplace in the back of the hut. Maybe the private quarters of whoever manned this trading outpost before. There was even some leftover firewood.
He piled a few logs into the fireplace and started a flame using flint stones. His movements were fast and fluid.
I said, ”You're surprisingly good at this.”
”I camp out more than I sleep in a bed. You learn how to survive outside cities.”
”Because you're always hunting witches? To earn money?”
A pause. Then he said, ”Yes.”
”And your sister, Yulia, is waiting for you at home?”
”Yes.”
”Do you miss her?”
”Why do you want to know?”
”Because I never had someone like that in my life. Not really.”
He looked at me. I looked at him.
”Do you think of her?” I asked.
”All the time.”
”Do you miss her?”
”I do.”
I smiled. He didn't have a way with words and sometimes I wondered if he was emotionally stilted, but at least he's honest about his sister.
I breathed out. ”And delivering me will get you home to her, hmm?”
He said nothing.