Chapter 12
“You earned the right to call yourself a man today,” Lochlan told me. “That was a very brave thing you did.”
I nodded, too nauseated to open my mouth. The day had felt comfortable and pleasant before I went down into that pipe but now everything seemed hot and muggy. My vision swam and time seemed to pass more slowly than normal.
“Feeling humble today?” Lochlan elbowed me in the ribs, right over the injury.
Unbidden, a cry of pain escaped from my lips. I cut the noise short, clamping a hand over my mouth and squeezing my eyes shut.
“Ha! You sounded like a girl.” He patted my shoulder jovially as I righted myself, clutching at my torso and trying to hide the pain I was in. “Don’t worry, your voice will change soon enough.” He stopped and looked closely at me. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look very pale.”
“I’m fine.” I tried to pitch my voice as low as possible, which made Lochlan smile.
“No need to force your voice down, Gil. Time does that on its own. We’ve all been there.” He continued to tramp through the woods, taking on the bulk of the work pulling the cart. It was all I could do to keep up. The handcart jolted to a halt.
“Stupid rocks,” Lochlan muttered, going back to look at what had obstructed the path.
The moment he was preoccupied, I snuck my hand under the thick rawhide jacket again to test my tunic beneath.
It was soaked.
My hand came away smeared with blood again, which I hastily wiped on my brown breeches.
Lochlan couldn’t know. The skin would mend in time.
I tugged the jacket lower to hide the shirt’s hem as Lochlan came back, saying something about too many rocks on the path.
I just needed to get back to the cottage and have some time alone to tend to my side.
We continued on, but the longer I walked, the more light-headed I became and I began to stagger.
Nausea caused my head to swim, and my thoughts became slow and sluggish.
“Gil? Gil!” Lochlan’s voice rose to penetrate my stupor. “Can you hear me?”
Feeling like I was moving in slow motion, I tried to nod and nearly fell over. His gaze snapped down to my waist. My tunic had come untucked from my breeches, and the telltale crimson stained the fabric.
“Hold on,” Lochlan said, lifting the thick jacket to expose my shirt underneath. “You’ve lost a good amount of blood here. You must’ve gotten scraped in that pipe. Why didn’t you mention it?”
“It’s nothing.” It was harder to form words than normal. My breath came in short, tight bursts. “A little blood doesn’t bother me. It’s not that bad.”
“Prove it. Take the jacket off.”
Glad he hadn’t asked for the whole shirt and confident that my chest wrappings would hide my faint curves, I shrugged off the jacket and felt my heart drop down to my toes as I looked at the stained shirt. Everything from my ribs down was a bright scarlet.
“That’s a good deal more than a little blood,” he noted, eyebrows jumping up into his hairline. “You’re lucky you’re with a healer right now, or we’d have to take you to that hospital we escaped from. All right, off with the shirt.” He began rolling up his sleeves.
“No!”
“Just sit down and take your shirt off,” he snapped impatiently. “If you don’t want an infection, I need to tend to that. You don’t have anything to prove by trying to tough it out.”
“N-no,” I stammered. Tight bands were constricting my chest worse than ever. “I’ll be…I’ll be fine.”
Lochlan huffed in annoyance. “Bleeding out is not fine.”
I tried to run. Lochlan, much faster than I was in my light-headed state, reached for my shoulder to prevent my escape, grabbing at me as I lunged sideways.
A loud ripping noise accompanied my fall as I thudded to the ground in a puff of dirt.
I screamed, unable to stop myself as agony ripped through my body. I’d landed on my injured side.
Cold air rushed across my exposed torso. Lochlan’s thumb must have caught a hole in my tunic and torn it clean open. My chest wrappings still bound my chest, but the truth was out. I clutched at what remained of my ragged tunic and huddled tightly to the dirt.
Lochlan staggered back in shock. “You…you’re…” Then he almost inaudibly whispered, “You’re a girl.”
I met his shocked gaze as fear crept in to settle on my chest. Would he tell?
Was he the type of person who would take advantage of an injured young woman?
I still couldn’t tell which Lochlan was standing before me—the devious schemer who plotted with Roderick and would leave a young boy at a hospital without warning, or the man who kindly helped Mable, knitted, and smiled at children. I could only hope for the latter.
Lochlan stared at the long strip of cloth wrapped around my chest, then hastily dropped his gaze, a deep flush creeping up his neck. I struggled to my feet, careful to keep my back to him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Still studying the ground, he handed the ripped fabric back to me. I stood to take it, wondering how long it would take to patch the tunic back together.
But I’d lost too much blood and had gotten up too fast. My knees buckled under me and I began to fall before I could take the cloth.
Lochlan caught me before I hit the ground, and I cried out again as his hand pressed against the gash up my side.
The landscape swirled as my vision swam and light-headedness threatened to overpower me completely.
“I… I need to look at that,” he said, then hastily added, “Just your injury. Nothing else, mind you.”
I shook my head and pushed him away but staggered. “No, don’t. I’m…I’m fine.” Each word was heavy on my tongue and my legs felt like lead. I couldn’t get medical treatment.
