Chapter 18
ELLIE
Ilet him lead me away, conscious of everyone watching us as he led me into the cave, letting the skins fall back into place behind us.
There was a small fire banked in the hearth, but it was quite dark in here during the day.
I watched as he stoked up the fire causing a sudden wave of warmth and light across the space.
I settled onto the edge of the main sleeping platform, and unlaced my boots so I could kick them off.
Although I found my new clothes surprisingly warm and comfortable, I still opted to wear my heavy duty hiking boots instead of the leather and fur foot wraps the rest of the pack wore in human form.
My forearm throbbed dully where Nathan had gripped it, and I rubbed at it absently, watching Daska move around the hearth with his usual quiet efficiency.
He reached for something on one of the shelves—a small clay pot, lidded and sealed with what looked like birch resin—and set it near the fire to warm.
The cave felt different with the skins closed. More contained. More his. The familiar smell of dried herbs and woodsmoke settled around me like something I hadn't realised I'd been missing until I was back inside it.
Daska came and crouched in front of me, and without asking, he reached out and took my arm, turning it gently to examine where Nathan had grabbed me.
His touch was careful, clinical in the way it always was when he was being a healer, but I could see a muscle working in his jaw that had nothing clinical about it.
"I'm fine," I said.
He gave me a look that said he'd be the judge of that.
"Daska, honestly—"
He went back to the shelf and returned with the warmed pot and a strip of clean soft leather, and began to apply something cool and faintly sharp-smelling to my forearm. Arnica, I thought, or whatever the prehistoric equivalent was.
His hands were steady. Mine weren't, quite, and I was grateful that he didn't remark on it.
I watched him work, the firelight catching the reddish tones in his beard, the small crease between his brows that appeared whenever he was concentrating on something that mattered to him.
He applied the salve with the same deliberate gentleness he brought to everything, smoothing it along the marks Nathan's fingers had left with strokes so light I could barely feel them.
The silence between us was warm. Safe. I let myself sink into it.
"Rivik," he said finally. "Why he angry with Nathan?" I sighed, watching as Daska wrapped the strip of soft leather loosely around my forearm. Not tight enough to be a bandage. Just enough to protect the skin while the salve worked.
"Tell me," he said.
"Nathan," I said slowly, trying to put it together in his language. "He grab me. Rivik see. Rivik angry because... Nathan hurt me?"
Daska nodded, but he frowned.
“Why Nathan grab?”
I closed my eyes.
"Angry because I stay here. He want to leave. I say Dev not ready, and he—" I mimed the grab, his fingers closing around my arm. "He hold me. Shout."
Daska didn’t say anything, but I could feel the sudden shift in his mood, the tension that filled his body. He seemed to grow bigger in the dancing firelight, even though he hadn’t shifted.
"How angry you?" I asked.
He didn't look up. "Not at you."
"I know. How angry?"
He looked at me, eyes full of fury and tenderness combined. "Very."
"He always like that," I said, and wasn't sure why I was explaining. Some leftover reflex, maybe. The old habit of softening Nathan's edges for other people, making him smaller and less alarming so everyone else could be comfortable. "Not that bad, but... like that. Yes."
Daska sat down and took my hand in his. I watched, looking at how small my hand seemed in his big one.
"You were with him." It wasn't quite a question.
"Three summers."
“He hurt you then?”
I shook my head. “Not grab. Not hit. Hurt…” I trailed off, not quite knowing how to say it. Daska knew.
“Hurt here.” He reached over and gently touched my forehead. “And here.” Another touch, this time to my heart. I nodded, feeling my throat tighten and not quite understanding how this man could see me so clearly.
“Ellie.” He cupped my face with both hands, making me look up at him, his dark eyes intent. “Daska not hurt Ellie.” It wasn’t exactly a statement this time, more a promise, as though he was trying to convince me. My heart ached for him.
“Know. Know here.” I touched my heart. “Daska not hurt. Daska not break.”
His thumbs traced along my jaw, light as moth wings, and he looked at me for a long moment as though he was memorising something.
Then he leaned forward and kissed me.
Not like the first time, which had been desperate and breathless and full of everything that had been building between us for weeks.
