24. A Magic Touch #2
“It had to be done, Alpha. I had to turn,” Cyphus goes on to insist, clearly defensive about breaking a rule among the pride. “There were over a dozen boars. Several bulls. They would have torn us apart.”
Tage waves a hand in dismissal.
Cyphus’s expression relaxes somewhat, understanding that he won’t be reprimanded.
Not for this, at any rate.
“You shouldn’t have been in the bluffs,” Viggo insists as he inspects Arvos. “Not out of dragon skin.”
Tage fixes his attention on Arvos writhing in pain on the table. “How bad is it, Viggo?”
“Would that we had bumped into soldiers,” Cyphus grumbles, still not letting the matter drop. “We could have handled them.” He nods at Arvos, clearly indicating that he could have shaded them.
“Could we? Arvos couldn’t shade her.” Danhy juts an accusing thumb my way, and full understanding hits me. It’s because of me they went south to the bluffs. It’s my fault they doubt their magic and made such an effort to avoid the humans in the north.
Because of me.
I swallow and give the barest, imperceptible shake of my head, denying responsibility. I’m their captive. What happened to Arvos is not my doing. It’s not my fault their magic doesn’t work on me. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work on others. I shouldn’t feel guilty. I shouldn’t.
But I do.
With Arvos’s anguished screams in my ears, I do.
I finally get a good look at Arvos spread out on the table and gag. Bile surges to my throat, climbing into my mouth. I cover my lips with my shaking hand as I assess the damage.
Arvos’s thick thigh is split wide open, revealing a pulpy mess of pink masticated tissue. I suck in a deep breath and taste blood on the air.
Arvos shifts slightly and the movement sends purple blood squirting, striking Viggo in the face.
I gasp.
Danhy squeals.
For anyone else this would be a mortal wound. At least on a human. There would be no coming back from this.
Viggo looks him over and then smooths a hand over his sweaty forehead, saying in a soothing voice, “I know it hurts—”
Arvos gasps, his eyes wild. “Give me something, Viggo! Make it stop. I can’t do this!”
I inch closer, the cold from the outside still radiating off their bodies the way heat emits from a fire.
I brush against Danhy, and her head whips around to glare at me. “Get out of here! This is your fault!”
I blink and step back.
No one disputes her outrageous charge. No one defends me. It serves as a reminder that they all perceive me as the enemy.
Resentment sparks in me like a flint on steel. I should go back to the kitchen, but I linger, curious, watching as they tend to Arvos.
“He’ll succumb to the svefn soon, I’m certain,” Viggo says, his expression grim beneath the blood spatter on his face.
Svefn?
I store this word away among the many other things I don’t fully understand in the pride. But I’m trying to. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about them and everything in this world, building my arsenal of knowledge. Maybe then, when the time comes, it will aid my escape.
I continue to listen, absorbing what I can and grasp that svefn is a type of pain-induced sleep, a healing slumber of sorts that a dragon falls into when gravely injured.
“How soon? When will it happen?” Danhy demands over the tortured cries, clearly distressed that Arvos’s pain continues. “This is too much for him.”
I lean forward, eager, like her, for his suffering to come to an end, for him to find some escape from the pain. Even if he is my enemy, no one should suffer like this.
Viggo shrugs. “Every dragon is different . . . with different thresholds of pain.”
“I would say he’s reached the limits of his threshold,” Tage mutters as Arvos lets out a long, keening moan that sends his spine arching up off the table.
The terrible sound beckons me. I feel drawn, connected to him as though by an invisible rope. I’m sure I shouldn’t feel this way. While Arvos didn’t treat me the worst among them, he’s never been kind to me. And yet his pain affects me, compels me forward.
Before I know what I’m doing, I reach out between Viggo and Tage, my fingers connecting with the taut, clammy skin of Arvos’s forearm, and I’m thinking, lips moving with whispery words, a scarcely audible entreaty: easy there, don’t hurt . . . don’t hurt . . . please, stop hurting.
His bowed body stills the moment I touch him.
I inch closer, sliding my hand more fully around him. My fingers prickle in the way it feels when my foot falls asleep and the blood rushes back in. His flesh warms slightly beneath my tingling palm. He lowers back onto the table, his body sagging like a depleted waterskin.
