The Lost Hero: Chapter 13

B: Anna Schroeder

Wake up, Ero!

He groaned, seasick.

Ero! Champion! Awake!

He tried to breathe. Fiery spears pressed into his chest, slicing through him.

Ero!

“Ero?”

That whisper could rouse him more than Their most insistent command.

“Ero, please. Wake up.”

He tried. A power was holding him down, dragging at his mind. She lifted his head. Something smooth and cool brushed his mouth.

“Drink this.”

He coughed, mouth too dry to work. She stroked his cheek, and it was almost as he had imagined it. His fantasies had less pain, though. Less of lots of things, actually. Like traitors. And clothing.

“Just a sip,” she urged. He managed to get some of the liquid in his mouth. Water, flat and warm.

“Another.”

Thrice blast the woman, didn’t she know he was trying? He opened his eyes to glare at her. Her face angled over him, upside down. That was wrong.

So was the blood on her cheek, the dirty streaks from tears.

“What…?”

She shushed him, with a scared glance to the side. “Don’t talk.”

He didn’t want to. He had been unconscious for a reason, so he couldn’t feel his injuries. They rose up strident, a chorus of pain.

Shoulder, chest, wrist. And something else, a dull fire inside him, pulsing with his heart.

“Gregin?” he ground out.

She nodded, looking again to the front of the lurching wagon. That explained his motion sickness.

Rage gave him strength. “I’ll rip out his thrice-cursed eyes!”

Juen pressed her fingers to his lips. Of the bonds he had endured, this constraint held him tighter than any other. Adoration was a weapon he had never had to counter and it left him defenseless.

“You are too weak. He has the Sword. He has some power, I don’t recognize it.”

Ero did. It was the Shadow, the Betrayer. It chewed at the edges of him, trying to worm into his soul.

“Drink.”

He obeyed, feeling better after his painful swallows.

“The others?” he asked.

“Dead.”

“Where are we?”

Her hands trembled. “He’s taking us into Druynia.”

Well, that was where he had wanted to go for the past season. Preferably not with a broken arm and ribs, but all the same, really.