Chapter 39
DEWALT
Until I held Nor in my arms, I hadn’t known the line of wanting could blur so dangerously close to need. I’d grown adept at wanting—to forget, to die…to dream. I’d managed to deprive myself of all of it for a long time, tethered to a memory and my duty to my friends. But, since the moment Nor had walked through a fire and seared herself into my mind, I’d begun to dream.
There were many featuring her like this—calm and content, hand splayed on my chest while her little dozy breaths heated my skin. There were others which involved her in decidedly less clothing while her body melded its heat with mine, and even more of her red-faced and raging at me before I silenced her with a kiss.
With a stark clarity, I realized I’d never hungered for anything quite like this. That each thing I’d yearned for in the past had never been attainable, but this time it was different. I was struggling to temper that vicious desire which now sat yowling in my stomach. Like a cornered animal, I wanted to wrap myself around her, teeth bared and claws out, protecting us from any threats. The insistent ache only grew harsher the more I tempted it. At some point, I would grow weak and weary and let it take over. Greed would force my hands to move, sliding soft over the lithe body that fit so comfortably against me. Deprivation would bare my soul to her, and I didn’t think I could withstand it.
Part of me wondered if I only felt this way because Lucia had planted a seed, and I had been desperately clinging to the idea there might have been one truth between us, after all. But did it matter if the place she’d planted it was barren? I wasn’t sure my heart could foster something so delicate.
As I laid in the rickety bed, staring up at a water spot on the ceiling as the sunrise lightened the room, treacherous thoughts came loose from where I’d shoved them at the back of my mind.
Angry as I was at Lu, I’d been a wreck for so long after her. If she gave me this gift, this opportunity with Nor, how could I refuse it? And at the same time, how could I accept?
I gently pulled Nor closer to me, running my fingers through her sleek hair, knowing this had to be it. If I memorized each detail of her, it could be enough. A selfish part of me wanted to tell her everything; perhaps I could share the burden of those words Lucia had whispered to me on the hazy edge of death.
But we were both better off if I kept it to myself. That way, she would never be faced with a choice that was never entirely her own, and I’d never be forced to decide if the fear of losing her was worse than never having her at all.
Nor stretched, bare toes rubbing against my pant leg, and yawned. Thank the gods I’d kept my fucking trousers on. She spread her fingers, palm covering the scar on my chest.
“Morning,” she said, scooting her body closer to mine. I’d been awake for hours, worried she’d forget how we fell asleep. That she’d pull away from me—abrupt and startled. Truthfully, I’d been counting on it.
She sat up, stretching her arms toward the sky, like some storybook depiction of a waking princess. Instead of looking at her rosy cheeks, one brighter than the other where it had been pressed against my chest, I sat up, reaching for my shirt. I dragged my fingertips over the bracelet on my wrist, reminding myself how badly I’d failed in the past.
“Good morning, pigeon,” I grunted, back turned to her as I buttoned my shirt. Standing, I reached for my pack, trying to organize my messy thoughts and feelings before she could analyze them. Wanting to spare myself from her astute observations, I did what a coward would do, and made an excuse to run. “McCullough said he’d have an answer for me this morning about the wagon, so I wanted to go find out before—what’s wrong?”
She’d made the tiniest grunt of discomfort, and despite myself, I whipped around to face her. Her strained expression was impossible to ignore, and as she rubbed her shoulder, I debated how to react. I’d never treated her differently because of her scars, and truly, she seemed to manage just fine. To me, they were a symbol of her resilience, but I knew other people sometimes deserved a swift kick in the ass when it came to how they treated her. I didn’t want her thinking I was one of them.
She smiled through a wince. “Nothing I haven’t felt before.”
I frowned. Emma had tried to heal her, I knew that, but the wounds had been too old. She’d said the only way to fix it would be to injure Nor further, and there was a risk it would be for nothing. Though I had no say in it, I had been glad to know Nor declined the offer. But I still didn’t like her being in pain. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Actually, yes,” Nor said, reaching with her other arm toward me. “I have a salve in my things. The queen made it for me, and it helps sometimes.” Nor had packed little, so it didn’t take me long to find the small glass jar. As I handed it over, her face flushed, and she looked down at my hands as she spoke. “Can you please pull the cork? Normally I’m capable,” she hurried to explain, “but when it’s bad, I?—”
“I didn’t ask for an explanation, songbird. I know what you’re capable of.” When I pulled the cork, some of the cream made its way onto my fingertips. It was a little grainy and smelled strongly of ginger when I held it up to my nose. I remembered my grandmother using the root to combat all sorts of ailments—from nausea to my father’s joint pain—and I smiled as I held up my salve-covered fingers. “My grandmother thought ginger could cure everything.”
