Chapter 33
I wake up soaked in sweat. And I’m moving.
Strong arms are encircling me.
I tense, and look up, only to see Raker’s hood.
“It bit—” I say, my voice raw, like it’s been dragged across a rock face.
“You’ll live,” he snaps, with more than a hint of regret.
Was he able to find a cure? Did my body overcome the snake’s poison?
Raker won’t answer any of my questions anyway, so I close my mouth to conserve my voice. It’s only a few minutes later that he drops me onto a cave floor.
“Sleep,” he snaps at me. And then he disappears through the entrance.
I wake up with a pulsing headache, but better. Able to move. There’s a pile of berries next to me and a mound of mushrooms next to that. A pouch of water is right by my head.
Raker. He must have foraged for them while I slept. I look around—
And that’s when I see him. Slumped against the wall.
Somehow, I know he’s not sleeping. I know something is wrong.
“Raker?” I get to my feet, losing my balance for a step as I fight off a wave of dizziness. In a moment, I’m on my knees before him.
He doesn’t look up at me. He only reaches up, as if to keep me away from him. His hand brushes against my shoulder. “Go back to sleep, Aris,” he says.
But his hand.
I take it in mine before he can stop me, and—“You’re burning.” He’s hotter than should be possible. I’m not sure how he’s still conscious.
And his veins … they are the same red as the snake’s eyes. Did he get bitten too?
I think about how quickly I recovered without medicine. I reach up to touch the place the fangs pierced me, only to find the skin a normal temperature. My own veins are not this color. I’m completely healed, as if—
I swallow. No. No—he wouldn’t.
“Did you—did you suck the poison from my neck?” I ask, my voice just a whisper.
He doesn’t say anything.
A strange feeling tugs in my chest. He sucked poison from my blood. He … saved me. Now here he is, burning up, the poison having reached his heart.
His enormous hand is still in mine. I weave my fingers through his, as if to cool it.
“What a stupid thing to do,” I say, my voice a whisper.
At that, he tilts his head up, only slightly. I can imagine he’s glaring at me. His voice is rougher than usual. “Saving your life? Stupider than you can possibly imagine.”
So he did.
“Yet you keep doing it,” I breathe.
“Someone has to,” he says, echoing my own words back to me. As if … as if he was listening. Remembering.
I raise a brow. “I’ve saved your life too.”
He makes a sound. “Hardly. All you’ve done is made my life a fucking nightmare.”
Keep talking, I think, worry crawling through me. Don’t fall asleep. I don’t know if you’ll wake up. “Yet you sucked the poison from my throat.”
He sighs. “I need you alive.”
“Right. For the map.” Though he hasn’t asked me to draw it in days. “Yet—yet now you’re dying.”
He doesn’t deny this either.
“Well … well, you can’t,” I say.
He shifts his head an inch, his body seizing, as if even moving hurts. “I would have thought my death would please you,” he says. “Given how much you hate me.”
I nod. “Normally, yes, but …” I shrug a shoulder. “It would just be embarrassing,” I say, “being the Warrior Without Marks on His Armor and then dying from snake venom.”
He makes a sound that almost resembles a laugh.
“Also, I don’t think that snake could lift your sword, so your death would really be a waste.”
There it is. That rough sound of amusement again.
I wish I could see it. I wish I could see if demons can smile.
His breathing is slowing. It makes something rise within me. Worry? Panic? Poisons either need antidotes … or they need to be fought. He cannot succumb to it. I won’t let him. I need to keep him talking.
“Did you always want to be a knight?”
“Want?” He says the word like it’s foreign. He shakes his head. “I became a knight to survive.”
I frown. “You … you were starving?” I remember how fiercely he told me I didn’t know him at all. For some reason, I can’t imagine Raker ever not having anything. He just seems so capable of taking it.
“We were starving,” he says. “My father was a fisherman. My mother was a seamstress. One season, all the fish washed up dead. We were out of food by winter. My siblings were little more than flesh and bone. Against my parents’ wishes, I enlisted as a knight in the king’s guard.
The stipend kept them fed.” I don’t miss how he uses the past tense when it comes to his family.
I think about all the assumptions I made about him.
Shame sinks through me. I don’t know why I just assumed the opposite. It’s the tale of many warriors. The king provides them and their families with food. So many of them often die, in training or in war. It’s a brutal sacrifice.
“And you were just … really good at killing?” I ask.
“I was good at doing whatever I needed so they survived,” he says. His voice is deeper. Rougher. “The more I advanced, the more food they got, so I became the best.”
