20. Saige #2
Pain grips me in its talons so suddenly I choke on a sob.
I’m sliding down the trunk of the tree, gripping my left side as I crumple in a heap to the dirt.
My vision goes white, and not even the raging current can obscure my whimper of agony.
I can’t stop it. I never can. All I can do is distantly wonder if this will be the end.
It has to be one day. A person can only endure so much.
The question comes to me as I dig my fingernails into my palms, the flesh always tender there: will I swim or will I drown this time?
Only the Triad knows, and the tide is coming.
I fumble for the cloth in my pocket, soaked in essential oils of peppermint and lemongrass. I shove it under my nose and inhale deeply. The sharpness of the scent is meant to pull me out of the pain, to ground me somehow, but it doesn’t so much as scratch the surface.
I dig my fingernails into my palms, little pricks of pain in the shape of crescent moons bloom across my palms. The urge to distract myself with another form of pain is dark and looming, like it used to be.
But I have worked hard to steer myself away from those measures.
Damn hard. My body contorts and sweat pours from my brow as I clench my fists harder.
It won’t help, I tell myself. I just need a minute.
I don’t need a new kind of pain to take from the old—I have moved past that.
No matter what relief it offered, it’s not sustainable.
I don’t do that anymore. I need to ground myself.
Fingernails into palms. Leaves sliding beneath my boots as I kick my legs out.
The bark of the tree scratching me through my shirt—
“What the fuck are you doing?” Warm fingers wrap around my hands. “Grayson!”
Archer’s voice brings me back, the sudden onslaught of pain ebbing away to a dull throb down my side until I can blink the Azkari general back into focus.
He’s crouched before me. Shirtless. With beads of water dripping down the broad planes of his chest. But I can barely breathe, my body is still seized up, rigid with pain.
“Where are you injured?” His hands are roaming my body gently, searching for hidden wounds, and all I can do is stare at his arms and shoulders, corded with more taut muscle.
As my pain ebbs away, my blood heats and I’m sure this is some of that wiley Azkari charm Raven was on about. Triad fucking save me.
“I’m not,” I croak, weakly batting his hands away at last. It takes me a moment to gather my wits, to remember why the fuck I’m on the ground in the first place. “I’m not hurt.”
“I know pain when I see it, Grayson,” he says, scrutinizing me.
I inhale shakily, my breath still shallow, though I’m not sure if it’s a lingering consequence of the episode, or if it’s Archer’s all-consuming presence.
I press the heels of my palms to my eyes for a moment.
I hate that he’s seeing this, that my private moment has been carved open for him to see the ugliness inside.
Nausea washes over me as it dawns on me just how exposed I suddenly am—
“There is a dungeon in Gravereach,” he says quietly.
“It’s where we were sent for… all manner of pain.
When I was unable to make myself pass out, there were meditations I tried, Azkari techniques that are meant to help you endure.
When I was back in my cell, I would try to trace the constellations from memory on the walls.
I thought about the stars a lot. I missed seeing them, I forgot what starlight looked like on water. ”
“And now?” I whisper. “Now that you’re free?”
A breath shudders out of him. “Now… I’ve forgotten how to look up.”
We’re quiet for a moment before I drop my hands and meet his gaze.
“I’ve had these attacks ever since I can remember,” the words spill from my lips. “Shocking, brutal pain just hits me out of nowhere, all down one side. I seize up, can barely see…”
Archer’s eyes drop to where I’m gesturing. “You were never wounded?”
I shake my head, a flush creeping up my neck as the shame unfurls inside me.
“Never. There’s nothing there that anyone can see.
When I was younger, Yev took me to see healers.
Spent all the coin we had trying to figure it out.
But there were no answers. Every examination, every test made me seem crazier than the last. Eventually they told Yevna it was a cry for help.
That I craved attention because I’d lost my parents. That I was making it up.”
I’m tense, waiting to be told yet again that I’m making a fuss about nothing, that I’m lying through my teeth to get pity.
