Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
T he Warsword caught her as her legs finally gave out and she slid to the floor.
‘Who did this?’ he demanded again, his firm hands circling her waist. His silver eyes surveyed her with a fiery expression.
His words sent a crackle of fire through Thea, but she gritted her teeth.
Hawthorne’s hand brushed her side. ‘You truly won’t tell me who did that to you?’
Thea’s lungs rattled. ‘No.’ It wasn’t his fight, it was hers.
‘I could easily find out,’ he warned. ‘I could punish them in ways you couldn’t even imagine.’
For a brief second Thea pictured Seb strung up and bleeding, all manner of horrors inflicted upon him. But she shook her head. ‘You could, but you won’t,’ she replied, her voice raw.
‘Won’t I?’
‘No. You wouldn’t take that from me.’
‘What is it I wouldn’t take?’ This time, the question seemed loaded.
But Thea met his stare, coming back to herself. ‘Vengeance,’ she said.
The Warsword’s nostrils flared, but his intense expression softened after a moment. ‘No,’ he agreed slowly. ‘I wouldn’t take that from you.’
Thea felt suddenly cold and confused; she became aware of the tiny, cramped space and how close the warrior seemed.
‘Where are we?’ she managed, her eyes heavy.
‘A broom closet,’ Hawthorne answered as he tore her shirt down the middle and studied the wound.
Up top, Thea wore a tight band of material around her breasts and her fate stone, but nothing more. She was too dazed to feel embarrassed as he peeled the rest of the fabric away from her battered body.
He swore softly at the state of her. ‘It’s deep,’ he murmured.
Everything was spinning and Thea felt completely untethered from herself. ‘Why?’ she mumbled.
‘Why what?’ His hands were hot on her cold, clammy skin as he pressed his fingers around the puncture.
She inhaled sharply through her teeth at the pain. ‘Why are we in a broom closet?’
‘Don’t ask me. I followed the trail of blood here.’
‘I… I was trying to find my sister. She… she can help.’
Hawthorne was tearing her shirt into strips now. ‘We have to stop the bleeding first.’ His fingertips brushed her skin as he wrapped the lengths of linen around her. ‘This is going to hurt.’
Thea didn’t register what he was doing until the strips tightened at her middle, crushing her tender abdomen and pressing painfully against her stab wound. Agony lanced through her and a strained gasp escaped, her hand shooting out, gripping his forearm, finding the strength there comforting.
He let her hold on to him as he reached for something with his other hand. From a pouch at his belt, he produced a dried leaf and held it to her mouth. ‘Chew on this,’ he ordered.
Thea’s lips touched his skin as she did as she was told, the plant bitter on her tongue.
‘It should make you more alert, keep you from falling unconscious,’ he told her, checking the makeshift bandage at her side. ‘I need you to stay with me, alright?’
Thea swallowed the herb with a grimace and almost instantly, she felt her senses prickle back to life.
The first thing she noticed was that she was still touching Hawthorne, her hand wrapped around the corded bulk of his forearm.
The second thing was that his hand was resting against the curve of her bare waist. Warmth radiated from his skin and she had to fight the instinct to lean in and savour his scent.
He went taut, as though he, too, had noticed where their bodies met.
‘Whatever it is you’re thinking, we can’t,’ he growled. ‘You’re half-dead, Alchemist.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘My mind isn’t the only one that went there, Warsword.’
She could see his jaw working where he ground his teeth.
‘How did this happen?’ he asked instead, motioning to her injuries. ‘Can you tell me that at least?’
Thea’s side throbbed terribly and an icy shiver raked across her skin, but neither sensation was enough to distract her from him. ‘Training,’ she managed.
‘You’re not using steel yet. How?’
Wincing as she steadied herself, Thea gritted out: ‘There were punishments to oversee, apparently.’
Fire blazed in that icy stare; the only sign that he’d heard her. For a moment, he was unnaturally still before he spoke again.
‘Do you think you can stand?’ he said softly. ‘Thea?’ he prompted, when she didn’t respond straight away.
He’d used her name. Not ‘Alchemist’, not even Althea, but Thea …
She found her voice hoarse when she spoke. ‘I think so.’
Slowly, he helped her to her feet, her whole body trembling with the effort. He draped his cloak around her bare shoulders, pulling it closed across her banded chest at the front.
He can probably feel my thundering heart , she thought, glancing down at where his knuckles brushed her skin, where they lingered.
And there, in the dim light of the cramped closet, for a moment she forgot about the pulsing pain at her side and her maimed abdomen, she forgot about Seb and Vernich and their cruelty entirely…
Instead, she focused on the subtle hum of Hawthorne’s body.
