Chapter 24
“Gods’ death, Raina. I could kiss you right now.
” Alexus sits on the other side of the fire, half-hidden by soft swirls of gray smoke as he gnaws on a roasted crow’s wing.
Even from here, I can see those full lips, shiny from the fat of dark meat.
He drinks from a moonberry root and looks at me over the dancing embers. “For killing the bird,” he adds.
“Of course,” I sign. “For killing the bird.”
My cheeks warm—and not from the flames flickering between us. I know full well he’s only relieved to have a bite to eat, a blazing fire, and a place to rest our weary bones. I’m not sure why part of me wishes it was something more.
Curled up inside his cloak, I tip back a moonberry root and empty it before placing its husk in a pile with the others I’ve drained.
I’m thankful for the nourishing liquid that quenches my thirst, but also for the roots, fleshy with thick skin.
If we clean out the pulp, they’ll make excellent storage for the berries, providing protection against the cold.
Maybe, along with the berries, they’ll keep us from starving, which I’m sure was Nephele’s intent.
I lean against the log at my back and let out the longest, deepest sigh.
The God Knife lies buried under a tuft of moss beside me, and Mother’s bowl sits on a rock near the fire, handfuls of snow melting inside.
They’re the two things that symbolize what’s been digging at me ever since we sat down to eat.
I want to check on the Eastlanders and the Prince, and on Hel, too.
But now I even feel brave enough to look for Finn.
I need the closure of knowing what happened to him, especially after everything I went through with Hel.
As for the God Knife, I can’t let go of the niggle in my mind that perhaps I should tell Alexus about it.
That level of honesty with him should feel so foreign to me, but I can’t say it does anymore.
Instead, I’m left wondering if maybe he knows something about such things. Maybe he can provide insight.
Or maybe telling him will complicate things further.
Gods, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m so tired—too tired to get into that tonight. It’s a kind of tiredness my body has never experienced but that I have no right to complain about.
Before we got the fire going, I healed the frostbite on our fingers, and after Alexus prepared the crow and set it to roasting, we washed our hands and faces and even took turns stripping and cleaning up more intimately behind a tree.
When that was done, he minded the bird while I healed my feet and the horses’ minor cuts and ice-shod hooves.
Even those small acts of healing made me tired.
Though I’m rejuvenated now, it’s hard to feel at ease.
Here I lie with food in my stomach, stretched out on warm grass that has no right to exist inside this frozen forest, while a band of Witch Walkers works tirelessly to keep this construct intact, lest the remaining Eastlanders invade their home like they did my village.
Then there’s Hel, trapped like an animal and suffering the terrors of a demon alone in the cold. Alexus said the heat in her body had to have come from the wraith, so she’s most likely safe from freezing, but I still worry.
I can’t help Hel or Winterhold’s witches unless I’m whole, however, so I try my hardest to shut out the guilt I feel for these hours of reprieve.
Dropping my head back, I close my eyes and focus on the wonderful heat from the fire, the way it’s chased away the numbness and replaced it with life.
Fire can destroy, but it can also renew.
A wolf howls, and I sit up immediately, the muscles along the back of my neck tight.
“Hel is out in the open,” I sign when Alexus looks up at me from cleaning his hands. “There are wolves.”
“She’s fine, I swear.” His eyes are ever the anchor, his voice so inexplicably certain.
His confidence calms the flutter of worry inside my chest. “Her scent alone is enough to send a pack of wolves in the other direction,” he adds, “but also, my scent is all over her. It’s the only reason the wolves haven’t bothered us.
They know to keep their distance from me and mine.
She’ll be safe. And we’re safe.” I want to inquire what exactly he means by all of that, but he stands and gestures to the ground beside me. “May I?”
I nod, and he sits with his back against the log, long legs bent at the knee.
“You should sleep. You barely slept while we were traveling.” He motions toward the fire where the gambeson hangs on two sticks. “It’ll be dry now and so warm. It makes a right bed, if you remember.”
There’s so much to think about, and yet he’s worried about me sleeping and having a right bed.
“I remember,” I sign, incapable of preventing a small smile from forming on my lips.
It would be impossible to forget. Before, I wondered how Nephele could be friends with Alexus, but now it isn’t hard to imagine at all.