“Those mortal healers were fools,” he murmurs.
My heart stutters “You… You believe me?”
Archer’s eyes are rimmed with black fire as he says, “Pain is pain, Grayson. No matter where it stems from; mind, body or heart.” He stands and offers his hand.
Slowly, I slide my palm against his.
Callus to callus, his grip swallows mine and a storm rages in my chest as he pulls me to my feet, towering above me once more.
“What can you hear?” he asks quietly, still holding my hand. “What sounds are around you? Close your eyes. Listen closely.”
I do as he says, my lids fluttering closed, my senses suddenly heightened. I hear the rustle of the leaves and branches in the light breeze.
“Tell me,” he murmurs.
Clearing my throat, I keep my eyes shut. “I hear the song of a robin in the distance. I hear the whisper of the trees. I can hear your breath.”
“Good,” he tells me. “What does the air smell like?”
“Like damp earth and moss. Like honeysuckle—it’s faint, but it’s there.”
“What else?”
“You.”
“You saying I smell, Grayson?” he teases gently, and I can hear the smile in his voice.
“No.” I fight the urge to inhale, to breathe in the intoxicating, heady scent of him. “You smell… good. Like agarwood and amber.”
His hold on me tightens ever so slightly, just for a second, and my stomach flutters in response.
“Open your eyes now,” he says softly. “What can you see?”
He releases me and steps back as I follow his instruction.
I don’t know what passes between us, but heat swells between my thighs, tingling and unbearable.
Blinking the world back into focus, my mouth goes dry.
I take in the sculpted expanse of him, all hard lines and golden skin.
I thought I had seen a bare-chested man before.
I stand corrected. Whatever came before was a mere drop in the ocean compared to this.
Archer is in a league of his own. Beyond man or warrior, somewhere in the realm of war god.
This is—oh gods, I need to look away. I can’t look away.
Soft hair dusts his torso, along with faint scars, descending into a narrow waist, an abdomen thickly ridged with muscle that gives way to a carved V-shaped dip of sinew that points—
My breath gets tangled in my lungs and I don’t dare look lower. This is already far too intimate.
“What do you see?” he prompts.
My breath catches as I try to form the words. He’s trying to help me. He’s—
“Naked!” I blurt the word out before I can stop myself. “Half-naked, I mean. You’re half naked.” I want to dissolve into the ground. My face is on fire.
Only, Archer’s mouth twitches. “As always, your powers of observation are unmatched, Grayson. I was trying to bathe, if you recall.”
“You should go do that,” I stammer.
“Here I was thinking you liked the way I smell.”
I cover my face with my hands. “Kill me now.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“I didn’t realize you knew how to have fun, General,” I try to recover.
“Perhaps with the right partner,” he murmurs. “That was one of the techniques, by the way, using your senses to ground you.”
But every thought empties from my head as he turns away, giving me his tapered back.
It’s a canvas of beautiful, black ink.
Intricate botanical illustrations cover his golden skin, from beneath his hair at the nape of his neck, covering the expanse of his back, dipping beneath the band of his leathers.
It’s a garden of shadows—foxglove, hemlock, rose and oleander are the blooms I recognize, but there is so much more.
Dark coiling vines, creeping ferns, ivy, thorns and jagged leaves, all entwined, mapped across corded muscle.
My core tightens in response, and I squeeze my thighs together to find some reprieve from a very different sort of ache that’s blossomed there.
My fingers itch to trace the designs, to study every piece of art etched into his skin—but then he’s gone.
As Archer disappears into the inlet to wash, I silently curse him, knowing that the masterpiece of his back will be forever seared into my mind, just like the brand on his neck.
It’s natural, I tell myself. I’d have to be dead not to notice a body like that. I shake my head, muttering, “For fuck’s sake” as Raven’s words of warning come back to me.
The most dangerous traps are the ones we walk into willingly.