CHAPTER 37 #2
“I wash my hands of you.” The man leered at Sakura. “Have fun with your little lady, but don’t treat her like a princess. She ain’t one.”
The fire in Keenan’s blue eyes grew brighter, but he didn’t move while the hateful man spun on his heel and stomped off.
Keenan’s shoulders dropped along with the dagger. Shaking his head, he turned to Sakura. He took a single limping step.
But as soon as his back was turned, his father whirled around and lunged for him.
“Look out!”
At her cry, Keenan spun back around. He threw up his injured arm, knocking the punch aside with his bracer and an anguished grunt. Whipping up the dagger, he cracked the hilt against the man’s head.
His father dropped like a rock. Keenan stood for a moment, staring down at the motionless form. He started to turn, then stopped and crouched down. After a moment’s hesitation, he set the dagger blade under the man’s nose for a few breaths. Sakura slowly approached him.
“He’s alive,” Keenan said heavily. “Though I’m not sure if that will last once the guards fetch him.”
He stood, looking surprised to find Sakura so close. While he sheathed his dagger, she reached a careful hand up to wipe the blood from his chin. It was only a little, and her stomach was happily staying in place.
But before she reached it, she was being crushed to his chest by his good arm.
“What were you thinking?” Keenan asked in a tight voice. “He could have hurt you. He did hurt you!”
Keenan’s head pressed against her hair, and Sakura wrapped her arms around him, wishing he wasn’t quite so religious about wearing his leather armor.
It was a sensible thing to have in their current uncertain circumstances.
But it was hard and cold, and she wanted the comfort of his coarse shirt under her cheek.
“He’d been using you as a punching bag for long enough,” she said into his jerkin, squeezing a little tighter. “I figured he needed a new target.”
He pulled back and ran a light finger over her bruised cheek. She flinched away, and he sighed, dropping his forehead to hers. “It’s nothing new. You shouldn’t have put yourself in danger like that.”
But it broke you out of your eight-year-old self, and that was worth a stinging cheek.
“What was that about Hugh and Milo fetching guards?” she asked, changing the subject. Explaining her reasons might bring a return of their argument, and she was too comfortable to deal with that now.
“They were playing outside,” he replied, wrapping his arm around her again. “They’ll have gone for help when they heard the ruckus. They always do.”
Frowning, she leaned back so she could look at him better. “What?”
“And Hugh is in the guard now, so he knows the patrol routes,” he continued. “Someone should be here soon to pick up the trash.”
She ran her fingers through his hair, checking for lumps. “Did you hit your head?”
He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand. “That feels nice.”
If he were a cat, he would be purring. Sakura had no objections to Keenan enjoying her attentions, but he wasn’t acting like himself. And he didn’t sound like he knew where he was.
“Oliver?” she called quietly. “A little help?”
The guard’s sword was in his hand, but he was studying the faint rock surrounding them instead of Keenan’s unconscious father. At her words, he stepped up next to them and set a hand on Keenan’s injured arm. “Let me look at that. I may be able to speed the healing.”
“You can do that?” Keenan blinked at him. “That’s handy.”
The ghost of a smile played around the guard’s lips. “The cut on your arm healed quickly after I sewed it back up, did it not?”
“The cut…?”
Instead of answering, Oliver closed his eyes and set his other hand on Keenan’s head. Keenan leaned away, but Oliver followed.
“What are you doing?”
“The magic in the illusion is too strong to disperse.” Oliver’s eyebrows pulled down. “And it is still meddling with your mind.”
“Yeah, but—” Keenan’s eyes crossed, and then he pressed a hand to his forehead. “Oh, wow. That feels better.” He winced. “But ouch.”
The guard released him and stepped back. “I could not completely remove the magic. You may continue to feel its effects for a while, but your memories should be clearer.”
“They are.” Grimacing, Keenan looked at Sakura. “I think I said some awful things before I lost it.”
She gave him a tiny smile. “I may have deserved some of them.”
