Chapter 3
He understood why Mabel was upset. He just wished she would stop trying to escape.
“My blessing,” he sighed, gently extracting his mate from the vent she’d crawled into when he was distracted, “you must stop this.”
“Let me go!”
“I can’t do that,” he replied, dropping her onto her wee booted feet.
Wiping a smudge of gods only knew what from her silky cheek with the pad of his thumb, he gave her a good once-over to make sure she hadn’t injured herself somehow.
“We’ve talked about this. It’s too dangerous, and with the snow—”
“I could be saving lives,” she argued, as intimidating as a fluffed up kitten. “Instead you’ve got me locked up in a damn sugar factory!”
He’d lost count of the number of times they’d had this conversation over the last week. There were many things he’d learned about his mate while they were snowed in, but chief among those things was that she appeared to be primarily composed not of flesh but determination.
Directing her away from the half-caved in factory floor, Henrik gave her soft backside a gentle pat. “You won’t be saving any lives if you’re dead, and that’s exactly what will happen to you if you run back to the front lines.”
Mabel shot him a scarlet-faced scowl over her shoulder.
Her dress hadn’t been salvageable, but it’d been a battle all its own to convince her of the fact.
It took two days for her to warm up to the small boiler suit he’d found in the locker room.
It was a damn good thing, too, because he loved watching her walk in it.
And now that she’d gotten more comfortable with him sneaking small touches, it was all he could do to distract himself from getting his greedy fingers on her.
Swatting his hand away from the curve of her backside, she muttered, “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he replied, suddenly serious. “Trust me, my blessing. I do know that.”
Her shoulders rounded. Rubbing her eyes, she sighed, “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he assured her. Trying to lighten the mood a little, he nudged her toward the office, where they’d set up what he called their nest and what she called her cell. It was a fun game they played.
Smiling down at his witch, he added, “Except, perhaps, for making me burn our dinner.”
Mabel perked up instantly. “You found something?”
“While you were busy crawling through vents like a wee mouse, I found a cellar in one of the houses nearby. There was a family of raccoons living in the—”
She stopped abruptly. He nearly jumped out of his skin when she grasped his sensitized hand, gripping it tight. Her eyes were wide when she asked, “You didn’t kill one, did you?”
“Uh…” It took a moment for him to think past the shock of her touch. It wasn’t often that she touched him. Giving her time to adjust was crucial, but that didn’t mean smothering his urges was easy.
Something not helped by the lack of a proper nest, he thought, the beast of his instincts clawing at his insides.
Giving himself a stiff internal shake, he answered, “No, my blessing. I won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon.”
He winced at the memory of their first week, when his rations ran out and he’d proudly presented her with a bird he’d managed to snare. It’d been a very long time since he spent any time with a healer, so it didn’t cross his mind that she might be horrified by the thought of eating meat.
It tended to come alive a little on the tongue, apparently, so he could hardly blame her for wanting nothing to do with it.
It didn’t make providing for her any easier, but Henrik set himself to the task without complaint.
It was a privilege to take care of his mate, and it sure as fuck beat day after grinding day on the battlefield.
Even sleeping with one eye open to be sure she wouldn’t try sneaking off in the night, he couldn’t remember the last time he slept so well or felt so full of life.
“Well, good,” she replied, pert little nose sticking in the air. He hid a smile, knowing that meant she was feeling a little soft toward him and leaning hard on her armor.
As they neared the office, Henrik hurried ahead of her to open the door. He did it because even decades of soldiering couldn’t wipe out the lessons his clan taught him — but also because her face went all pink without fail.
The fact that it made such an impact on her made him sad, but he couldn’t complain about the results.
Ushering her inside, he closed the door to keep in the warmth.
It’d taken some serious engineering, but he’d managed to rig up something like a stove out of an old metal drum and a chimney by routing pipes through a hole in the ceiling.
They’d taken apart just about every bit of wood furniture they could find and used it as fuel, and the more the room warmed, the heavier the scent of sugar became.
The smell was in the walls. It crusted every barrel and bit of rusted equipment. It was dark and a little burnt, but it was far better than the shit he’d been smelling on the battlefield. If he never got a whiff of gunpowder or blood again, he’d be a happy man.
And their little home, imperfect as it was, beat the tar out of any encampment.
They’d turned a desk into a table of sorts, which sat near the stove, and at the far end of the room was the nest. Which he hadn’t been invited into yet. Unfortunately.
Henrik slept on a mat closer to the fire — and the door. Seeing as his blessing still occasionally tried to scamper off back to near certain death, he’d set to guarding it. But those attempts had fallen off somewhat over the last week, which he took as a good sign.
Even today’s attempt felt a little half-hearted. She’d made an awful lot of noise for someone so desperate to escape him, but he wasn’t about to point that out.
Mabel settled into her usual seat at the makeshift table with a sigh.
He moved to the stove, where a tin that’d once been destined for beet sugar now bubbled with beans and canned carrots.
There wasn’t much in the way of seasoning available, but salt did a lot when the only other choice was nothing.
He felt her gaze on him as he carefully ladled out some stew into his soldier-issued tin bowl. She watched him often with that keen, witchy gaze, probably searching for things he couldn’t understand.
Mabel had a tricky brain. She was smarter than him by leaps and bounds, and despite the fact that she had no trouble speaking her mind, she tended to keep a lot of what went on in that sharp mind a secret.
One day he intended to unlock all of those secrets, but for now he’d settle for a smile or two.
Setting his bowl and a far nicer one he’d scavenged from a house in town on the table, he eased into his seat. “Can’t beat beans and carrots,” he announced, flashing her a smile.
Mabel looked at him for what felt like a long time before her gaze dropped to her stew.