“It certainly helps me,” Nor said, chuckling as she looked between the jar and my fingers. “Can you wipe them on the rim? I don’t want to waste any.”
I was about to do as she asked, but, fool as I was, I gestured to her shoulder instead. “Can I?”
Her eyes bulged the slightest amount, and I swore she breathed a little harder. “It is hard for me to reach my shoulder blade.” A flurry of emotions raced over her face, so fast I couldn’t pick any out in particular, and she nodded. Before I could react, she slipped her arm out of her sleeve and through the neck hole of her chemise. I withheld my snort of laughter threatening to escape.
“Do you want to use one of my shirts? Button it up past your chest? That doesn’t look very comfortable.”
Don’t look at her chest. Do. Not.
Cheeks aflame, her brows furrowed as she glared at me. “This is perfectly fine. I thought you wanted to help me?”
Pushing my smile down, secretly admiring her steadfast desire for modesty, I rounded her side of the bed. “How much do I use?”
“A little goes a long way. Put it on the places—” She cleared her throat. “—where the skin looks thickest. That’s where it hurts.”
I nodded, scooping a little more of the salve onto my fingers before hovering them over her flesh. Studying her, I could tell where she meant. “Should I massage it into your skin? I don’t want to hurt you.”
She chuckled, higher pitched than normal. “Yes, but not too hard. Even pressure feels good.” A pause. “I’m sorry. I-I’m a little nervous. Do you mind if I talk?”
“You never stop the rest of the time, so why would you now?” I teased, and she giggled as she pulled her hair over her covered shoulder. She softened her posture, and I was pleased to see my distraction had worked.
“The queen explained why it still hurts after all this time. She said we have something called nerves, like the roots of a tree, in our bodies.” I hummed in agreement, scooping a little more of the salve onto my fingers before gently stroking them over the thickest parts of her scarring. When she continued, speaking into my mind, I wasn’t sure she even meant to. “ Well, she supposes mine got damaged when this happened, and my body was unable to heal them. That’s why some parts of my burns are numb. The nerves there are probably very damaged, and that’s why I can’t feel anything at all. ”
I continued rubbing the area, allowing the salve to permeate her skin, until she winced. “Shit, sorry. Are you?—”
“No, no, it’s fine. Sometimes it hurts in a good way,” she assured me, and then her cool hand slid up, covering mine where it rested. “ Thank you, Dewalt. ” There was something about her speaking into my mind that bewitched me. It made me want to wrap her up in a vision, keeping these moments safe between us. I fought the urge to bend down and press a kiss to her hand, the top of her forehead—anything.
When she groaned—pain and pleasure wrapped into one sound—I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Would you prefer your entire shoulder to be numb?” I hoped it wasn’t overstepping to ask. My own scar ached, but I didn’t know if that was all in my head or not. I wasn’t sure I’d even notice if it went numb. She made a thoughtful noise as I finished rubbing the cream into the areas she’d indicated, and I was beginning to think she didn’t plan on answering me.
“Most of the time? No. It only really hurts like this when I do too much—but it’s easy enough for me to control that. My joint works as it should, and who is to say it still would if it were numb? Anyway,” she said, tilting her head, “I can feel what you’re doing to my muscles, and it’s divine. I wouldn’t trade it away.” Her chest began to flush, and I averted my eyes. “I’m sure I’d get used to it being numb, and there are certainly days I’d consider it. But I think I’d rather feel pain sometimes than nothing all the time.” She laughed, turning her bright smile toward me. “Ask me again after a particularly long day.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with her—at least when it came to a different sort of pain. I’d gotten quite used to feeling numb. I forced those thoughts down as I corked the pot in my hands. That wound would start to ache eventually, or I’d somehow experience a worse one.
The notion scared the shit out of me.
“Well, next time won’t be so bad, will it? Because you’ll give me the pleasure of rubbing your body if it hurts. Right, Nor?” It felt wrong to force arrogance and charm after such nearness. That creature in my gut protested, remembering the soft cradle of her hands on my face, the quiet words of comfort she gave to anyone who asked, the tilt of her defiant chin and the wit of her sharp tongue. I ignored it, deciding to save myself before it went too deep. “Perhaps you’ll let me rub you somewhere it doesn’t hurt.”
She turned, rolling her eyes as she moved to sit on her knees. Grabbing my wrist and pulling me toward her, she played at being irritated, but there was a spark of recognition there. With dismay, I realized she saw right through me. When she wrapped her arms around my neck, my hands circled her waist of their own accord, and she gave me a quick peck on the lips. “You can be quite the scoundrel, you know that?” And when her mouth returned, moving slow and sweet against mine, my stomach clenched in something akin to agony.
