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“Hey, Callypso—” Aetherial calls out.

My head rolls weakly towards her voice.

“Siren!”

“Yeah?” I croak weakly.

“Drag your bed over here,” she says.

“I don’t know if I can,” I mumble.

“You can,Iknow it.” She doesn’t even sound sorry, her voice commanding. Weak, but commanding.

Ugh, fae warriors are way too tough.

It takes an embarrassingly long time to move my pallet, but eventually I do just that.

“How are you holding up, siren? Still have enough movement in your limbs?”

“You had me drag my bed over here and now you ask me that?”

She gives a wheezy laugh. “I’m making polite talk. Don’t question it.”

My lips curve up slightly.

The two of us fall silent again, and my mind drifts.

“The shackles …” I finally say. “I didn’t realize how painful they must be.”

“I’ve endured worse.”

Geez.

After a moment, she adds, “We wrap cloth around the cuffs—the barrier stops most of the pain.”

But not all of it.

As I listen to her, I realize her voice is slurred, her speech much slower, like she picks her words carefully.

Losing the ability to move her mouth.

“Are you alright, Aetherial?”

She doesn’t speak for a long time.

Finally, she says, “Everything’s going. Even my mind feels foggy.”

From the little I know of her, I can tell Aetherial is too proud a creature to say that she’s not all right.

She sighs. “You know, the worst thing about this is that my wife’s going to have to see me like this.”

I don’t bother to comment. What would Des do when—if—I came back to him in a coffin?

“She’s going to take in that creepy little monster I’ll inevitably birth. I know she will, that sweet, foolish woman.”

“You’ve also seen them?” I ask.

“I wasbitby one of those creatures.”