Page 209 of Keldori By Daybreak

When I came back to the tavern, defeated and soaked through by the rain, the others were huddled around a booth table, sitting in vinyl seats with steaming plates of hot food in front of them.

The large windows that looked over the bay offered a spectacular view of the raging storm, and the dull afternoon light pressed against the silhouettes of my friends.

“You didn’t want to turn on the lights?” I asked from the doorway.

Ciarán, Iseult, and Orla all looked up from their plates, but Fana remained with her head down on the table.

“The lights?” Iseult repeated.

I flicked the switch behind the hostess booth by the door, and they all winced as the overhead lights turned on.

“Electricity,” Orla said, remembering a long ago conversation from one of my first nights in Skalterra. “Little lightning.”

“Little lightning,” I confirmed. My boots echoed against warped floorboards as I approached, and I tried to not think about how I’d shocked Tiernan’s nose in my impromptu electrical demonstration when I’d first described the concept to Orla.

Tiernan deserved to be here too.

“Ciarán made us food.” Orla’s smile was sad, and I wondered if she was thinking about Tiernan too. “It’s very good.”

“‘Very good’ is respective,” Iseult said. “It’s at least better than the bread-dogs from the small market we stopped at on the way here.”

“The corndogs were probably old,” I said, then hesitated as I got close enough to see their plates. “What are you eating?”

It was rare to feel embarrassment trill along the tether, but it did so now, loud and clear. Ciarán’s blushing cheeks mirrored the emotion, and he avoided my eye.

“Ciarán made us burgers!” Orla grinned and gestured at her plate.

It was definitely an attempt at burgers. Each plate held an open hotdog bun with two circular burger patties nestled side-by-side atop the bread. Each patty overflowed with pickle chips and onion.

“Meat, bun, pickles, and onion,” Ciarán explained, remembering what I’d described when we’d sought food in Willow’s Grave. “No lettuce, unfortunately. It had turned brown.”

“It’s…” I cocked my head at the plates. “You did a good job.”

Ciarán pushed a fifth plate of his avant-garde burger adaptation towards the end of the booth. It probably tasted better than I was giving it credit for, and it definitely would’ve tasted better than rabbit jerky, but my stomach frothed and burned with unspent magick.

The thought of eating made it churn all the more.

“You need to eat too,” Ciarán murmured in my head.

“I’ll be fine. I’m not hungry,” I replied out loud.

Ciarán narrowed his eyes at me, and I knew he knew I was lying. He opened his mouth to argue, but then Fana cried out and curled in on herself.

“Fana!” Orla abandoned her food to hover an uncertain arm over Fana’s shoulders. “What is it?”

Fana’s curls bounced as she shook her head, refusing to speak.

“It’s Skal,” I said. “There’s too much of it here. It’s building up inside her body and burning ulcers in her stomach lining.”

“How do you know this?” Iseult demanded.

“Trust me,” I said. My own built-up magick tore at my every fiber, and Fana was so much smaller than me. Her tiny body couldn’t hold nearly as much as mine.

“It hurts,” Fana whispered.

“You have to use the magick to get it out,” I said. “The ulcers are already there, but they’ll start to heal once you get the Skal out.”

“I can’t,” she cried through gritted teeth. “It’ll blind you.”