I can’t say I understand it—why he takes people from the vale and why they don’t hate him for it—but I can’t seem to hate him either, much as I wanted to before all of this happened.
I reach across the small space between us and take his hand in mine. There’s a bone-deep knowing when it comes to him, and so I’m not surprised when the lines crossing his palm call to me. I’m sure they’re not calling to me the way palms called to Mena, but the need to see them closer is real.
I trace Alexus’s lines into memory, reveling when he shivers at my touch. I’ve no idea what they mean, but I wonder.
“Do you read palms?” he asks. “We’ve a lady at Winterhold, from Penrith, who does.”
“No,” I sign. “Not a clue.”
“Minds?”
I laugh and press another no into his palm.
He winks and smiles, then lets his head fall back as I keep tracing the lines in his skin. “That’s probably a good thing. Though I bet you could if you tried.”
Funny how he worries about me knowing what he’s feeling and thinking.
First, he asked if I read people’s emotions, and now this.
I wish I could read him—his emotions, his mind, his palms. Mena always said the lines of the hands define who we are.
She labeled me well enough, calling me an idealist with volatile tendencies and someone who struggles with a mundane existence.
She called me impulsive, impatient, and imaginative, a restless being who needs freedom to flourish and love to thrive.
I think she was right, but I fear those last two requirements for peace might be impossible anymore.
Alexus exhales and relaxes, as though my touch is all he needs to unwind.
Though we’ve been pressed against one another for days, I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to touch him outside the mode of sheer survival.
His hands are big and calloused, scarred in the way of a swordsman, strong and warm in ways I shouldn’t be thinking about.
Delirium. It must be.
But maybe it isn’t. Because ever since his words before we left Hel, I can’t stop ruminating about how much I do trust Alexus now, how I knew that I trusted him the moment he asked me to as we stood in the snow.
Trust is earned, and though he hasn’t had very much time to do so, he’s only proven himself unfailing.
If I had to imagine what his palm would tell me, it would be that. Unfailing. When I’m grieving, he provides comfort. When I’m angry, he lets me rage but tempers my fury. When I’m frightened, he’s right there beside me, facing whatever comes my way. And sometimes tossing pebbles to scare me.
I stifle another smile. My mind is in tangles over him.
Shaking my head, I snap out of the spell and rest his hand in my lap. He still has a little frostbite in places and blisters from the reins, so I set to healing him. He winces and flinches and even hisses a time or two as I weave the tattered threads of his flesh back together.
Eventually, he settles, watching my hands as I sing and work.
Such a mystery, this man, though he also feels like an open book. Perhaps there are pages and lines I simply haven’t had the time to read yet. Chapters to lose myself inside.
And perhaps I shouldn’t want to.
But gods, I think I do.
Once the strands of his injuries are entwined, I ask, “Any more wounds?”
He twists his mouth up to one side as though considering whether he should tell me something.
“No shame,” I sign. “Just show me. Is it your feet?”
He barks out the loudest laugh, as if what I said was funny, but I meant it. My toes looked horrendous, black-tipped and covered in blisters from too-small shoes. Feet are bad enough without all that damage.
“Frostbite?” I spell out, stifling a laugh myself. “On your toes?”
“No.” He laughs again. “Somehow, my shameful feet are fine. But this”—he hooks his thumb in the hem of his tunic and tugs the fabric up his long torso—“is another story.”
My smile falls, and I swallow hard. Not just because awful scrapes zigzag from his navel to his collarbone, but because I did not need to see this much of him right now.
He’s more beautiful than I imagined. There’s a dark dusting of hair across his deeply tanned chest, and an even darker trail that travels down his rippled abdomen, between deep V-shaped muscles, and disappears inside his breeches.
Old scars live amid the new wounds, too.
Strange markings that remind me of runes, raised and rough like someone carved them with a hot knife.
If a relic could be human, this is what it would look like.
“When did this happen?” I sign, trying to seem unfazed. But I remember when he had to have received these marks, and he sees the recollection on my face.
“That damn wraith dragged me quite a long way. Rocks and roots and sticks and gods know what else lay beneath the snow and upturned soil. It’ll heal fine on its own, though. No need for you to exhaust yourself even more for a few scratches.”