Chapter fourteen
I worked over James in the cave, my hands moving with practiced efficiency even as my heart thudded unbearably.
The torch flame threw unsteady orange light across the rough stone walls, making shadows dance as I wrung out the piece of his plaid I had ripped and dipped it in the stream to wash him.
It was not ideal. I would have preferred hot water, but I had no pot to bring it to a boil.
I had found a small wooden bowl in James’s satchel, and I used it now to mix the woundwort and yarrow I had gathered into a tincture.
A basin of steaming water laced with woundwort and yarrow.
My own wounds protested with each movement, but I shoved the pain aside. James needed me. Nothing else mattered.
It had taken every bit of strength I had to drag James into this cave after he collapsed.
He was twice my size, all lean muscle and solid bone, and my arms still shook from the effort.
But I had managed it somehow, step by agonizing step, driven only by the thought of what would happen if I left him bleeding in the open.
“I’m sorry, James,” I whispered. If he died, I’d never forgive myself. I had left those clues for him that led him to me, and then I had pleaded for Siward’s life, which had been the very thing that led Siward to stab James.
James didn’t answer. Of course, he didn’t. His eyes remained closed, his breathing shallow. His face, usually so full of expression, now looked slack and pale.
I needed to clean him properly, but there was no way I was going to get his tunic off him over his head.
That would mean sitting him up, and I could not support his weight and tug the tunic up and over his head.
I picked up the dagger I had pulled out of his side and used it to cut his tunic down the middle, and then I pulled back and away from his skin as gently as I could.
The wet fabric clung to him, resisting my efforts, and I thanked the gods that James was still out, because I had to give it a hard tug.
I caught my breath as I stared down at his wound.
It was raw and ugly, to be sure, but I was used to treating wounds. What made my breath catch in my throat was all his other scars. There was a long, puckered scar that ran diagonally across his ribs, a knotted burn mark on his left shoulder, and a thin white line along his collarbone.
I had seen many wounds in my long years as a healer.
But seeing them here, on this man’s body, twisted something in my chest. I worked the cloth across his chest and arms with deliberate, careful strokes, discovering more scars every time I wiped away some of the blood.
He had an old puncture on his right forearm, likely from a spear, and there was a jagged slice across his hipbone that was curved like a scythe.
Then there was a neat, round hole near his ribs that seemed like an arrow would have marked him in such a way.
Each scar was a brush with death he had survived, and he had ridden towards death once more, for me.
His skin burned under my palms, and he drew shallow, uneven breaths that made me fear for him.
I pressed my wrist to his forehead and frowned at the heat there.
Fever had him firmly in its grip, and it was the enemy of healing.
It would take the energy he needed and weaken him when he needed strength.
“You will nae die,” I commanded him. “Do ye hear me, James? I did nae save ye from Siward only to lose ye to a fever.”
He didn’t answer, but his face twitched slightly, as though he’d heard me through the darkness of his unconsciousness. I wrung out another strip of plaid I had dipped in the river and pressed it to his forehead, watching as his face eased.
I had never killed before. The thought of Siward, of his body cooling in the mud just outside this cave, made my stomach heave.
But had I not killed Siward, he would have killed James.
I could not feel guilty. James was a good man, even with the lie he’d told me so that he could do the king’s bidding, but Siward had not been good.
How many men had the king sent to find me?
I’d asked this question at least a dozen times as I’d been in the woods and at the river, readying the things I needed to tend to James.
I had no answers, and it made me skittish every time I heard a noise.
I had to shove that fear down now and concentrate on James, so I took a deep breath and forced all thoughts away, save the thought that I had to save James.
Time lost meaning as I worked, but was marked by the fire I had built, growing duller.
Outside, the rain finally stopped, leaving the night still and cold.
My arms ached, and my eyes burned, but I pushed myself to continue, and then James stirred.
His head rolled to one side, and his cracked lips parted.
“Katreine,” he said, and then again, softer. “Katreine.” Then, barely audible, he said, “I’m sorry. By the gods, I’m sorry.”
My breath caught in my throat. His brow creased even in unconsciousness, and his fingers twitched against the dirt floor as though reaching for something. I stilled and watched his face.
He said my name a third time, and the rawness in his tone, the weight of concern there, tightened my chest near mercilessly. He sounded as if I were precious to him, as if my safety truly mattered.
I had the sudden, piercing desire to feel his lips on mine, to feel his arms around me, and to have him look at me and hold me as if I were a gift to him.
I shook the thought away. I was tired, and my mind was being foolish.
I pushed back a lock of James’s sweat-drenched hair as I stared down at him.
“Ye need nae say yer sorry,” I told him, though he likely could not hear me.
“Ye came for me. Ye fought for me. Ye nearly died for me.” I swallowed hard.
“I’m the one who should be sorry. I drugged ye. I left ye. I—”
I broke off, unable to continue. What could I say?
That I had felt betrayed? That I had feared him?
That I still feared him, but now, I feared him not for what he might do, but for what he had already done.
