Page 26 of Death of a Mortal

“Ha! Ha ha ha, she thinks you’re nuts!”

“I thinkyou’renuts, thinking I’m your bonded fae or whatever.”

Nella and I started walking once more. She wrapped her arm around mine, like she meant to help carry me out of the woods.

“I would take offense to that,” the crow continued,“but it is strange indeed. Mortal humans can’t bond without magic. I’ll admit I was confused the first time I shared your mind and heard your mortal heart beating. Something about your heart is…different.”

“What’s my heart got to do with anything?”

Noxie sighed, exasperated, before he said, “Mortals…you know nothing. I can actually feel the emptiness in your brain.”

I shot him a dirty look that earned a side-eye from Nella. “I’m beginning to hope Nella is right, and that, after I lie down, you will have been just my imagination.”

“The heart is where magic lives,” he continued, as if I had said nothing. “Without magic, the heart beats faster. So fast, trying to fit an entire lifetime of beats into the brief span of a mortal life. Without it, a heart cannot be free to find the bonds it’s destined for, to reach for the hearts that share its same magic. The magic is what makes a fae, giving them a near-immortal lifespan’s worth of heartbeats. It gives them bonds, mates, and magical abilities. And you, Ignacia, have none. No magic whatsoever.”

My anger flared out of nowhere, and I decided I didn’t want to talk to this bird in my head anymore. “Then why are you still following me?”

Nella eyed the bird still circling us. Insteadof answering me, he skimmed the top of my head with his wing as he crowed and flew off ahead.

“There is something weird about that bird,” Nella said, glancing at me.

“Agreed. Let’s stop for the night,” I said, changing the subject. “I know you must be as starving as I am. But we need at least a few hours of sleep, then we can try and find some food when it’s light out.”

She agreed, so we left the path and walked twenty paces or so before we found a massive tree. I sat down, leaning against its trunk and Nella sprawled out beside me. She put her head in my lap and was asleep within minutes. My mind lingered on the strange bond with Noxie for a bit longer.

I was mortal. Cassius was, and my mother had been too, as far as I knew. And even if she had been fae, I had no magic, so I wasn’t even half-fae. If shehadbeen fae, then I was just like Nella. She was mortal even though she’d had a fae mother. It was luck of the draw whether a mortal and fae couple produced mortal or half-fae children. And if Iwerehalf-fae like Aemilia, from what we’d been taught in school, fae magic emerged much younger than my current age. It would have happened by now if I had magic.

Yet I could talk to a bird, and according to him that should only be possible if I had magic in my heart. My heart, that was racing over all the unknowns.

I could also understand the banshee…

Something was obviously odd about me, but before I could contemplate it further, exhaustion finally pulled me into sleep where I dreamed of smoky demon deer and electric blue elixirs.

* * *

I awoke, blinkingat the morning light. This was the brightest light I’d been in since losing my left eye vision, and it made the darkness on my left side feel far more calamitous. I sighed and lookeddown to find Nella still sleeping. I wondered what she could be dreaming about as the memories of my own dreams slipped away.

Before I could wake her, I spotted a broken branch next to me on the ground with three bright red apples still on its stems. A small black feather sat beside it.

Noxie. It had to be. I looked around and found no apple trees in sight.

“Eat. There’s a town not far if you stay on your path and head away from the rising sun at the road. Since you’re bad with directions and all.”

I wanted to tell him off, but more than that my mouth watered at the thought of a sweet, crisp apple.

It was more delicious than I’d imagined when I bit into one. I roused Nella and handed her another, which she eyed suspiciously.

“Eat,” I told her.

“Where did these come from?”

“I found them.” It was technically true, and I thought she wouldn’t eat them if I told her the bird had left them for us.

She took it tentatively from me and sniffed it. She must have been satisfied—she took a massive bite and sighed.

We each ate an apple and split the third, tossing the cores behind us. I was still hungry by the time we got back to the path, but the hunger was no longer painful.

We walked in silence until the trees gave way and a road came into view ahead. As instructed, I turned from the rising sun to find a town not too far ahead. The pink sky and the sun’s low position in it told me it was still early morning. That was good. We’d maybe get into this town before most people were out. Find some food, clothes, and supplies, then turn our sights toward the capital.