Chapter Twenty-two
WILDER
I t took Wilder longer than he cared to admit to recover from the reaper’s attack.
Though he was no stranger to nightmares, being dropped right back into the fray of the Islaton battle was something else entirely.
Even now, he could taste the sorrow and despair on his tongue; he carried the weight of it in his chest.
Malik. Talemir.
Both hurt beyond repair on his watch.
When his hands had stopped shaking, he went to find Thea.
He hated that after encounters with three different monsters, she’d taken it upon herself to wander the ruined city alone.
Even more so, he hated that he’d been too overcome to go with her.
She’d done it for him, he realised. She had recognised that broken piece of him that needed to work through the trauma alone.
Steeling himself against all that warred within, he found her perched on the edge of a dried-up fountain, her pack open at her feet.
She was hunched over herself, and wore no shirt, only the band that covered her breasts.
Her left arm was streaked with blood, and a needle and thread was poised in her shaking hand.
She cursed quietly to herself, reaching for a flask on the ground. Fire extract . He could smell it on the wind. She’d found the stash in his bag, apparently.
Wilder watched silently as she tossed back the liquor and returned her attention to the seeping wound on her bicep, clearly trying to work up the nerve to make the first suture. That was always the worst part.
Every instinct within him roared to go to her, to tend to her and comfort her, to take away the pain. It hurt him to watch her hurt, but this was how a Warsword was made.
‘What happened?’ he said as he approached.
She didn’t even look up. She’d known he was there.
‘A stupid error on my part with the wraith,’ she replied through gritted teeth.
‘You won’t make it again, then, will you?’ His voice was rough as he surveyed the damage himself.
‘Hopefully not.’ She hissed as she put the needle to her skin.
He hid his wince. ‘Thought Farissa taught you battlefield healing?’
‘She did. It’s a little different when you’re treating yourself, Warsword. We don’t all just dump a bunch of liquor on it and call it a day.’ Thea still hadn’t looked at him, but he noted the beads of perspiration on her brow.
‘Here,’ he heard himself say, and reached for the needle.
‘I can do it.’
‘Yes, but I’ll show you how, lest you butcher it and sew your arm to your body or something.’
A half-laugh escaped her. ‘That’s something Kipp would do.’
Wilder merely grunted and accepted the needle from her. ‘I’m assuming you cleaned the wound and your tools?’
‘Obviously. Though I didn’t see you washing your hands…’
Wilder baulked. She was right. Gods, she got his head so twisted that the most basic of tasks seemed difficult.
After he’d washed his hands as best he could with one of their canteens, he returned to her.
‘You need to line up the edges of the wound,’ he told her, moving her hand to hold her flesh in place.
‘Then you want to push the needle through the skin at about a ninety-degree angle, so that you’re not pushing it into the fat. ’
Thea cursed as he pushed the needle through her skin. ‘Hurts more than the fucking cut.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘You twist your hand like this, and pull it through.’ He showed her. ‘So the needle comes out the other side of the wound. You want it directly across from the first puncture.’
He expected her to turn away, but Thea was studying the way his fingers manipulated the needle through her skin, as though she had disassociated from the pain and was now memorising the lesson.
‘You try.’ He passed her the needle. ‘There will come a time where you have to do this alone.’
With a furrowed brow, Thea did as he bid, piercing her flesh with the needle, cursing quietly as she worked.
‘You want the edges of the wound just touching, not too tight. The knot should be lying flat.’ Wilder reached for the flask at her feet and took a swig of fire extract, relishing the burn of the liquor down his throat.
‘That was for medicinal purposes,’ Thea muttered, biting her lip as she reached the end of the wound.
Wilder simply drank again. ‘You know how to tie it off?’
‘In theory. It’s different when it’s your own injury. I can’t use this arm —’
‘It won’t be perfect, but it’ll do the job.’ He showed her how to wrap the thread around the needle to create a path for a knot before offering his dagger for her to sever the remaining thread.
When she did, she sagged on the edge of the fountain with a moan. ‘That was deeply unpleasant.’
‘You need to clean it again, bandage it.’
‘In a minute, Warsword. Let me catch my breath.’
Her hair had fallen in her eyes and he wanted nothing more than to reach across and tuck it behind her ear. He did no such thing. ‘There’s no catching your breath in the heart of a battle, or on the road with no supplies.’
‘How did you learn?’
‘On the road with no supplies.’
‘Figures.’ She scooped up her blood-stained shirt, tearing a strip from its hem with her good hand and her teeth before dousing it in fire extract and applying it to the newly sutured wound with a stream of colourful curses.
‘Thought you didn’t clean wounds that way?’ he said, recalling her reprimands when he’d been injured in the previous battle against the reapers.
‘I learnt from the best, apparently.’
Wilder had no retort for that. He passed a hand over his face, feeling too raw from the reaper’s mind whipping, from seeing Thea hurting, from not being able to treat her as he wanted to. ‘Don’t let it get infected,’ he muttered.
‘You’re incredibly bossy,’ she huffed, moving her arm tentatively with a grimace.
‘Occupational hazard.’
‘You mean it’s not just your charming personality?’
‘That too.’
She didn’t laugh. Instead, she looked to the murky skies. ‘Do you think they’ll be back?’
Wilder considered it. ‘Not anytime soon…’ he said slowly.
‘But we should move on anyway?’
‘Ordinarily I’d say yes, but with you injured and me not quite at my full strength, I think we need to rest.’
‘I can manage.’
‘Fine, you can manage well enough,’ Wilder allowed.
‘But with honesty being our policy at the moment… I’m not so sure about me.
