Aeralis Read Online Free PDF

don’t overtire him,” the Healer said, and this time her voice was gentle. She’d delivered her hard news; now all that was left was helping us put ourselves back together. “Go one at a time. It’ll be less overwhelming for him that way.”
    “You first,” Ivy said, and I turned the knob and went into the room. The door clicked shut behind me.
    I was alone with my brother.
    My eyes crawled over the floor, the walls, and the window before landing on the central thing: Jonn. He was swathed in quilts to his chin, his body just a narrow bump beneath the covers. He looked young, fragile, like a little boy waiting for his mother to come and kiss him goodnight. At the sound of my footsteps on the wooden floor, his eyes fluttered open. He looked at me and tried to smile, but his mouth seemed broken.
    I took a few steps, breathing the stale air that stank of sickrooms and sweat and uneaten soup. Each step took a lifetime. Each step, time bled away too fast.
    Dying .
    I reached his side and stopped. My hands hovered over him, and I was reluctant to touch him and aching to at the same time. I rested one hand hesitantly over the lump of his shoulder beneath the blanket.
    “Jonn,” I said gently.
    His voice was just a croak. “Lia.”
    Silence hovered between us as I sank down to the chair beside him. I clasped my hands in my lap. “How—how do you feel?”
    “The way I must look,” he said, and laughed under his breath. It turned into a cough, and I saw flecks of blood on the blanket as he bent over it.
    “Jonn—”
    “It’s fine.” He straightened, still gasping for air, wheezing as he sucked life into his lungs and blew it out again. “They won’t tell me anything yet. How are you and Ivy? How is Adam? The village? How is everyone adjusting to the liberation? What’s happened since I’ve been out?”
    I thought of the letter I had hidden in the bureau drawer. I flinched.
    Jonn raised his eyebrows.
    “We’re fine,” I said. “Worried about you, of course, but keeping busy. Everything is different now, and no one knows exactly how to take it. There’s been a great deal of disagreement already.”
    “I can imagine.” He brought his hands up from under the quilts and rested them over his chest, folded, corpse-like. I averted my gaze from them, looking instead at his eyes. His pupils were constricted and veins bulged around the irises.
    “They demanded that Ann and the Mayor—the former Mayor, I mean, well, Ann’s father—leave the village.”
    “What? Leave? Where are they now?”
    “Staying at our farm.” I paused. “But I’m worried about them. It isn’t a permanent solution. Then there’s the matter of Echlos and the PLD. We saw Korr and Gabe days ago, and I handed it over to them, but I don’t feel—” I stopped. “Is this all right? Am I exhausting you?”
    He moved his fingers in a gesture that perhaps was meant to be reassuring, but it looked like a cat clawing for a bird. “I’m all right. I want to know what’s happening. I’ll go insane if I don’t.”
    “Adam is leaving.” I said it quietly, my head lowered.
    “What?”
    “He’s been ordered to join Korr and Gabe in Aeralis. The Trio wants it.”
    He exhaled heavily. One hand plucked at the quilt. “And you?”
    “I’m to stay here and help the villagers, Adam says. Keep them from killing each other.” My voice betrayed the defeat I felt.
    Jonn raised his eyebrows. “I thought you were no longer under Adam’s authority,” he said, with a hint of his old spark. “I thought he said he was going to let you continue leading here as you’d been doing. Doesn’t that mean you’re no longer bound to do what he says if you disagree?”
    “I’m still a member of the Thorns. I still get orders from the Trio. Besides, I have no desire to go to Aeralis and work for Korr.” I hesitated. “I don’t want him to leave, though.”
    Jonn absorbed this information. “Who’s fighting? What’s wrong in the village?” he