Revelations (The Elysium Chronicles) by J. A. Souders

fire. After a minute, he looks up at me again. “Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?”
    I frown. “Tell anyone what?”
    “About me? You’re so set that I ruined your life. Yet you know something about me that could destroy me, yet you haven’t ever told anyone.”
    I blink. It takes me a minute to realize what he’s talking about. I shake my head and roll my eyes. “One, because it’s not any of my business, or anyone else’s for that matter. And two, I’m not like you. When someone tells me something in secret, I don’t share it with anyone for any reason.”
    He narrows his eyes at the fire, as if he’s trying to puzzle that out. I decide that I’d rather be lying next to Evie than sitting out here with him. To make sure she can’t sneak out of the tent without me knowing, I slide into the sleeping bag with her. Before long I find myself falling in and out of sleep, waking several times throughout the night to soothe Evie back to sleep when she has another of her fits.
    When she wakes me for what feels like the thousandth time with a sharp kick in the shin and screaming incoherently again, I know I’ll need to talk to Asher first thing in the morning and go over the map with him to come up with a better, faster route to the city. Evie needs help and she needs it quickly.
    *   *   *
    The birds singing in the trees wake me. I groan as I sit up. The little bit of sleep I’ve been getting is only a giant tease that makes my muscles sore. My joints pop when I stand and stretch.
    To my surprise, Asher is already awake and poring over the map.
    Trying to rub the sleep away, I run a hand over my face. “What’cha doin’?”
    He startles, but moves over so I can sit next to him. “Trying to come up with a faster route.”
    I don’t know why it annoys me that he had the same thought as me. I would have had to ask for his help anyway, since he’s gone back and forth from the city much more than I have. At least this way it isn’t a favor. So I nod and glance down at the map. “What do you think?”
    “The fastest route is this way, through this town.” He slides his finger over a black dot. “If we go that way, it will shave off at least three days from our trip. With any luck we could be in that town tonight and then another day, maybe two, and we’d be in Rushlake.”
    “Why didn’t we go this way in the first place?”
    “No one does.” He won’t look at me.
    “Why?”
    He hesitates, before finally saying, “I don’t know. But my father was adamant that we never go that way.”
    Well, that’s ominous. I think about it, weighing the risks. It’s not smart to ignore that kind of warning in the Outlands. But with Evie getting worse and worse …
    “Let’s do it,” I say.
    We don’t waste any more time; we both head back to camp and start tearing it down.
    “We’d move faster if we don’t carry anything that isn’t necessary.” Asher folds up his tent.
    I lift an eyebrow. “You want to dump it?”
    He shakes his head. “Starshine can carry it. This will be nothing for her. And then we’ll have both hands free if we need them.”
    I nod. “Yeah, okay, let’s get it all together.”
    We spend the next few minutes packing everything up and only when I have to, do I wake Evie. She’s groggy and her eyes are still glazed with sleep, but she’s lucid and able to walk and talk.
    It worries me how flushed her skin is, but I can’t think about it right now. There’s nothing I can do about it. The only way to help her is to hurry our asses up and get her to the city.
    Asher helps Evie onto the horse, while I break down our tent and then start securing our supplies to Starshine. I’ve just about tied the last supply, when I realize it’s gotten really quiet. Too quiet. I look around, trying to figure out what has my instincts humming. The only sounds are Asher and Evie talking quietly. He’s got her laughing again, with that stupid fake Southern gentleman charm he likes to use.