15. Porridge
Porridge
Mariana
We were two miles from Yar when dawn broke.
The rising sun smeared pink across the sky like jam on a porcelain plate.
At our backs, the moon hung low over the Western Wood, veiled in blue.
Safe within the shelter of the grove that Faren should’ve escaped to, I dropped my gear in the grass, knelt, and began rifling through my pack.
“Mariana.” Faren’s voice was low, shaping my name into an apology. “Mariana, I—”
“There’s a creek,” I interrupted, jutting my chin in the direction of the trickling water, its soft song filling the underbrush a short way south. “Wash your wound.”
Faren set his pack at the base of a tree and began unstrapping his breastplate, vambraces, and scabbards. He set them in the wet grass, then straightened and removed his shirt. I averted my eyes, focusing on finding the small jar I sought in the bottom of my bag.
Once he was out of sight, I let out a rough sigh and sat back on my heels.
My fingers shook; I pressed them against my eyelids, desperate to make the world disappear for a moment.
Steel does not feel, I told myself, but all I could see was the Morta striking Faren to the ground.
Striking Grinnick to the ground. The memory had rushed in at me from all sides: the pain in my vocal cords as I screamed, my tears hot against my cheeks, the jarring physicality of my heartbreak rending me in half as I ran to safety.
I had faced many Morta since Grinnick died—had fought alongside many Valiant Knights and seen plenty of them fall—yet never had the memory hit me so squarely as it had tonight.
“Are you all right?”
Faren stood two paces away, his bare chest glistening with creek water.
His skin was pebbled from the frigid morning air.
Bright red blood welled from the wound at the top of his arm, but I saw no trace of black veining.
Aside from the lump on his head from where he’d hit the ground, the rest of him appeared unharmed.
“I’m fine.” I stood and tossed the jar of salve at him. “Put this on the wound.”
He caught it easily. “What is it?”
“Hylder.” I’d purchased a couple jars from Hattie the last time I’d visited Waldron for more vials of cure. “It’ll stop the disease from spreading.”
His eyes widened. “Is it possible I could—”
“You’ll be fine,” I told him. Just fine, I assured myself—then wondered why I craved the assurance. My heart was still in my throat, and I swallowed hard. “I’ll be right back.”
Grabbing a fresh shirt, I headed off toward the creek.
The water was clear and cold, reflecting the blushing sky.
I splashed my face and bare arms. The welts from the Morta blood stung bitterly, but I was no stranger to the sensation.
I cast my soiled shirt aside and removed the wrap around my ribs; the injury still ached at the top of an inhale, but the bruising had lessened, and I wanted to breathe freely.
Moving swiftly, I shrugged the clean shirt over my head, tied the laces to my liking, and rinsed the blood from my dirty clothes.
When I returned to our small clearing, Faren was seated on a boulder, dabbing salve on his wound.
Soft morning light filtered through the trees to kiss his bare shoulders and collarbones.
His pecs were wide set, his stomach flat and defined, his biceps lined with plump veins. He was solid. Sturdy. Fine.
“You’re back,” he observed, glancing up from his task.
My attention darted back to his face. “I’m back.”
“Wasn’t sure you’d come back.”
“You think I’d abandon you here, but not in Yar, where I could deny culpability for your disappearance?”
I expected a quip in return, but his light brown eyes held mine with genuine regret. “I’d deserve it.”
“I didn’t think Mighty Knights were capable of self-deprecation,” I joked, dumping the wet wad of my shirt and wrap beside my pack.
Faren set the jar of salve aside and rose.
He rubbed at the scruff along his jawline and chin, something I was beginning to notice he did when he felt conflicted.
He approached me and halted with two feet between us—close enough for my touch magic to sense the heat radiating off all that bare skin.
“What I did was wrong,” he said. “I went against your orders and put us both in danger. I am deeply sorry, Mariana, for not trusting your judgement.”
For most of my life, I’d lived among volatile, stubborn, emotionally stunted men.
Faren might’ve vexed me most of the time, but I was beginning to learn that he was steady when it counted.
Willing to own his mistakes, change his mind, consider a new perspective, apologize.
I wasn’t used to it, and a part of me didn’t want to trust it, but as I stared up into his eyes, his sincerity was unmistakable.
So, too, was the sudden dip in his attention—a brief glance at my mouth. The knot in his throat bobbed, and when he met my eyes again, his pupils had widened.
The look was dark and a little bewildered. I could still feel his body heat altering the atmosphere between us, humid and charged. There was a delicate quality to the way he was staring down at me, and it only made me feel more unsteady.
“Just don’t do it again,” I said, turning away from Faren to tidy my gear for departure. “Can you be ready shortly?”
“Are we leaving so soon?”
“Our mission is over, isn’t it?” I glanced over my shoulder at him. “You saw Yar-on-Gray. You have what you need to write your report. The sooner we retrieve our horses, the sooner we can get you back to Fenrir City and part ways.”
A line formed between his eyebrows, as if he were displeased. Then he cocked his head. “We haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. Let me cook us breakfast.”
Being fed was a gift to a girl who grew up hungry, but still, I said, “We ought to keep moving.”
“You think there are monsters nearby?”
“No, but—”
“You said it yourself: our mission is complete, which means we have nowhere to be—or, at least, nowhere to rush off to. Faren gestured at the little clearing, where sunlight streamed through the yellow leaves of the trees onto the grass. Overhead, the clouds were flushed in rich shades of raspberry and apricot. “It’s a beautiful morning. You must be tired and hungry. Just sit. Let me do this for you.”
