Chapter 24 #2
The sound of squealing hinges stills every cell in my body, a blow of wind bringing Raeve’s scent straight to me like a gift from Clode herself.
I don’t hear the door shut, nor do I hear Raeve’s footsteps, but my skin prickles with her proximity. Instinctually aware of her presence, just as Rygun’s aware of the invisible line he can’t pass when he’s soaring high, lest gravity lose its grip on him.
I take the dehydrated-jitung-berry-that-looks-like-a-shit and toss it in my mouth, biting down. Screw up my face at the offensive tartness that explodes across my tongue, staring at the empty doorway, hunting for movement.
Everything else blurs into oblivion.
I’m distantly aware of Pyrok flipping the lid on his weald, ordering Ignos to gorge on the wood in the ornate hearth, filling the room with a warm glow. Distantly aware of Roan firing the prongs as I’m told to remove my shirt.
Starting from my neck down, I get to work on my buttons, almost at my diaphragm when Raeve moves through the doorway like a blow of icy wind—still dressed in her black cloak and boots, bits of snow dusting her hair now hanging around her like a drape of shadow.
My hands still.
I hunger over her smooth features, failing to catch her stare that seems to scour everything but me … coming to rest on the blazing hearth.
Her lips tighten.
She moves to the table, pausing close enough for me to tip forward and rest my head against her ribs if I were only brave enough.
“The book’s beside the door downstairs,” she says, then lifts one of Pyrok’s bottles, her hand still tangled with that strange silver thread that’s there but …
not. I’m about to ask about it when she pops the cork with her thumb and tips the bottle to her lips.
She draws deep before scowling down at it—looking exactly the way Kyzari did after she tried my mead in Gore.
A thought that kneads my heart.
“Hear fucking hear,” Pyrok chortles, draining his mug before clonking it against her bottle, pausing to frown at the wispy silver tendril.
He points. “The fuck is that?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” she mutters, face knotted as she moves toward the pallet, bottle in hand even though its contents obviously taste like piss.
Pyrok and I share a glance.
“Riiight.” He slams the mug on the table, refilling it. “I thought you’d ditched. Again.”
He makes a throaty sound that suggests Roan just stomped his foot. Saves me from turning around and booting him under the table.
Raeve drops onto the pallet’s end. Elbows on her knees, she leans forward and lets the bottle hang between her legs. “I’m in remission,” she says, flashing him a half smile that fires my fucking heart.
Then she finally meets my gaze.
Being struck with lightning would be gentler. Would feel less monumental than the way she’s looking at me—unfaltering.
I get back to picking my buttons, pull my shirt open once I reach the final one. She nips a glance at my bare chest, then lifts the bottle and draws another swig.
Brow raised, I edge my arms free of my sleeves. Though the motion pulls at my rib that’s got a fucking pin in it, I refuse to show a twitch of pain, shucking the shirt to the ground as Roan continues to prepare his workspace.
I mimic Raeve’s stance, the berry I chewed pumping me full of energy. Or perhaps it’s the fire billowing through my veins.
Not Rygun’s.
The flame that sparked when Raeve tore the anthe’s watery den in two, stood before a frothing backdrop, and looked back over her shoulder at me—tears streaming, the raw emotions in her eyes telling me things I’m half convinced I imagined. Though I hope not.
When Roan begins swiping my back with a cool sterilizing balm, I raise a fist.
He stops. “Everything alri—”
“Her first.”
Raeve pauses with the bottle to her lips, gaze hardening.
Tension tightening.
“She got pinned in her right thigh,” I clarify, maintaining her eye contact. “Her first.”
Still for a beat, Raeve makes a huffing sound, then draws another deep glug and thumps the bottle on the ground.
She sways toward me in three smooth strides, plucks the prongs off the table, parts her cloak, and kicks her leg through the gap, planting her foot right between my spread legs—my heart pounding so hard and fast I’m certain it’s about to burst.
Until she digs the prongs into the bloody hole in her thigh.
“Fuck, Raeve.”
She roots through, tightens her hand around the instrument, then rips out the pin without so much as a flinch, dropping it on the table beside the gory prongs.
She wipes her bloody hands on her cloak, then leans so far over me I’m afforded a not-so-ideal view of her open wound—now weeping a slow glug of blood.
I avert my gaze.
She grabs a hook-shaped needle, a ball of thread, then tears a length free with her teeth.
Dropping the excess, she threads the needle, stalks back to the pallet, and sits, ripping the hole in her pants wide.
Then she splashes the wound in spirits. Something I know must hurt, but she remains stoic, drawing another sip before placing the bottle back on the ground between her feet.
I give her a dry look as she pushes the needle through her skin and begins stitching the hole shut, blood squelching free with each fleshy tug, that luminous strand tangled around her hand and wrist glowing in the dull light.
“Right,” Roan says, clearing the croak from his throat. “That saves me a job—”
“And reminds me I need to put my fuckin’ piercings back in,” Pyrok mumbles, leaning back to dig through his pocket.
Roan nudges me. “Lean forward.”
I do as he says, setting my elbows on my knees and forcing myself to watch Raeve fix herself one messy stitch at a time. Pretty certain she’s telling me something, not that she probably realizes it.
I barely notice Roan clean the prongs and refire them. Barely feel him dig into each wound, grip the pins, and yank them free. Too caught up in the way Raeve’s long lashes shadow her glacier eyes into a darker hue.
The pinch of her mouth, the curve of her jaw, the fierce concentration on her face—it’s all a hard outer shell that hides whatever’s brewing beneath.
She pulls the final stitch tight and knots it off, using one of her blades to cut the needle free as the last pin is yanked from my rib.
Ignos’s and Bulder’s songs blast me with welcomed gusto, and I pull breath, dropping a murmured order.
“Get out.”