I cared for him, and it was the one thing I could not afford.
I was terrified of what would happen if he died, not just because it would mean the loss of his life, but because it would mean I had allowed myself to want something I had said I wouldn’t.
I had little control, it seemed, when it came to this man.
“You will live,” I said instead, the words an order. “Ye hear me, James? I’ll nae allow anything else.”
He did not answer. But as I worked, his breathing steadied slightly, and the tension in his face eased.
Whether from the herbs or from my voice, I could not tell.
But I kept talking anyway. I spoke of herbs and their uses, of the Summer Walkers, of my life with my family, and of how I had lost everything for a foolish wish to make a man love me.
I spoke of Alec, of how I’d thought myself in love, of how he had chosen my sister to wed, and I knew it had been because she would one day inherit my da’s castle.
I held my breath for a moment, waiting for that old feeling of unworthiness to consume me, but shockingly, it didn’t.
I smiled to myself as I continued to talk again.
“I’ve changed, James,” I said, continuing to clean him.
“I do nae feel so small anymore, so insignificant. Do ye think it is because I have seen so much death?” I took a deep breath and continued.
“If I get this curse broken, I will nae ever settle for a man who does nae love me for just me and nae what I can bring him. That is nae love, and I do nae want any part of it. What do ye want in a wife?” I peppered James with a dozen questions, answering for him, amusing myself by making his answers all about how he simply wanted me.
It was dangerous, but I indulged in it. I was beyond weary, and my little game kept me going.
I applied a fresh poultice of comfrey and honey to the dagger wound, my fingers working by the light of the fire that was almost dead.
The cave had grown cold as night deepened, but James’s skin still burned beneath my touch, and his breath still came in ragged draws that made my heart clench with each uneven rise of his chest. I bound the wound tight with clean linen, my movements deliberate despite the exhaustion pulling at my limbs, then sat back on my heels and looked at him.
He had risked his life for me, but was it truly for me or to not fail in service to the king?
I was a fool to even consider that it might have simply been for me and had nothing to do with serving the king, and yet, here I was, considering just that.
We had barely known each other a sennight.
He had lied to me, tracked me, and I had drugged him and left him unconscious.
We had fought, argued, and traded insults.
We were strangers bound only by circumstance, and it would be perfectly reasonable to assume it was merely because he had not wanted to fail the king, and yet, I had seen the rage and fear on his face for me, and I had heard it in his voice.
I pressed my fingers briefly to the inside of his wrist to feel his pulse.
It was fast, thready, but present. I should have pulled away once I had counted the beats as my healer’s training had taught me to do, but I lingered there, tracing the ridge of a vein, feeling the heat of his blood beneath my touch.
I thought of the walls I had built against ever loving a man since being cursed. They had held until now. James had begun to crack the invisible stones I had stacked around my heart. He had begun to awaken a need I had managed to suppress to be loved and love in return.
Suddenly, his hand found mine, and his fingers curled weakly around mine.
His grip was barely there, but it rendered me immobile.
My heartbeat exploded, and I felt frozen by his touch, by his hand finding mine in his dream state.
Did he feel it too? This invisible thread pulling us together despite reason.
I should put a distance between us, yet I could not bring myself to do it, and as if he read my mind, he suddenly murmured, “Stay.”
Yearning gripped me in a vice-like hold, and I folded myself down onto the dirt floor beside him, promising myself I was only doing this because he needed me.
I knew it was a lie. I needed him as well in this moment, just as I needed breath to live.
I needed to feel a warm body pressed to mine, to know I was needed and wanted.
I was, I realized, as I molded myself to the curve of him, starving for love.
It was making me die day by day, but it would not kill me.
That was the irony of it. I had wished for love, and instead, I had been cursed in a way that ensured I would fear gaining it and losing it.
I closed my eyes, overcome by darkness, overcome by James’s heat and his closeness, and in that darkness, I allowed the question that had been silently building to form fully.
Dare I let James close and tell him the truth?
The question hung in my mind, impossible to answer, impossible to ignore.
I was surviving, not living, and if I opened myself to James and the curse was not broken, I would almost assuredly one day watch him die.
The thought sent a shaft of fear through me just as James turned over and faced me, lips curling into a faint smile.
“Katreine,” he murmured. “Boniest lass I’ve ever seen. ”
My heart stumbled then galloped forward. I leaned close to him and pressed my lips ever so gently to his. Death might bring heartbreak, but only by embracing life and love could true joy be found. I wanted to joy. I wanted James. Dare I take an impossible chance, not knowing the outcome?
No was the only answer that would keep my heart from being ripped to shreds, but life would continue dull and gray.
But yes, yes was color, and laughter, bairns, and bodies pressed together in passion.
James was supposed to have only been a means to an end.
He was not supposed to matter. He was not supposed to make me question my plan, and yet here I was questioning, yearning, hoping.
As sleep claimed me, dragging me down into darkness, I thought perhaps I already had the answer.
Now I just had to be brave enough to accept it.