Chapter 19 #3
I make quick work of it, if such a thing can be done. To get the oil all over, I need to strip down to my underwear.
I rip at my laces, then kick my boots off first. Once they are tumbling over the grass, I whip off my rain jacket and let it fall to the earth—and I’m quick to follow it, drop down onto my bum, before I wrestle off the rest of my clothes against the growing chill.
Beside me, the cold one doesn’t look along his chain-link shoulder at me.
He sorts the mess of his satchel, organising things, refolding leathers and packing them away, then taking out a flimsy canvas bag, the sort clothing stores used to sell to replace paper and plastic bags, a whole lifetime ago.
I watch him out the corner of my eye as I wipe myself over with the cloth first, then I swap it for the oil.
My hands run the oil up and down my legs, along the curve of my bum, and I keep my narrowed stare on him the whole time.
The oil settles into my skin like a moisturiser, a welcome feeling that I greedily glide all over my body, every part that I can reach.
But then comes his part.
In the weeks that I’ve been tethered to him, the cold warrior has swiped the oil down my spine, the exact centre I can’t reach on my own. He hasn’t been kind about it, either. It’s always like a strike down my back that stumbles me.
So I stay sitting as I narrow my eyes on him.
“My back.” It’s all I say.
It’s all I need to say before he’s turning for me.
His pale fingers dip into the jar, then lure out a glistening glob of the oil, and it dangles like egg whites.
Crouched, he grabs the rain jacket I’m sat on—and tugs it. I’m dragged that bit closer, angled around to face the darkness.
His fingertips press into my spine, right between my shoulders.
I cringe against his touch, like every other time, and feel the glide run down my spine.
A tremble runs through me.
Then, behind me, an icy breath tickling down at the curve of my ear—
“Many freckles...” His murmur is soft, but distant as though he’s talking to himself, thinking aloud, and he adds, “for one not a kuri.”
My hands tighten on the slick skin of my knees.
The pressure of his fingertips ends at the dip of my spine, right at the waistband of my underwear. He pauses, adding a dent of pressure that I steel against.
The word is an echoing whisper in my mind.
Kuri.
It parrots over and over, even as the cold touch of his fingertips leave my spine, and I’m quick to scramble back into my clothes.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard it.
The guard ordered me to go in with the kuris.
And Mika—
I chide myself with a swift rattle of the head.
Glass.
Glass mentioned that word, too.
Kuris are kept, and something about not kuris are not kept—and something about me. Maybe I wasn’t listening as well as I should’ve been, but since she was so close to me that she was pressed up against my thigh, I was only really focused on somehow getting out of my own skin.
But if I had paid attention then, looking down at the captives, I might have understood, like I’m starting to now.
The captives, the people guarded by fae, are not all the same. They aren’t kept for the same reasons.
Some are mates of the warriors.
Evate.
It would make sense that those are the kept ones, the ones who look better, healthier, well clothed and fed.
And others are whatever kuris are.
The ones who are tattered, head to toe, weathered in the eyes through to the souls.
Those are the slaves.
Slaves and mates.
Kuris and evates.
I’m neither.
‘Many freckles for one not a kuri.’
That statement confuses me more than it should. I mean, does he think there’s a fucking copyright on freckles or something? I can only have them if I’m whatever a kuri is?
I slide a dark look over my shoulder, shifting my weight onto my side—
And the glacier chill of his stare latches onto me.
My brow thickens.
He always does that. Finds me with his stare before I’ve even decided to look at him, to throw him a scathing glare or an ugly wish.
He always knows when I wish him into a pothole, want him burning alive in the towns we pass through, find him and his white blood utterly disgusting.
He just seems to have a sense for it, all my ill will, but my fear, too, and when I need my inhaler…
If I’m curious, he knows.
If I’m scared, he knows.
If I turn dark and ugly inside, he knows.
And right now, he watches me, lettuce eyes alight in the dimness, watching me figure it out.
My brow unfurrows.
A tightness firms my face and, slightly, I lift my chin. Suspicion steadies me.
Blink if you can hear me.
He doesn’t.
Blink if you’re better than me.
He doesn’t.
My brow knits.
Don’t blink if you fancy humans.
Still, he doesn’t blink.
Ok…
Well, that was the best bait trap I could think of.
It convinces me he can’t hear my thoughts.
Maybe he just senses them, feels them somehow—
He loses interest in watching me.
Turning his pale cheek to me, he sets out another jar on the pew, on the left side. “Sit.”
I frown at him.
“Here.” He faintly lifts his chin to the pew in front of him, the clear spot on the right side. “Leave the boots.”
