Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
When Verna rose to go, Marie invited her and Thom to dine with them. Agreeing to meet them at seven, she excused herself, and with as much speed as possible, hurried back to the inn.
One of her guards was standing in the corridor outside Kalen's door when she reached the first floor of the inn.
"How is she?" Verna asked without any preamble.
"Hurt. She wouldn't let the palace healer anywhere near her, so we brought her to her room and called Marleen."
Verna huffed out, "Typical," and knocked.
"Come in," Marleen called out.
The room was warm from the fire in the hearth, and Marleen sat on a chair beside the bed with a bowl of water and a cloth, cleaning the wounds.
She looked up when Verna entered, gave her a smile of relief, and moved her chair to make room without saying a word.
Five years of service as her maid, had made her an expert at reading her mistress.
Kalen was stretched out on the bed, her training leathers gone and naked to the waist. Verna gasped when she looked at her face.
The cut above her eyebrow had bled down the side of her face and gone dark where it dried.
The one on her cheekbone was deeper and nastier, definitely going to scar if it wasn't closed properly.
The bruise along her jaw had turned a spectacular purple-black that was spreading toward her ear and down her neck.
Her left eye was half-swollen shut and her lip was split at one corner.
Her knuckles were the battered red of someone who had spent the day hitting things.
When her eyes moved down over her torso, she winced.
There was a three-inch cut across her lower ribs, not deep but messy. It had clotted well enough but it needed cleaning and closing. There were a multitude of bruises over most of her exposed skin, and god only knew what was under her pants
"Before you say anything," Kalen said, "I'm fine."
"Your face is a mess and your body’s all bruised," Verna said, leaning over the bed. "So, let's not do the I'm fine conversation."
Kalen gave a ghost of a smile. "Fair enough."
Marleen handed Verna the cloth and the bowl without being asked and stood back. The contents of the healer’s box were arranged neatly on the small table beside the bed.
Verna started with the rib cut because it was the one that worried her most. She cleaned it carefully with the salt solution, and Kalen breathed steadily through her nose while she worked, not making a sound.
Up close the cut was cleaner than it had first looked.
Though it had bled a lot, it wasn't deep.
"How did this happen?" Verna asked, laying the first closure strip across it.
"Third bout. He had a ring on."
"He was wearing a ring in a no-weapons bout?"
"The judges didn't see it." Kalen's voice was completely even. "I did… eventually."
Verna pressed the strip down with rather more feeling than was medically necessary. "And nobody reported it."
"It wouldn't have changed anything," Kalen said. "Don't be angry on my behalf."
"I'll be angry on whoever's behalf I like," Verna said, which made Kalen's mouth move at the corner in what would have been a smile if it hadn't been split.
She finished the rib cut and moved up to the face. The eyebrow cut first, which had bled dramatically but was shallow and already trying to close on its own. She cleaned it and put two strips across it and moved on.
The cheekbone was worse.
She leaned in close to see it properly in the lamplight. It was a good inch long and had opened cleanly, the kind of cut that needed proper closing or it would pull apart every time Kalen moved her face for the next week.
"This cut needs stitches," Verna said.
"Do what you need to do."
She was very close now. Close enough that she was aware of the warmth coming off Kalen's skin and the steady quiet rhythm of her breathing and the fact that Kalen's eyes, which she could see perfectly from this distance, had not moved from her face since she sat down.
She threaded the needle and said softly, "Hold still"
"I am," Kalen said, in a tired voice.
After quickly putting in three stitches, she snipped the cotton and sat back. "Done."
She studied her work and then looked up and found Kalen gazing back at her with an expression she couldn't fully read through the swelling and the bruising.
She cleared her throat. "The pants need to come off. I want to see what your legs are doing."
A pause.
"Marleen," Verna said, without turning around, "thank you. I'll take it from here."
Marleen didn't say a word, simply rose and left the room. The door closed softly behind her.
Kalen looked at Verna.
"The pants," Verna said, with the attitude of a healer attending to an injured person.
Kalen moved carefully and worked the laces loose. Getting them off required some manoeuvring given the state of her ribs, and Verna helped without being asked. She eased them down while Kalen lifted her hips, which was all perfectly practical and not remotely complicated.