“Doesn’t make it all right.” His hand dropped to fiddle with the bottom of his jerkin, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s all a little hazy still. When I lost my temper, did I…I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No, and you wouldn’t have,” she said firmly. “You stopped yourself when you saw I was scared.”
“I scared you?” he whispered.
Stepping closer, she set a hand on his arm. The muscles jumped under her fingers, but he didn’t move away.
“I’d never seen you like that,” she said softly. “I wasn’t sure what to think. But you stopped. And your eyes were the same when you protected me from your father.”
When his lips mashed together, she pressed forward. “You are not him, Keenan. Sharing his eyes doesn’t make you a bad person. And the same anger that you showed me during our argument kept me safe when I was in danger.”
“You’re trying to say my temper is a good thing?”
“When properly controlled,” Oliver interjected calmly. “If you vent it safely on occasion, you will be less likely to explode.”
“Maybe,” Keenan muttered. He still wouldn’t look at Sakura. “But I’d rather not have it to start with.”
Since her own temper was mild and infrequently roused, she couldn’t empathize.
But she didn’t want him to lose himself in guilt over it, so she squeezed his arm in what she hoped was a comforting way.
He looked at her hand for a few moments, then reached up to lightly press it before bringing his injured arm up to his chest again.
He glanced around. “So how do we proceed from here? I won’t be much use with my arm. And not to complain, Oliver, but—why do I still see my childhood home?”
Oliver frowned. “Your mind only thinks your arm is broken. I was unable to correct it because it is tied to the illusion, as is the setting. I see it as well.”
“How do we escape it?” Sakura folded her hands at her waist. “It will be difficult to continue our quest while caught in an illusion of Hartford.”
“I should be able to remove everyone but Keenan,” Oliver replied. But he had a tiny wrinkle between his eyebrows.
“Wouldn’t that remove us from Keenan’s awareness again?”
His lips tugged down. “I believe so.”
“We can’t all stay trapped in here,” Keenan pointed out. “Someone needs to watch for danger in the real world and keep us moving toward the tinderbox.”
“Unless the illusion is what will lead us there,” Sakura said suddenly, eyeing the sunlight streaming through the dingy windows at the end of the hall.
She could no longer see the cave walls through it.
“My mother told me that it is protected by a series of tests or trials. We already encountered the magically sealed gate that required a riddle to open. Keenan just faced his greatest fear. What if the illusion is the test?”
“Or a trap,” Keenan said dubiously. “Didn’t Cherry try to warn us off this tunnel just before the illusion hit? Or did I imagine that?”
“Perhaps we should ask her,” Oliver calmly suggested.
The little dragon hunched her shoulders, creeping her scaled hands back toward her feet as they all turned to look at her. “No traps, just tests. I saw the magic responding to your argument, and I hoped to escape to a different tunnel before it triggered.”
Sakura drew her shoulders back. “So if we had taken a different passage from the start, we would not be in this situation?”
“There would still have been tests.” Cherry’s head rose a little from her compressed position.
“But the amount of magic is different in each. This one was collecting a lot.” She rolled her shoulders in what looked like a shrug.
“But since you overcame your fear and the illusion is still here, perhaps the magic was so great because it is two tests in one.”
“So we should follow the story?” Sakura mused. “But what’s the story?”
“Keenan mentioned his friends while still in the magic’s grasp.” Oliver’s eyes turned to the exterior door. “Perhaps that is where we should look.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Adjusting the straps on his pack, Keenan started for the door, but Sakura pulled him back.
“Do you plan to walk around the city with blood on your face? Let me clean it for you.”
He tried to pull away, but she tightened her grip and pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve. “It’s an illusion,” he protested, tilting his head away as she carefully dabbed at his lip. “Even if anyone notices, it won’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” she said stubbornly, keeping her eyes fixed on her work.
“It’s not the job of a princess.”
“If I say it is, then it is. As a princess, I should know, shouldn’t I?” she challenged.