This was slower. Softer. The kind of kiss that had nothing to prove.
His hands stayed cupped around my face, holding me like I was something worth holding carefully, and I felt my eyes sting and press close to stop myself from crying, which was absolutely ridiculous and I didn't particularly care.
When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against mine. His breath was warm against my lips.
"Daska not break," he said again, very quietly.
Then he made a low sound in his chest, not quite a word, and pulled me forward into him.
I went. I didn't even hesitate, just leaned into the solid warmth of him and let his arms come around me, one hand spread wide across my back, the other cradling the back of my head with a gentleness that made my throat ache.
He was so warm. He was always so warm. I pressed my face into the curve of his neck and breathed him in.
Earth and herbs and woodsmoke. His hand moved in slow circles across my back, and I felt the tension I'd been carrying since Nathan had grabbed me begin to ebb away.
“Ellie,” he murmured. I looked up at him, and he bent to kiss me again.
This time, he tipped my head back, deepening the kiss.
By the time he was done, I was breathing harder and my heart had sped up.
His mouth left mine, moving up across my cheekbone, then down, lips moving down the side of my neck.
I felt the warmth of his breath and the heat of the tip of his tongue, flicking over my skin and I shivered, tilting my head to give him better access without even thinking about it.
A small, breathless sound escaped me that I couldn't have held back if I'd tried.
His mouth found the hollow beneath my ear, and my fingers curled into the front of his tunic, gripping the soft leather like an anchor.
He kissed the spot where my pulse hammered, lingering there, and I felt his lips curve into the faintest smile against my skin.
He could feel my heartbeat. Of course he could.
"Good? Yes?" he murmured against my throat.
"Yes," I whispered. "Very good."
He huffed a quiet laugh, warm breath fanning across my collarbone, and kissed his way down the tendon of my neck with an unhurried thoroughness as though he was cataloguing every inch of skin and filing it away for later reference.
His beard brushed against my throat, softer than I'd expected, and the contrast between that gentle rasp and the heat of his mouth sent sparks skittering down my spine.
His hand moved from the back of my head to my shoulder, thumb tracing the edge of my collarbone where the tunic met skin and slid down the front. He paused there, fingertips resting against the leather lacing that held the front of my tunic closed.
"Can I?" he asked.
My stomach flipped. Not with fear. With something else entirely—a hot, nervous anticipation that made my pulse hammer in my throat. I thought about saying no. I thought about all the reasons this was complicated, all the reasons I should slow down, be sensible, be careful.
Then I thought about two years of feeling nothing. Two years of being numb and hollow and convinced that whatever part of me was supposed to want this had been scraped out and discarded like the membrane from a hide.
"Yes," I whispered.
His fingers found the first lacing and pulled, slow and deliberate.
The leather slipped free with a soft whisper of sound that seemed impossibly loud in the quiet of the cave.
He moved to the second, then the third, each one loosened with the same careful patience he brought to everything, giving me time to change my mind at every step.
I didn't change my mind.
The last lacing came free and the tunic fell open, the leather parting down the centre of my chest. Cool air hit my skin and I shivered, resisting the urge to pull it closed again, to cover myself, to hide.
The old voice in my head—Nathan's voice, always Nathan's voice—whispered that I wasn't enough.
That my body was too soft, too round, too ordinary.
That he'd look and be disappointed, the way Nathan had been disappointed.
Daska eased the tunic back off my shoulders, the leather sliding down my arms, and then he stopped and looked at me.
His eyes moved from my face down my throat, across my collarbone, lower.
I watched his expression change, watched something kindle behind those dark eyes that made the breath catch in my lungs.
"Beautiful," he said, the word rough and low, almost reverent. "Ellie. Beautiful."
I shook my head automatically, the denial rising before I could stop it. "I'm not—"
"Beautiful," he repeated, firmer this time, and his eyes came back to mine with an intensity that silenced me. There was no politeness in it. No flattery. He said it the way he said everything—like it was simply true, and he saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
My eyes burned. I pressed my lips together and looked away, blinking hard, because if I held his gaze for one more second I was going to fall apart completely, and I'd already cried enough for a lifetime."Daska—"