Except, both of them were breathing hard when she’d finished.
The bruising on her hips was extensive. Deep purpling across the left hip bone where she had clearly gone down hard on the sand at some point during the day.
Then a wider bruise was across the right side of her pelvis that had the mottled look of something that had been hit more than once.
Verna ran two careful fingers along the edge of the hip bruise, checking the bone beneath.
Kalen went very still.
"Does that hurt?" Verna asked, pressing lightly.
"Yes," Kalen said. Her voice had gone quiet in a way that Verna recognised had nothing to do with pain.
"I don't think anything's cracked," Verna said, moving her fingers along the bone. "Badly bruised though. You're going to feel this tomorrow."
"I already feel it," Kalen said.
Verna reached for the arnica salve and opened it. The sharp green smell of it filled the warm room. She dipped her fingers in and looked up. "This will help."
Kalen nodded once. Her eyes were on the ceiling again.
Verna began working the salve into the hip bruise with slow careful strokes, spreading it across the darkened skin.
Kalen's jaw tightened slightly at the pressure over the worst of it but she didn't move.
Her hands were flat on the sheet on either side of her and she was breathing with the deliberate steadiness of someone managing something.
Verna moved to the right side, the wider bruise, and her hands followed the line of it down from the pelvis and along the top of the thigh.
Kalen's breath changed. Just slightly, just a small difference in the rhythm of it, but Verna was close enough to notice.
She looked up.
Kalen was staring down at her, with an expression of open desire on her face. "Verna," she said quietly.
"The bruising goes quite a way down," Verna said, which was true, and also what she said because she needed to say something and that was what came out.
"Yes," Kalen agreed. "It does."
A silence.
Verna's hands stopped moving. She was aware of the warmth of Kalen's skin under her palms, and the firelight moving across the room, and the ring on her finger which was very warm and had been since she walked in.
Not to mention the fact that Kalen was looking at her with dark eyes and not saying anything, which was somehow more difficult to manage than if she had said something.
"I should finish," Verna said.
"Should you?" Kalen said.
Verna looked at her hands on Kalen's hip, then up at her face, then back down at her hands. Then she picked up the cloth and made herself move on to a long scrape on Kalen's left shin that needed cleaning, which was entirely on the other end of the problem and therefore much safer territory.
Kalen watched her work without saying anything. Then she said, very quietly, "You're doing that on purpose."
"I'm cleaning a wound," Verna said.
"Yes," Kalen said, in the tone of someone who had decided to let something pass for now. "You are."
Verna cleaned the scrape, put a dressing on it and sat back to look at her patient. She was lying on the bed with bruises on her hips, salve on her ribs, closure strips on her cheek and yet had the look of someone who wanted to ravage her.
"You need to eat something," Verna said. "I'll have food sent up."
"I'm not hungry."
"Kalen."
"All right," Kalen said grumpily. "I’ll eat something."
Verna stood, straightened her gown and picked up the medical bag. She tried to appear composed and not someone who just realised something while she was standing in the middle of a lamplit room holding a jar of arnica salve.
She was completely in love with this woman.
Kalen was staring back at her with that dark steady gaze as though she had had an epiphany too.
Verna cleared her throat. "I'll have Marleen bring something up, and I'll check the dressings in the morning before you go over to the arena."
"Verna," Kalen said.
"Yes."
"Thank you for coming."
"Thank you, Kalen, for being my champion today. You were wonderful. I owe you a debt I’ll never be able to repay. Now get some rest," Verna said softly.
She let herself out into the corridor and stood there with the door closed behind her and her hand against the wood.
The guard stationed outside eyed her with a worried expression. "Is she alright?"
"She is, but she’ll be sore for a while. Make sure she eats," Verna said, and walked back down the corridor to get ready for dinner.
She pressed her fingers briefly to her lips as she went, then smiled. She could feel it now, the power in her veins. It had been unlocked in that room and she knew exactly when.
The moment she acknowledged to herself that she loved Kalen.
The Carlton’s dining room at the townhouse was cosy with a crackling fire in the hearth.
Carlton had produced a bottle of wine from his cellars that Verna found excellent. The food came and they ate with the appetite of people who had been sitting in a cold stone box all day, running on anxiety and not enough bread.