Her eyes caught his, and they simply stared at one another before his gaze dropped to her lips.
Am I delirious? she wondered, warmth flooding her.
‘You could have died in here,’ he said, something unrecognisable in his tone before strained lightness sounded. ‘Some legend you would have been then… The alchemist who keeled over in a broom closet.’
Thea’s heart raced, her fingers itching to hold her fate stone, to press it into his warm palm and tell him what it meant, what it truly meant. Enovius wouldn’t take her, not yet.
Instead, she shook her head and stepped away from the Warsword, opening the door. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘I couldn’t have.’
Torchlight from the corridor flooded the tiny closet and as soon as she was outside, she inhaled the cold air, instantly missing the closeness of his body, her skin still tingling.
Hawthorne still looked tense. ‘If you’re going to be a warrior of Thezmarr,’ he said. ‘You need to learn more than fighting.’
‘More wisdom for me today?’ She sounded weak.
‘You will need friends in this fortress, you will need a team. You need to learn to tend to wounds. You’ll have plenty of them. As will your friends. So if not for your own sake, learn for theirs.’
Thea thought of Wren and Ida and Sam, then Cal and Kipp as well. Sometimes she tried to convince herself she didn’t need them, that they were better off without her, a young woman with one foot already in her grave…
‘I haven’t noticed you with any friends.’ Thea hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but it was too late to take it back.
Hawthorne gave her a piercing look and ignored her comment. ‘Every discipline this fortress offers has a vital part to play. You should respect them all. You should master them all. There is more to this guild than blades and fists.’
‘So my sister tells me,’ Thea heard herself say.
‘And you should listen. She knows what she’s talking about.’
Hawthorne supported her all the way to Wren’s rooms, where the door flew open upon their approach.
Her sister’s eyes were wild with panic and she was instantly at Thea’s side, looping Thea’s arm over her shoulder, taking her weight from Hawthorne.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ Wren told him.
The Warsword hesitated in the doorway.
‘Thank you for helping my sister,’ she said rather tersely, before closing the door in his face.
Thea was too exhausted to protest her sister’s rudeness, or voice that she wanted him to stay.
Wren helped her inside and gently lowered her onto the bed.
‘Callahan has all the alchemists out looking for you. He told us what happened. Gods, Thea. Why didn’t you send for me?
You know I would have —’ Her words came out in a terrified flurry and her voice broke at the end.
‘No matter what shit was happening between us, you’re my sister. ’
‘I know,’ Thea managed. ‘I was coming to find you.’
‘Then where in the midrealms were you?’ Wren exclaimed, pulling back the heavy cloak to get a look at the bloodstained linen binding her midsection. Then she froze, noticing the dark wool between her fingers.
‘This is the Warsword’s cloak,’ she said.
Thea gave a nod of confirmation, and she watched her sister stiffen.
‘The Hand of Death himself gave you his cloak?’ Wren asked. When Thea didn’t bother confirming this, she weighed her words, chewing the inside of her cheek before meeting Thea’s questioning gaze. ‘I…’ she struggled. ‘I don’t like him.’
‘Since when do you have strong opinions about any Warsword?’ Her breath whistled between her teeth as Wren examined her injuries.
‘I have strong opinions about everyone, thank you very much.’ Wren sighed again. ‘Since one seems to trail my sister.’
Thea laughed and then gasped at the sharp pain that lanced through her. ‘He does not,’ she wheezed.
Wren perched on the edge of the bed, no amusement there. ‘Stay away from him, Thee… He’s the worst one. I know you think they’re noble —’
‘Some of them,’ Thea muttered, clutching her side.
‘But the stories I’ve heard about Wilder Hawthorne…’ Wren continued carefully. ‘They’d make even your stomach turn. He’s dangerous.’
‘Of course he’s dangerous. He’s called the Hand of Death, for fuck’s sake. They’re all dangerous, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?’
Wren was shaking her head. ‘People talk, Thea. He’s a monster, more so than those he slays. He brings back the hearts of the creatures he kills… Trophies. That’s what the fortress staff say.’
‘Gossip,’ Thea retorted. ‘Bored, nosy —’
‘Listen to me for once,’ Wren hissed. ‘I’ve seen it. I’ve had to take… supplies to him. I saw those bleeding black hearts for myself.’
Thea’s own heart stuttered, a memory suddenly coming back to her. Hadn’t she seen Hawthorne enter Thezmarr on the night of his initial return, a sack dripping with blood in his hands?
But Thea shook her head. ‘He helped me. He stopped the bleeding. Gave me some leaf to chew.’
Wren looked up, alarmed. ‘What was it?’
‘Uhhh…’