Chapter 21 Interrupted #2
Then his hand shifted, fingers sliding from my hair to brush against my fevered cheek. The touch was cool, almost soothing. “Is that what you think I am?” he asked, his voice softer, almost intimate. “Your executioner?”
I tried to nod, but the movement sent fresh pain lancing through my skull. “You promised,” I whispered instead. “You said I was going to die.”
“And so you will, as all mortals must,” he replied, his dropping to a soothing drawl. “But not today.”
“Then what good are you?” I muttered, petulance seeping through my delirium.
He hummed, and I felt it rumble through my lips. “A question many have asked,” he admitted, pressing my body more firmly to his. I nuzzled into his neck, trying to get as close as possible to this being who held me with such care.
He lowered his face to my shoulder and breathed me in, slow and deliberate, almost hungry, as though my scent alone could sustain him.
I felt his nose trace the line where fevered skin met the pulse in my throat.
My body, stripped of every last defense, shuddered with something that was not altogether fear, nor entirely wanting—it was a third thing, nameless and starving, and I knew it belonged not to me alone.
His grip gentled, the large hand splayed across my back moving in feather-light circles. The other hand found its way back to my hair, fingers combing through the knots, undoing the tangles with an impossible tenderness for something of such obvious strength.
I shifted in his arms, summoning what little resolve remained to lift my head.
My lashes felt weighted with lead, but I managed to crack them open just enough to glimpse the shadowed planes of his face.
The light was too dim to make out details, but I could see the strong line of his jaw, the hollow of his neck, the pale gleam of eyes watching me with an intensity that should have frightened me.
Instead, I felt satisfaction at what little I saw. At least I could confirm that death was not monstrous.
The world swam in and out of focus, and I couldn’t find the energy to keep my eyes open any longer. Instead, I pressed my forehead against the cool solidity of his cheekbone, taking comfort in that small point of contact.
“I’m so tired,” I whispered, the words scraping past my parched lips. “So very tired.”
The hand at my back continued its slow, unhurried circles, grounding me in the moment, while the other now hovered at my cheek. It was almost as if he feared harming me, as if he hadn’t touched another in years.
Maybe he hadn’t.
Slowly, his fingertips brushed my face. Fingers ghosting over my cheekbones, my temples, the hollow beneath my eyes. When they reached my lips, they paused, a feather-light touch that sent an unexpected shiver through my fevered body.
“I know, yshera,” he murmured, his breath caressing my skin. “I know.”
I wanted to ask what it meant, yshera, this foreign word spoken in a tongue I couldn’t place, but language was slipping away, drowned by exhaustion and the steady beat of his heart against my ribs. Instead, I pressed closer still, seeking solace in the rhythmic cadence.
“That’s enough,” Valen’s voice cut through the moment, startling me. He sounded far away, as though speaking from beyond the bars, but the authority in his tone was unmistakable. “You’re supposed to be helping her, not... whatever this is.”
My harbinger didn’t immediately respond, his fingers continuing their gentle patterns against my spine. I felt him exhale against my skin, his breath cool.
“Healing takes many forms,” he finally replied, his voice a low rumble that I felt more than heard. “Or have you forgotten that in your time playing in mortal revenge?”
Valen made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a growl, a sound that could have been mistaken for jealousy had I not known better. “I haven’t forgotten how you operate. Get on with it.”
The hand on my back stilled, and I found myself mourning the loss of that soothing motion.
Suddenly, the air in the cell felt charged, as if lightning were about to strike, before a loud metallic clang shattered the tension—the sound of cell bars slamming shut. Had Valen done that? Or had my harbinger’s powers somehow caused it?
“What are you doing?” Valen snarled.
“Ensuring privacy,” my harbinger replied calmly. “You want me to heal her? I require concentration. Your presence is highly distracting.”
“I will only remove the second if she is returned to me alive and whole,” Valen said, his voice low and dangerous. “Remember that.”
“I remember,” my harbinger replied, and there was a weight to his words that suggested centuries rather than decades, perhaps millennia. “Now be silent or leave. Your choice.”
I heard Valen’s frustrated exhale, followed by the sound of retreating footsteps. He had chosen to leave rather than watch whatever was about to happen. In my fever-addled state, I felt only relief.
My harbinger shifted me in his lap, adjusting our positions so that my head rested in the crook of his shoulder.
The oppressive heat that had been consuming me for days began to recede, replaced by a coolness that started at my crown and flowed downward like clear water.
The sensation was so blissful that I couldn’t hold back a moan.
“Better?” he asked, his voice closer to my ear than I’d expected.
I nodded, unable to form words as the coolness continued to spread through my body, chasing away the fever that had been eating me alive. It was like diving into a mountain stream after months in the desert—shocking, painful in its intensity, yet desperately needed.
“The infection is deep,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “It has taken root in your blood.”
His hand moved to my feet, where the worst of the cuts were. I flinched as he touched the festering wounds, but his grip on me tightened, preventing any escape.
“Be still,” he commanded. “The discomfort will be less if you do not fight it.”
I forced myself to relax, surrendering to his touch.
His fingers traced the edges of each cut, and I felt something strange.
A pulling sensation, as if he were drawing the pain out through his fingertips.
The ache subsided with each pass of his hand, replaced by a tingling numbness that was almost pleasant.
“The next part will hurt,” he warned then, his voice gentling. “It is the price of such healing. A piece of yourself, freely given.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I nodded anyway. What was one more piece of myself? I had already lost everything else.
“Good girl,” he said softly, the words seemingly pulled from him without thought. But for some reason, the simple praise brought tears to my eyes. How long had it been since anyone had spoken to me with anything resembling kindness?
His hand moved to my chest, resting over my heart.
At first, there was nothing—just his palm against my sternum.
Then, without warning, pain exploded through me, so intense that my back lifted, my teeth clenched in a silent scream.
I barely registered that he was shoving my face back into his neck, his strong arms wrapping around me in a tight embrace.
It felt as if he were reaching inside me, past skin and bone, to grasp something essential at my core.
I whimpered into his neck, my fingers clutching desperately at his shoulders as the pain intensified. This was no physical wound. This was something deeper, more intrinsic. I felt as if he were tearing away a piece of my very self, extracting something I hadn’t known could be removed.
“Just a bit more,” he whispered, his lips brushing my temple, his voice sounding stronger than before. “You’re doing so well. So brave.”
The praise shouldn’t have mattered, not when I was being unmade from the inside out, but somehow it did. I focused on his voice, on the steady rhythm of his breathing, using it as an anchor as the pain crested.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The tearing sensation ceased, leaving behind a strange emptiness, like a hollow space where something vital had once lived. I sagged against him, exhausted beyond measure, my body suddenly too heavy to hold upright.
“There,” he said, satisfaction evident in his tone. “It is done.”
I wanted to ask what he had taken, what piece of myself I had just surrendered, but consciousness was already slipping away.
The world began to fade, the edges of reality blurring into comforting darkness.
The last thing I felt was his arms tightening around me, cradling me against his chest as if I were precious rather than broken.
They were not death’s cold embrace as I’d longed for, but something warmer, more complex, perhaps something I had yearned for before these dungeons.
As the darkness pulled me under, I felt my harbinger’s lips brush against my forehead, so lightly I might have imagined it.
“Sleep, yshera,” he whispered. “There will be time enough for dying later.”