She was quieter than normal as she picked up her spoon and began to eat.
His mate was a talker, which he appreciated even when she was railing at him.
Henrik loved the sound of her voice and just how damn clever she was.
Sometimes, when she wasn’t fighting to stay mad at him, she told him all sorts of interesting things — plots to books they didn’t have available in the Orclind, or what it was like to be able to see inside a body with her hands, or even stories from her apprenticeship days.
She filled their nest with color whenever she opened her mouth.
But she was silent as they ate.
Henrik’s appetite dwindled as the quiet stretched on. Instinct prickled. They’d been getting on well, all things considered, for the past week. To suddenly have her behavior shift back to what it’d been those first days made him wary.
“You all right?” he cautiously inquired.
Mabel pushed her stew around with the back of her spoon. “Yes,” she answered, not looking at him.
“Really? Because you’d normally be done with your supper by now.”
She shot him a quick narrow-eyed look. “You saying I eat too fast?”
“Not even a little. If anything, you could stand to eat more and faster.” Pushing his bowl away, he crossed his arms and rested them on the table. “You’ll eat better on my homestead. When the weather clears some, we’ll—”
“I can’t go with you,” she sighed.
Trying to restrain his growing frustration, he argued, “You say that, but we both know it’s not true.”
“It is,” she insisted, suddenly all agitation and energy. “I swore to do my duty. As did you! How can you be so comfortable abandoning your cause, Henrik? You act like you’re a man of morals and principles, but how can that be true when you’re willing to just walk away—”
“From what, Mabel?”
He had a lot of patience, and he was willing to fight with his mate until Grim ushered in the end of days, but one thing he couldn’t stand was her dedication to a cause that saw her as little more than meat for the grinder.
Henrik leaned forward a little, trying with everything in him to impress on her the truth of what he said.
“Whatever cause existed once at the heart of this war died a long time ago. For gods’ sakes, Mabel, you were born into it.
You’ve never known a life beyond it. I’m telling you that more exists off the battlefield, but you won’t get to see a bit of it if you go back. ”
Her chin wobbled, but his stubborn, beautiful mate firmed it enough to bite out, “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You volunteered,” she argued, “you chose this life. And now you want to abandon your men? All for what?”
“For you,” he snapped. “My orders — the entire Orclind army’s orders — are to capture or kill healers, Mabel.
And it’s not just us. It’s the shifters.
It’s the elves. It’s the dragons. You’re too dangerous to be allowed to stay with an enemy, and the fewer there are, the bigger targets you become.
I’ve put my time in. I should’ve retired from the front lines a decade ago, but I didn’t because I didn’t know what else I was good for. But now I do.”
Her eyes were glossy in the firelight, and when she spoke, her voice was husky with unshed tears. “And what’s that?”
Instinct compelled him to reach across their table and draw her into the safety of his arms, but he restrained himself. They’d been arguing circles around this conversation for two weeks. It had to be out, to be done, for them to truly find their footing.
Swallowing hard, he answered, “Protecting you.”
Mabel looked away quickly. In that raw voice, she breathed, “Henrik…”
“No, you gotta hear me,” he insisted, at last giving in to the clawing need to reach across the table to grasp her perfect, powerful hand.
Nearly growling the words, he confessed, “You’re worth a thousand of me, Mabel.
I’ve done nothing but take lives that ought not’ve been taken for too many years.
I’m drowning in regrets, and Grim will count them all when I meet her at the riverbank.
But this fool war won’t change because we aren’t there to fight it anymore.
It’ll keep grinding on, chewing up folks like us, until the day there’s just no one left.
You can’t tell me you don’t see that. And you damn well can’t tell me you truly want to go back to that life. ”
Her fingers curled around his. They shook a little, but they held on tight as her eyes closed. The fringe of her lashes glittered with tears in the firelight when she admitted, “I hate it. I’m… I’m so tired of not being able to save people.”
His heart broke for his poor mate. It was unnatural, crushing a healer under the weight of so much death. They were the stuff of life. Not being able to save those in their care would be a fate worse than death for creatures crafted by the gods to heal.
Still holding her hand, Henrik got up from his chair and circled the table. Kneeling by her chair, he brought her knuckles up for a lingering kiss. “You’ve done your best, my blessing. That’s all anyone could ask of you.”
“But don’t you see why that means I have to go back?” Her eyes opened, revealing so much conflict and pain. “If— if I’m capable of saving even one life and you don’t, that makes me a killer.”
His nose wrinkled with a snarl. “Tell me, how many lives will you save if you die on a battlefield tomorrow, Mabel? And how many lives will you save if you live? If you abandon the meat grinder and find ways to help the suffering that won’t end up with you blown to pieces?
There are civilians who need you. Babies.
Soldiers too wounded to fight. There is more to this war than the front line, my blessing. ”
Pressing his lips to her knuckles again, he murmured, “I’d never ask you to stop healing. All I’m asking is for you to live.”
Her index finger slowly uncurled. Brushing his cheek, she whispered, “And you’d help me do that? Save other people? You just met me.”
“I would,” he answered, thrilled to his bones by that gentle touch. “Because you’re my mate, my blessing, my light in this terrible world. The gods gave me a gift when they picked me to guard you, Mabel. I intend to cherish it.”
She said nothing. Her eyes, so bright and uncanny in the flickering light, darted back and forth as she examined his face. Whatever she found there must have moved her, though, because she leaned down slowly.
He held his breath, afraid that even a sigh might scare her off. His heart hammered as she brushed her lips against his — a chaste kiss that tasted like sugar and magic that made the world go bright.
Too bright.
Magic was a bomb blast between them, as hot and devastating as any ordinance, and within a few heartbeats, the world fell away, as dark as the winter solstice itself.