“Gil? Gil! Listen to me.”
I tried to focus on Lochlan’s face, but his features swam in and out of focus and his voice was garbled.
“I’m…fine,” I repeated. I couldn’t think of any other words. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and rest. I shouldn’t.
But I couldn’t not sleep. It was impossible to resist. My head rolled to the side and I blacked out.
The effort required to open my eyes was almost too much to bear. I tried to put my hand up to my head but lacked the strength. Nausea rippled through me and my entire body felt like a giant sack of wet sand, useless and immoveable.
“Welcome back,” Lochlan said. “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it for a little bit there.”
I groaned, rolled my head to the side and wondered if I was about to vomit. I didn’t think I had the strength even for that. We were back at the cottage, and I was laid out on one of the beds. Lochlan had a basin at the ready and was watching me closely.
“Roderick and Peter aren’t here right now,” he told me. “Why were you pretending to be a boy? Want to explain?”
“No,” I croaked.
“What’s your name?”
“Gil.”
“Drink this.” He hooked his arm beneath my shoulders and propped me into a sitting position so I could sip a bitter-tasting drink.
It was disgusting but helped to clear my head and drive away the worst of the nausea, though the pain remained.
When I tried to move away from Lochlan, I only managed to flop back down.
“Ow.”
He adjusted my position to where I was as comfortable as possible. “So how old are you really?”
“Older than thirteen.”
“I gathered that much, funnily enough. Is that why you always smudge dirt on your face? To make you look like a boy wanting to be older?”
I managed a tight smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s real facial hair. You’re just jealous that you can’t grow a beard as impressive as mine.”
“You’ve put on a good act,” Lochlan admitted as he pressed fresh bandages over the wound. “You fooled me. I was so busy remembering what it was like to be thirteen and eager to become a man that I didn’t even question it.”
“You…did you…?” I struggled to look down. My shirt had been cut to expose the slice up my side, but it was all neatly bandaged up. “How much did you see?”
“Enough to treat you.”
Fear clutched at my heart. He knew. He knew my secret. No one was supposed to know. No one was ever supposed to find out. My breathing came in short, rapid bursts and my thoughts all jammed together.
“You don’t need to worry,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I won’t tell.”
Right. Information like that was never safe. It was always sold. I had to get away. I had to escape. I tried again to rise, but Lochlan held me down.
Instant panic exploded in my stomach. “Let go of me,” I gasped, trying to pull away while my side seared in pain. “Don’t touch me.”
Lochlan released me immediately. “I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
I gasped for air and edged as far away from Lochlan as I could on the bed. “I don’t like being touched.”
“I can tell.” There was a strange expression in Lochlan’s eyes, almost like pity. “You’ll need to lie still and recover. It’s going to take a few days.”
I stubbornly shook my head. My throat was clogged and I kept cringing away from Lochlan, wishing more than anything that I could run far, far away. I’d had to leave Ebora because too many people discovered my secret for me to be comfortable. I couldn’t let the same thing happen here.
There was a rumble of voices as Peter and Roderick came back from whatever errand they’d gone on. I could hear their footfalls coming closer.
I turned my terrified eyes onto Lochlan. “Please don’t tell,” I whispered. As much as I hated it, I’d have to trust him. I couldn’t run.
“I won’t,” he promised, eyes shining with sincerity, then fear came over him. “You have to put on a new shirt.” He snatched up the closest one hanging out of a trunk and threw it at me. “Get it on. I’ll give you a little time.”
He was out the door in a second, calling a greeting to Peter and Roderick as I fumbled to don the new tunic. Stretching my arms out to push my hands through the sleeves was agony and depleted what little strength I’d regained. How long would my recovery take?
Once dressed, I eased myself back down to lie flat, panting for breath.
If I had more energy, I would’ve kicked myself.
How could I have let this happen? Brent had told me about the new bounty the Employer wanted, and I was sure it had to be the crate in the house with me…
but now I was lying in bed, unable to do much more than take a few steps.
It would be impossible for me to steal the pixie dust and outrun all three men, and my safety was wholly reliant on a man I barely knew.
“Where’s Gil?” Peter was asking.
“Resting in the back room. The dumb kid fell and got hurt, so he slowed us down on the way back here. He’ll have to rest up for a bit before he’s useful again. Bled all over a few of my scarves, so now I can’t sell them at all.”
Roderick’s booming, bear-like laugh rang out. “I think we can spare a few coppers now that we have this.” There was the slapping sound of flesh against wood. “Buyers are very interested.”
A whine had started in my head, trying to muffle the sound of the conversation.
“We ought to send Gil back to his mother,” Lochlan pressed. “He needs to be cared for.”
“No. He knows too much already,” Roderick said. “He’s not leaving. You’re a healer. You take care of him.”
I took several deep breaths, trying to clear my head, but the incessant whine persisted, growing to the point that I could barely hear any of the conversation floating in toward me.
It all became muddled together and my eyelids began to close, no matter how much I resisted.
Sleep was coming, whether I wanted it to or not.
Within a few minutes, I’d drifted off again, in too much pain and too exhausted to stay awake a second longer.