Scoundrel .
That one word would be the fucking death of me.
It repeated in my mind over and over again, first Lucia saying it and then Nor, until I wanted to gouge my fucking ears. As the hood of my cloak was ripped from my head by the frigid wind, I hoped it would serve as a distraction to the endless thoughts racing through my mind. Nor couldn’t have known Lu had referred to me as a scoundrel. She couldn’t have known it meant something to me—and why did it anyway? Lucia was dead and gone. I’d do well to remember that and stop letting the woman affect my life.
It had stopped snowing, but fucking hell, the wind was biting. The wiser, more cautious, version of me wondered if it might have been safer to delay continuing our journey by a day, but I couldn’t be locked in that room with Nor any longer. And besides, Rainier was counting on me.
Despite her objections, I’d forced Nor into wearing an extra layer of my clothing, and when she glared up at me from beneath her cloak, she’d bit out a begrudging ‘thank you.’ Despite my horror over what she’d unknowingly said to me, I was eager to put those clothes on again because they’d smell like her. That hint of bergamot in her hair loved to linger. When we finally left, it was slow-going, but some progress was better than none.
At least, that was what I told myself.
Nearly half a day had passed when chatter erupted behind me, and I finally slowed and paid attention. I’d been avoiding looking back, needing some distance from Nor while I figured out what the fuck was going on in my head. After realizing what I was looking at, I stopped, turning my horse back through the snow. We’d just emerged from the edge of what one might consider a forest if they were feeling generous, and the wind had picked up considerably, making snow blow into my eyes.
“The fuck are you doing, Fletcher?”
“She offered!” my soldier yelled, and I stopped myself from sending him an impulse; he was injured, after all. When my gaze snapped to the woman in question, she turned away from me, slipping her foot into the stirrup and hauling herself up onto a horse.
“I got you a wagon!” I shouted, gesturing to the cart in question. Hardly big enough to be classified as a wagon, there was enough space for Turman to sit on the bench, guiding the horse, while Nor huddled in blankets in the back amongst our supplies. And yet, here she was, opting to subject herself to the elements.
“It’s boring!” she replied, and my mouth dropped open. “I can’t sleep in there—it’s making me sick. I’m just sitting there, bored out of my mind, thinking about how ridiculously cold it is!”
“Oh, because sitting atop a horse will lessen the wind!”
“Petunia misses me,” she argued, and I regretted keeping her horse. “I don’t want to have time to think about how?—”
“Get back in the wagon, Nor.”
“Fletcher’s arm is hurt because of me.”
“Leave me out of it!” my soldier interjected.
“Can we just go, already? I’m fine. Everything is fine. Instead of worrying about my fingers falling off, I’ll worry about falling off the horse instead. It serves a purpose.”
“I’m going to count to three, pigeon. One?—”
At that, Nor threw her head back laughing, hood falling off. The cloak revealed dark, glossy hair—unbound. It caught the wind, making her appear as some deity of old. Her eyes appeared a vibrant green while her skin glowed—pink at the apples of her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Her dark hair swirled against a background of sparkling snowflakes, and I committed the sight to memory. She was a gods damned vision. Dickey gasped beside me, and I understood completely.
Ethereal and divine, I knew with certainty I would never see someone more beautiful than her.
“DOWN!” Dickey yelled, just as an arrow flew past Nor. I didn’t breathe, frozen until I saw her throw herself flat against the horse’s back. When I turned to see our attackers, I found nearly half the miners from the gods damned town emerging from the trees, riding the fucking horses we traded. We were outnumbered nearly three to one. Despite that, the miners were untested, and I had three well-trained soldiers at my side. There was a reason they waited for us to lose cover before attacking. I ripped my glove off, scrambling for one of my knives, as I dug my heels into my stallion. Positioning myself between the attackers and Nor, I made her my priority. Without cover, she’d easily come to harm.
“Go west—toward sunset. Don’t stop until the apple orchard. Ask for Saski,” I ordered, speaking over my shoulder before I launched one of my knives at the miner who’d fallen on our door frame the night before.
“Dewalt!”
“I’ll be right behind you—now go!” I couldn’t look at her as she left, and I was grateful she listened to me this time. A moment later, Nor’s horse squealed as an arrow lodged into her rump, and the animal took off. “Fuck,” I swore, terrified she wouldn’t be able to hold on to the injured beast. In a frenzy, I began weaving visions, expending more divinity than I had in a long time.