His moan fades, replaced by steady puffs of breath that grow softer with every passing moment.
“Arvos?” Danhy queries, hope in her voice. She darts a glance to Viggo. “Is this it . . . the svefn?” Looking back at Arvos, she frowns. “He’s awake, though. His eyes are still open.”
Viggo shakes his head uncertainly, but then his gaze lands on me, on my hand, touching Arvos. He follows the length of my arm up to my face.
With a flush, I guiltily withdraw my fingers from Arvos and glance away to find Tage staring at me intently.
Arvos begins thrashing again on the table, pained sobs wrenched from some deep well of agony inside him.
“The svefn hasn’t taken him yet,” Viggo grimly pronounces. “Cyphus, fetch my things.”
Cyphus obliges and hastens away.
Arvos continues to writhe in torment.
Tage looks back and forth between Arvos and me, commanding tersely, “Touch him again.”
“Wh-what?” I stammer. “I don’t—”
“Do it,” he instructs in a tone that allows no argument.
I obey, my trembling hand stretching forward again to touch him. Instantly he calms beneath my palm.
Tage and Viggo study me like two hawks tracking prey.
Cyphus returns, noting the quiet that fell. “What’s happening?” he asks.
“Are you a healer?” Tage demands of me.
“No,” I respond, even as my mind instantly leaps to Maretta and all the time I spent with her in her cottage.
Did I inadvertently pick up a few tricks in the healing arts from her?
Can such a skill be passed from one to another like an ague contracted from frequent exposure.
Is it possible that I learned something from her? No. It can’t be. Maybe . . .
Shaking my head, I start to pull my hand away, but Tage quickly covers it with his, keeping me in place. “No. Keep it there.”
My breath catches at his words, at his hand on top of mine, at his face so close, at the velvety sound of his voice in my ear.
“Your touch is like . . . magic,” he adds.
Magic.
That loathed and bewildering thing, responsible for so much loss, so much pain. The villain in my life. I never considered it could be good.
If I’m to believe magic has its good, then, relatedly, Tage, born of magic . . . can be good, too.
The warmth of Tage’s touch is only heightened by the sensation of Arvos’s ice-cold flesh beneath my palm. “You give him relief.”
The way he says those words, the narrowing way he looks at me, I’m not sure if it’s praise or an accusation. Whatever it is, he won’t let go of my hand.
Cyphus makes a sound of disgust. “This human is no—”
Tage cuts him a quelling look that silences him. “The only thing that matters right now is Arvos.”
Cyphus’s lips flatten in a mutinous line, but he doesn’t speak again.
“I’m not a healer,” I insist. As though to prove it, I tug my hand out from under Tage’s, stepping back from the table.
Arvos stills. His eyes close and his chest eases into deep and even breaths.
I nod to him. “He’s fine. See?” Whatever peace Arvos found hasn’t anything to do with me. I’m no healer. “Nothing to do with me.”
Tage’s unreadable gaze holds me in a vise. “Whatever you say.”
“The svefn finally claimed him,” Danhy says excitedly.
I nod with renewed vigor, as though to say, See, not my doing.
Danhy seizes Arvos’s hand and bows over it, pressing her lips to the back of it with palpable relief.
Tage spares only a quick glance for Arvos. He studies me in a way that makes me long to be invisible again. It’s probably for the best to be largely ignored by your captors—to fall beneath their notice. I’d forgotten how uncomfortable it could be to find yourself under intense scrutiny.
My hand still hums and tingles from where he’d held it, the pressure from the contact throbbing even now.
I cross my arms over my chest, tucking my hand between my arm and body in an attempt to kill the lingering sensation.
All attention is fixed on Arvos. Viggo begins to tend to the wound, directing Danhy and Cyphus to help.
Only Tage isn’t looking at Arvos.
He’s looking at me.
I back away in shuffling steps until I turn and flee into the kitchen, the place that is quickly becoming my sanctuary.
Still, even here, away from them, alone once again, I feel the weight of Tage’s gaze boring into my back.
And it doesn’t feel like sanctuary.