That reaper messed me up something fierce.
’ The words were hard for him to say. He’d never admitted such a thing before in any sort of battle or skirmish.
But he felt shaky, fragile in a way that made him nervous about being on the open road, about not being able to offer Thea his full protection. Not that she needed it, apparently.
Wilder glanced up to find her studying him. Her expression alone told him that she’d seen more of his memories than she’d admitted. Heat prickled in his face, the shame rising to the surface.
‘Has that happened before?’ she asked quietly.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘Not to that extent… The Furies made me strong. Usually I’m able to keep the shadow visions at bay. Today… today, I was more susceptible.’
‘Why?’
Wilder grimaced.
‘Why?’ Thea demanded again.
He let his gaze fall to her, let her see the pain he’d done his best to keep masked. ‘Because you were here. Because I was scared for you. My focus was split.’
‘And that made you…’
‘Vulnerable.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Thea said.
At that, Wilder huffed a laugh. ‘Don’t be,’ he told her. ‘It appears my fears for you were severely misplaced.’
She nudged him with her good arm. ‘Something to remember for next time, perhaps.’
‘I’ll be sure to write it down.’
‘Maybe you should tattoo it on your forehead.’
‘Not a chance, Princess. I wouldn’t want to mark this pretty face of mine.’
Thea snorted. ‘ Pretty ’s not the word I’d use for it.’
‘No? What, then?’
Thea met his gaze, considering him with a pained look of regret before she shook her head and got to her feet. ‘Dangerous territory there, my friend.’
‘Isn’t it always?’ Wilder quipped. It was for him.
The vow of friendship they’d made hadn’t changed how he felt about her.
Nothing could. But before she could answer, before they went down a path they couldn’t retrace, he scanned the ruins.
‘We’ll camp here for tonight. There’s decent shelter from the wind, and we’ve got enough rations and water. ’
She gave him a grateful look and he knew he’d made the right choice. Thea would never be the one to hold them back, but she needed the reprieve as much as he did.
‘Do you want me to hunt?’ she asked. ‘You look like you could use a hearty meal.’
‘Nothing around here to hunt,’ he replied.
‘Then what are we going to do?’
He raised a brow. ‘Suppose we could talk, Apprentice.’
‘Talk?’
‘You’re unfamiliar with the concept? It’s when two people exchange words…’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Very funny. Forgive my shock – you’re just not overly known for your scintillating conversation.’
‘You wound me.’ He started back towards the ruins of the castle, Thea in tow.
They tended to the horses, unsaddling them and ensuring they had a patch to graze on. Hauling their packs and tack with them back to the ruins as the sun lowered on the horizon, they set up a basic camp, with a wall behind them and a small fire crackling amid the rubble.
With the remaining light, Wilder opted to get out his sewing kit. Biscuit’s saddle blanket needed patching, as did his spare set of pants. He felt Thea watching him curiously as he threaded the needle and started on the blanket.
‘Who taught you?’ she asked.
He didn’t look up from his work. ‘My mother. She always said it’d be a good skill to have. Told me and Mal that if we ever found women willing to put up with us, they weren’t there to darn our socks.’
Thea made an appreciative noise. ‘I like her already.’
‘She was a special woman,’ Wilder told her. ‘She died a long time ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Wilder gave a nod of thanks and kept threading the needle through the blanket. A long time ago or not, he thought of his mother whenever he got out his needle and thread. It had been her kit in another lifetime.
‘Did she teach Malik how to braid leather?’ Thea asked.
‘That was my father, actually. He was a tanner when we were younger.’
‘What sort of things did he make?’
‘Everything, I suppose. He was the only leatherworker for miles. People would bring him animal skins from all over. But he loved making belts with the leftover materials. That’s where Malik gets his braiding habit from. Before he was injured, he used to engrave all the Warsword belts.’
He leant back to show her the intricate design his brother had carved into the leather of his own belt.
‘He can’t do that now?’ Thea asked as she admired it.
Wilder shook his head. ‘Not with the tremors in his hands. He mainly braids now.’ He tied off the knot in his thread and set the blanket aside, peering at Thea over the fire. ‘Anything else you need to know?’
Pink stained the tops of her cheeks. ‘I want to know everything.’
Wilder found himself smiling as he reached for their supplies. He handed her the canteen of water. ‘Drink this.’
‘I’ve already had —’
‘It wasn’t a request. You don’t drink enough water.’
Thea clicked her tongue in frustration, but did as he instructed, and when he handed her a bowl heaped with food, she accepted it without argument.
‘There are things I’d like to know, too,’ he told her. ‘So why don’t we play for answers?’
‘Play what?’ she asked around a mouthful of bread.
He slid a pack of cards from his saddlebag. ‘Knave and Fool?’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘Then you can add it to the list of things I’ll teach you.’ Wilder honestly didn’t mean to wink. He just… forgot their agreement, for a moment.
But a smile tugged at Thea’s mouth. ‘That’s becoming quite a list, Warsword.’ She finished eating and brushed her hands off on her thighs. ‘Alright, then. How do you play?’
Wilder made quick work of explaining the rules to her, realising that he himself hadn’t played for years… Not since he and Talemir were on the road together and Tal had convinced a group of women to play for their clothes rather than questions and answers.
He shoved that thought violently aside. He didn’t need to be thinking of Thea without her clothes.
When he’d finished dividing the cards by suit and rank and placed one card face down between them, he looked at her in the glow of the fire. Her messy side braid framed her face, her eyes bright. Gods, she was beautiful.
‘Ready, Apprentice?’
‘I was born ready, Warsword.’