The offer eroded my resolve. I was tired.
My feet hurt. My lungs were sore. My legs ached from all those stairs in the tower.
I felt wrung-out and overstimulated, my magic fracturing on all the little irritants that I could usually ignore: the tightness of my sword belt around my waist; the way my trousers clung to my thighs, sticky with sweat; the breeze lifting loose strands of my hair to tickle my neck.
I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I wanted to collapse. I wanted to let him do this for me.
And it was a beautiful morning. Autumn was a fickle thing: foggy, rainy, windy, cloudless. When a calm day came, it made sense to appreciate it.
“Fine,” I said, “but I’ll get the fire started. It takes you forever—and you’re still bleeding.”
Faren lifted his arm, inspecting the wound.
A trickle of bright red blood had slid toward his elbow.
He grunted with annoyance and sat on the boulder again, dabbing at the blood with a clean piece of cloth.
By the time I’d gathered wood and coaxed a small fire into being, Faren had procured a long piece of fabric from his pack and was awkwardly wrapping it around his upper arm.
When he glanced in my direction again, it was with reticence.
“Stop looking at me like you’re a dog who shat on the rug,” I told him.
He huffed a laugh. “It’s not that, I…” He lifted a big shoulder. “You’re an impressive fighter.”
I poked at the fire with a stick. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“No, it’s more than that,” Faren insisted. “You were fearless. Mighty.”
I raised an eyebrow, surprised by his wording. “You weren’t bad yourself,” I conceded. “I mean, it was stupid and unnecessary, but…you fought valiantly.”
“Valiantly, you say? Is that a compliment or an insult?”
“You decide.”
Faren bounced his eyebrows and went back to fumbling with his bandage. I nestled another branch on the fire. The events of last night seemed to hang in the air between us like smoke.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to ask about him.”
A nervous pang radiated through my breast. “I don’t know who you mean.”
“The man whose name you called out during the fight.” Faren didn’t look at me when he clarified, “Grinnick.”
It’d been a mistake, of course. Pure, blinding instinct.
To think that a Mighty Knight had witnessed such a vulnerable moment…
my embarrassment was acute. I covered it up by pitching my voice low, assuming a suggestive tone.
“Are you jealous I called out someone else’s name in the heat of the moment? ”
“A little,” he said, “seeing as I almost died.”
I snorted. “You said you weren’t going to ask about him, but this conversation sounds a lot like asking.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “No. I just didn’t want you dreading the question.”
As I watched him wind the fabric around his arm, I felt the ghost of Grinnick’s memory clearing. Acknowledging my moment of panic—even vaguely—did ease some of this morning’s lingering tension.
Faren tried to tie the ends of his bandage one handed, but the fabric slipped. “Fates,” he muttered, unraveling the wrap and starting over.
“Need help?”
“Truly?” He sounded dubious.
Begrudgingly—before I could change my mind—I seated myself next to him and took up the ends of the bandage.
Up close, the wound was jagged, but not too deep.
Still, I winced, feeling a twinge in my own arm.
Touch magicians could be squeamish—because we felt things so keenly, it was easy to imagine someone else’s pain as our own—but after tending countless wounds, I was accustomed to ignoring the squirmy feeling in my stomach at the sight of torn flesh.
Faren held his arm away from his body, allowing me to coil the bandage around the place where the cap of his shoulder met his bicep.
On a few occasions, as I passed the fabric under his arm, my knuckles grazed his ribs, and my magic sparked.
I recalled the fear I’d experienced when he was struck.
It wasn’t just the terror of my past with Grinnick that had unnerved me—I had worried for Faren. Golden brute, egoistical ass, nemesis.
It was confounding, to say the least.
When his arm was wrapped sufficiently, I tied the bandage snug and tucked the ends, my fingertips lingering on the contours of his muscle beneath the fabric.
His arm was draped loosely across my lap to give me access to his wound, and if I weren’t a touch magician, I might’ve missed the way his fingers curled against the outer seam of my trousers.
It was an idle movement, easily excused by the tension in his arm due to pain.
But he was a touch magician, too, and the contact didn’t feel involuntary.
Our eyes met. His were the color of liquor, a blend of honey and gold—yet they seemed to drink me in.
I felt suddenly hyperaware of how close we were sitting, his thigh pressed against mine.
Other sensations—the stirring of the breeze, the fluttering of my shirtsleeves, the hardness of the boulder upon which we sat—seemed to fade into the background, until only my fingers, the bandage, and his arm remained.
Without thinking, I allowed my hand to slip down and meet his bare bicep. His skin was warmer than mine but pebbled with goosebumps. I could feel the ridges of his muscle tissue, supple and strong. His arm flexed in response to my touch, and my magic blazed.
I drew back as if I’d been burned. Faren startled, too, and we both stood abruptly, seeking space.
He coughed. “Porridge?”
“What?”
“For breakfast,” he clarified. “I have barley in my pack.”
“Uh, sure.”
He nodded and went to his gear, pulling a fresh shirt over his head before retrieving and pot and traipsing off into the woods toward the creek.
When he was gone, I let out a puff of breath. Last night must’ve frayed my nerves more than I realized. I knelt on the ground in front of the fire and held out my hands, hoping to sear away the sensation of his skin.