Chapter 5

I woke slowly, wrapped in warmth and with fur tickling my nose with each inhale. Fur... That was new. My head ached and felt foggy, but I sure didn't remember sprouting fur...ever. I felt funny. I must've been dreaming. Best to keep at it. 

Somewhere, a nearby fire crackled, warm for being outside at winter's edge. Unless I wasn't outside...

More and more awareness crept in, bringing with it an onslaught of stiff muscles and achy bones. How was I not dead?

I blinked open my eyes - and gasped. I was staring at myself lying in a bed and covered with a long fur blanket, neither of which I recognized. I almost didn't recognize myself even though I'd seen myself countless times before I'd gone blind. Same long black hair. Same face that looked as frightened as I felt. But...how was I seeing myself when I was mostly blind?

Wait. That had happened in the Crimson Forest too. I'd peered down at myself from above like the angel of death. Now, I was looking at myself from across the room, on the other side of the crackling fire.

A shudder ran down to my toes. Was I dead? Because this was not what I expected it to be like.

Slowly, carefully, I moved my legs across the bed to test that theory out and see if I could find out where I was. And then why I could see myself. The last thing I remembered was that the wolves were homing in on the pulse at my neck to snuff it out. I should've been dead.

Sitting up bolted pain across my ribs, and I stopped and hissed, seeing sweat bead across my forehead from across the room. Two ribs were surely broken, maybe more, and someone had taken great care to wrap up my torso loosely. My arm nestled into my side, held there by a sling.

If I were dead, then death had some pretty amazing healthcare.

My head swam. Pretty sure I'd been given a painkiller because I felt loopy, like my brain and body weren't quite connected. Surely that was why I still saw myself from across the room.

When I was pretty sure I wouldn't pass out, I slipped my legs out from under the fur blanket. I was naked from head to toe, able to see the scratches and wolf-shaped bites all over my skin, the bandages covering the gashes that bloomed red in the middle.

I saw all of it. It was as though I had a pair of working eyes, but they were unattached, sitting like marbles on the other side of the fire.

I shivered. That was a disturbing thought. Way to go terrifying myself with my own head while my current situation hardly put me at ease. 

Still, I wouldn't find out anything if I stayed put. My feet found purchase on a cold, hard floor, but my legs buckled as soon as I tried to stand. I crumpled to the floor in a heap, feeling every cut and bruise and break scream as I slammed against the floor. 

"It's not," a deep, rough voice called. Something thudded-dragged-stepped on the other side of a door. Then a large figure barreled into the room, the top of his head nearly skimming the wooden-beamed ceiling. He carried a long walking stick in his hand.

I yelped and scrambled for the blanket to cover myself with it.

His eyes, a steely gray, connected with mine even though he wasn't looking at me, softened just a fraction, and then he turned his head toward me.

But my eyes, the tricky, uncooperative ones on the other side of the fire, aimed at me again so I couldn't study him further. They did point out, though, that I was anything but covered. I quickly adjusted the blanket.

"You're up," he growled.

"Your definition of up must be different than mine," I muttered from my position on the floor. My voice sounded different, rusty and unused.

He grunted, then shouted, "Archer," making me yelp once again.

I hated loud noises, especially when I didn't see them coming. That was obviously the drugs sparking a little blind humor. That, and the disorientation of seeing myself from across the room.

"Coming, coming," a different deep voice said, and then my other eyes swiveled toward a man in the doorway, his long black hair like liquid night. Just a glimpse, and then my eyes were trained on me again. "Oh. Well, you made it to the floor, at least. That's...progress?"

"How - " I started to ask how I could see myself, but that would be admitting that I was blind, at least usually. They didn't need to know my weaknesses, or my strengths. I'd asked Jade once, and she'd said my eyes looked "normal." She wouldn't lie, so maybe I could pull this off. "How did I get here?"

"Grady found you outside the woods," the second man - Archer? - said. "You were in pretty bad shape, so he brought you here."

Grady and Archer - I filed the names away.

"Can you...?" Archer started. "Do you need help back - "

"No. I don't need help." My voice came out sharp like it always did when someone automatically assumed I was useless. "You...fixed me?"

"Well, fixed is relative. Grady here can make a mean sling, and I can stick fresh bandages on my fingers so they look like long claws...so there's that."

"You're not fixed," Grady said, his tone clipped.

I sure didn't feel it, or look it if my other eyes were anything to go by. If I was hallucinating, I definitely wasn't fixed.

"What's your name?" Grady demanded.

"Aika Song," I said. "How long have I been here?"

"Three days," Archer said.

I sagged against the side of the bed, defeated. Three days. I was late with the delivery to Old Man's Den. If it was late, there would be no payment. Those were the rules. No payment meant we'd starve since there were still several supplies we didn't yet have for winter.