He grumbled under his breath, but he straightened his head so she didn’t have to reach as far. His jaw relaxed as she worked, but he still wasn’t looking at her.
“If this is about you frightening me when you were angry, I wish you would forgive yourself,” she said quietly, acutely aware of the curious little dragon and the middle-aged guard a few feet away. “I’m not upset about it, and you shouldn’t be either.”
His eyes flicked toward her. “It’s not just that.”
Sakura withdrew the handkerchief, carefully folding it into squares with the soiled part inside. He turned away, but she set a hand on his arm again. “Not yet. I need you to kneel for a moment, please.”
He gave her a funny look. “Why?”
“You will be more comfortable if you do not have to hold your own arm the entire time,” she explained as he carefully lowered himself to one knee. She opened his pack and began digging through it. “I intend to make you a sling.”
They didn’t have much that could be used for such a purpose; Keenan had prioritized necessities since he didn’t know how long he would have to carry it. But he had agreed to include one of her simpler dresses in case they were traveling for multiple days.
She ran her fingers over the green silk, taking a moment to admire the embroidered flowers and mourn the loss of a dress she should have left at home. Then she snatched Keenan’s dagger from its sheath and plunged it into the skirt about a foot above the hem.
“What are you doing?” Keenan twisted to look at her. His jaw dropped. “Are you destroying more of your clothing?”
“It will suit my purpose better than anything else available,” she replied calmly, focusing on her work as she ripped the blade through the fabric. “And it would be impractical to use the entire dress when I need to tie it behind your neck.”
“Yes, but—” He cleared his throat and faced the front again. “You wore that once before we left the castle. It was… You looked really pretty in it.”
A smile tugged at her lips. She finished detaching the bottom of the skirt and stuffed the rest of the dress back into his pack. “And now it will look pretty on you.”
His mouth scrunched as she stepped around him and handed him his dagger. “Great. Looking pretty in a dress has always been high on my list of things to accomplish in my life. I’ll be able to check that one off now.”
Her smile stretched into a grin as she draped the circle of fabric around his neck. “It will become you as well as it would any handsome man.”
“Handsome?” he echoed, raising an eyebrow at her.
“I see no reason why it would look worse on a plain man.” She focused on carefully working the fabric around his injured arm, trying to hide her blush. Which was ridiculous; he already knew how she felt. Or how she claimed to, according to him.
Keenan’s smile softened. Somehow, tying a knot behind his neck became much harder. His brilliant blue eyes beamed up at her, their intensity stealing her breath and making her fingers fumble. But there was something sad in them as well.
“About the cherry blossoms,” she began.
He set his good hand on her arm, stopping her. “Let’s leave that for later,” he said quietly. “We should wait till we’re clear of magical tripwires for the rest of that discussion. Just in case.”
Nodding, she finally got her fingers under control and secured the fabric. “You’re probably right. Even if it’s only temporary, you have enough injuries already. We should avoid any real ones.”
“Wait.” Tilting his head, he held a hand up to his ear. “Did you just say that I was right?”
She lightly shoved him in the shoulder. “I have yielded to your advice on previous occasions. And I admitted my error in pushing you at the waterfall.”
“Oliver, you’d better check the princess for magical tampering, too,” he called out, that grin that she…appreciated so much finally surfacing again. “She’s acting out of character.”
One of Oliver’s eyebrows raised a fraction. “Perhaps it’s simply an error in perception.”
“So much for kingdom solidarity,” Keenan muttered.
“Your fellow simply has better sense than you. And that will be quite enough aspersions on my character, weapon-smith,” she said imperiously.
He grinned. “Anything you say, ma’am.”
“I am not a ma’am.”
“Of course not, ma’am.”
She allowed herself a tiny smile as Keenan stood. If he was still willing to tease her, perhaps there was hope yet for persuading him that an imperfect princess and a foreign weapon-smith could forge something stronger than friendship.