The breath huffs at my mouth in a cloud before I redress down to the socks.
I grab my rain jacket as I drag myself to the pew. My arms punch through the sleeves as I drop down, feeling the warmth of the oil already kneading and knitting into me.
I basket my legs, keeping my sock-clad feet off the cold grass, and my longing look lingers over the boots left on a frozen patch of soil.
The cold warrior takes my wrist in his hand.
The hot red flames of the torch dance over the translucent hue of my complexion and darken the scrapes and bruises that mar me.
The warrior unthreads the rope from my wrist.
It slackens from my torn flesh, and the relief is fast to loosen a breath from my lips, until the rope is gone—and it thumps to the ground.
I consider the angry flesh left in its wake. Scrapes and dried blood and bruises as black as the darkness itself.
He considers it, too. Turns my wrist over in his hands, eyeing it closely, and his murmur is so soft I hardly hear it, “Weak.”
It’s an instinct, an automated response, and it comes out in a whisper before I can stop it, “Fragile.”
His eyes lift—and tunnel into mine.
I freeze all over.
Stiff on the pew, I become a statue in the cemetery, breath pinned to my chest—and I wait. I wait for his strike, I wait for the break of my wrist in his grip…
But nothing comes.
A muscle slashes over his cheek, a jaw clenched much too tight, and he firms his grip on my wrist. His other hand reaches for the jar of greyish ointment on the pew.
With a flick, flick, flick of the thumb, the lid unscrews.
The stink of root beer hits me.
It’s a strange bitter medicine smell.
I recognise it.
He used it on his own wound and his skin pulled together like hot caramel.
My gaze traces his movements.
He dips two fingertips into the ointment, then scoops out a glob that glistens honey. He brings it to my wrist—and a wince cuts through me.
That.
Fucking.
Stings.
My face twists in a grimace, a groan bottled in my swollen chest.
The warrior throws an impatient look up at me before he spreads the whole glob around my entire wrist.
My teeth bite down on my bottom lip. “Ffffffffff—”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Like vinegar in an open wound, lemon in the eye, tequila in the throat.
The urge to boot out at him is strong.
I fight it, toes curled and tensed in my socks, and I lean closer to him, my hair falling into my face as I try not to throw myself to the ground.
“Weak.”
My glare snaps up.
Doubled over, the burn of my stare is shrouded by my fallen strands of hair and my lashes. But I’m not a raging idiot, so the moment his glare meets mine, I look down.
Still, the groan is stifled in me, a hum in my chest.
He continues rubbing the ointment into my flesh, does it much like he kneaded his own, circling around and around. He uses the pad of his thumb along the bone of my wrist, then along the stinging cuts and bruises.
Beneath his touch, purple stains fade. Crimson streaks thin.
It starts to heal right in front of my eyes.
I’ve seen a lot of fucked up shit since the blackout came tumbling through the skies. I’ve seen things I can’t explain beyond ‘magic’.
But to see it happen to myself, my own flesh, is something else.
The sting remains, but it’s hold on me is slipping.
I’m mesmerised by the performance of it.
The methodical caress of his thumb, over and over, smooth, gliding along the gloss of balms, every bruise, every scrape fading away.
For a while, I watch, and with each passing second, the stings lessen and lessen until there’s hardly any pain at all.
The background noise of the camp is soft, murmured conversation and splashing water and chuckled laughs that sound so distant.
It’s the only sound between us, until—
“You weep.”
I lift a doubtful look to him.
My eyes are dry.
His gaze is locked onto my wrist, watching his methodical application.
“For the kuris,” he says.
“The kuris?” I echo, that frown still etched onto my brow. “The people?”
His answer is a curt, soft hum.
A stubborn strand of peachy hair hangs over my cheek, drifting in the faint breeze. “I don’t.”
“You did.”
My mind whirls back to the post. Watching those people be torn apart like that…
I did cry. I did weep.
He’s right.
But he’s also wrong.
I shake my head.
It’s a gesture that lures his attention up to me, those cold studious eyes sweeping over my face.
“I wept for me.”
A slight crease strokes his brow.
“I cried—because… that could happen to me.”
That crease smoothens.
His face is glacier again, beauty chiselled from ice. “Only if you run.”
Run like they did, the captives who were slaughtered. On the bridge, under the assault of raining gunfire, they ran.
My voice is small, “I hid.”
His gaze drags along my jaw.
Slightly, he tips his head to the side as if to better see something beneath my earlobe. His hand leaves my wrist and moves for my face.