“And did it work?” I ask, wondering if I’m prying. Wondering if he’s going to just stop talking. “Was all of it … worth it?”
His breathing is more labored now, as if his body is fighting. Good. If his experience with the poison is anything like mine, his heart will be racing. His head will be pulsing in pain. A distraction. What he needs is a distraction.
“No,” he says, and it’s the only time I’ve heard even a sliver of emotion in his voice.
I can feel it in him. Barbs rising. He might as well have his sword between us. I’ve poked at something sensitive, and I know how much easier it is to build walls than to break them.
“I lost my family too,” I say softly.
I think he might tell me he doesn’t care. Or to stop talking. But he doesn’t. He just sits … like he’s listening.
“It happened in one night.” I swallow the emotion in my throat.
“The nightmares,” he says, his voice ragged.
I nod. “That’s what I dream about. Every time I reach deep enough sleep. That night, when everything changed. I was the only one who survived.” I take a rattling breath. “And I wish it was me who died.”
“Reaching the end will help you get your revenge?” he asks. He must assume I’ll use the cup of magic for something in my plan.
I nod.
“And you?”
He nods back.
I sit down against my heels. “So, we have that in common. Dishonorable intentions.” I tilt my head. “Though I expected nothing less from the king’s most brutal warrior.”
He just stares at me from within the darkness of his hood.
“I know it’s selfish,” I say. “Our side is dying. People are suffering. But—but ever since that night, there’s been a hole inside me.
It’s grown, devouring everything. Every shred of empathy or kindness …
I feel it withering. I don’t want to care about everyone else.
I cared about them, and they’re gone, and this world is worse for it.
” My eyes burn. I smile weakly. “I know it’s wrong.
But I would trade every single person in this world for them.
Without flinching.” I shake my head. “It’s wrong, but it’s the truth. ”
“I understand,” he says.
“Of course you do,” I say. “You’re a demon.”
He makes that half-amused, half-frustrated sound again. It’s faint … but there. I stare at the darkness. He stares back. I wonder what he sees. I can feel the heat of him, of his feverish skin, right in front of me, as I lean slightly closer.
That’s when I realize he’s not wearing his mask. Only his hood.
My voice is barely a whisper. “Well … since you’re dying.” I swallow. “Your face. I want to see your face before then. You know, in the interest of coils of snakes and all.” He has seen my markings. He has seen me. We have fought back-to-back and survived countless dangers.
He doesn’t say anything. So, I raise my arm. My hand trembles as I reach for his hood, slowly, so slowly.
I give him time. Space. Opportunity. But this time, he does not stop me. His breathing seems to become even more labored. My fingers brush against the edge of his hood, and I swear I can feel him shiver. Perhaps it’s the poison. Or it’s the fever.
With a rush of curiosity, I push the fabric back, and there he is.
And the world isn’t fair, not at all.
Because Harlan Raker is a monster, but he doesn’t look like one.
He is painfully beautiful.
His skin is pale, his cheeks are sharp, his hair is dark and curled around his ears. Just looking at him makes my blood heat. He looks like he was carved by a merciless god, one that wanted a weapon people would run toward.
He’s like a blade. I know if I touch him, I’ll bleed. But I want to, anyway.
I can’t help but be enraptured. I stare, even though he’s watching. I open my mouth, then close it, unable to find the right words.
“Why hide?” I finally ask.
“Why did you?” he says.
“But you—you didn’t have a reason.”
His voice is sharp as a scythe. “Neither did you.”
That isn’t fair. Especially coming from the very person I was taught to fear.
I study him for far longer than is acceptable, and he just stares at me, eyes narrowed, almost as if he’s glaring, but I can’t stop.
“You—” I say, my voice just a breath.
“Are not a coil of snakes,” he says.
I shake my head. “No. Not at all.” Maybe it’s the shock, or the remnants of the poison, or because I’ve finally lost my fucking mind, but I say, “You’re beautiful, Raker.”
He raises a brow at me. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“On the outside, yes.”
He sighs in that long-suffering way I’ve heard before, but to see it … to see the way his eyes close in irritation, the set of his perfect jaw …
He winces, as if pain has lanced through him again. For some inexplicable reason, I want to make it go away; I want to distract him.
“You must be filled with regret … dying for someone so insignificant,” I say, my voice light. Trying to make him laugh again.
But his own voice is serious. “Aris,” he says, my name a deep whisper that scrapes against my bones. “You are irritating. And reckless. And an idiot.”
“Thank you—”
“But you are not insignificant.”
You are not insignificant.