Chapter 19 #4
The moment his touch finds me, a pulse jolts through my insides.
I freeze against it.
Fingertips dig into my chin, angling my cheek to him, and he considers the length of my neck for only a heartbeat before he drags a streak of balm to it.
The sting is instant.
A guttural sound runs through me. All for a wound, a scrape, a scratch I didn’t even know was there.
“I hid because of the bullets.” My words grit out between my teeth. “And… one of the guards I think was going to kill me.” I don’t know why I tell him this. Maybe I talk through the sting to distract myself. “He thought I ran away, but I didn’t, I was just trying to hide from the gunfire.”
His gaze touches mine, brief, before it returns to my neck. His touch is long from the under-bone of my ear, along the curve of my neck—right to the cartilage of my throat, back and forth, back and forth.
The stinging eases with each stroke, less and less, until it’s starting to feel…
I tense.
My hands clasp onto the bend of my knees, legs folded into a rigid basket, and I dig my fingers into myself, hard.
The warrior’s voice is cold, indifferent, “Did he do this to you?”
My mind is mush. “Who?”
“The guard.”
I blink, catching up to the place we were before I lost my footing and my fucking mind.
“No. I think… He was going to kill me, maybe, or just capture me. But I…”
Shame swells in me, a bubble of sickly self-loathing. I shut my words down, fast.
Ice flickers to me.
“I…” The shame turns my face an ugly shade of red. “There was another person running—and I pointed him out… so I could hide.”
I hate it.
I hate his stare, how strong and steady it is, unflinching, but piercing too, like he’s reaching into my soul and rummaging around for something interesting.
I hate his touch on my neck, the tingling sensations it sends unravelling through me to my worming gut.
I hate that I think it, for a moment, how lovely his face is, chiselled from marble—
I hate him.
An ugly storm churns in my stomach.
As if feeling it, his hand leaves my neck—but his stare doesn’t waver.
It’s a blizzard aimed right at me.
My toes curl in my socks.
“You did that to your friend.” He speaks with certainty. No room for doubt or negotiation. “Em-ah-lee.”
Chills run down my spine.
My lips suck inwards, and I bite down on them, hard. I drop my head, as if to hide myself from his steady, piercing stare. As if to hide myself from that truth too ugly to face.
I divert, “I need my inhaler.”
If he senses the lie, reads it on the heat of my cheeks, then he doesn’t call it out.
He says, “You need a lot for a ward who lives in my patience.”
My throat bobs.
I don’t look at him.
I don’t speak.
I don’t even let myself think.
A curt breath mists at his face before he’s reaching into a pocket on the thigh of his leathers. From there, he draws out the little blue plastic inhaler—and tosses it at me.
It lands in my cupped hands, a perfect catch, and as I firm my grip on it, he says, “It is new.”
I don’t look at him.
A heartbeat passes before he snatches my ankle, then tugs it to rest my foot on his lap.
The ache is quick to spring through my shin.
I swallow back a grunt of pain, then snatch the inhaler. I don’t really need it. Not right now.
I just wanted to break that.
Whatever that was.
Whatever that touch on my neck felt like, whatever that look into my soul was becoming.
I shove the mouth of the inhaler between my lips and draw in a greedy breath.
The leg of my sweatpants tickles against my skin, and not a heartbeat after, the cold air prickles at my oiled flesh—but it doesn’t reach into me, into the bones, and so I’m safe from it.
He rolls up the leg of the sweatpants, all the way to my knee, until my whole shin is exposed… and so is the ghastly purple and blue markings down the bone.
“A man stepped on me,” I mumble, then take another breath from the inhaler.
If he looks at me, I don’t see it. I keep my gaze down, fixed on my leg, and I watch as he reaches for another jar, not the grey stuff that smells like root beer, but a tall glass jar full of what looks like slime and pearls.
I expected the black medicine, if anything. It’s set out on the pew, right next to me, a little phial of black, glistening powder.
Maybe he wondered the same, if I would need it. But after considering my injury, he settles on the pearly slime that he smears generously along my shinbone before binding my leg with an oily black bandage from another jar.
I ask as he ties the wet bandage, “What’s that one for?”
He is quiet for a moment.
I don’t think he’s going to answer me when, “Surface wounds,” he says, then rolls down the leg of my sweatpants. “The bone is not broken.”
“If it was broken… would it be the other stuff you gave me? The powder?”
“Yes.” He takes the inhaler from me and pockets it. “Why do you have that?”
I frown down at him, his hand on my ankle, as if ready to draw my boot off his lap, but he only holds it in place.
His gaze lifts—and spears into me. “The hair.”
My lashes flutter.
The hair.
Heat burns my cheeks.
Not just the hair he’s caught a glimpse of a couple of times, but also the hair just now on my leg, sparse and blonde, but there.
I could answer with the truth, that I don’t know why he doesn’t have it, but I do. I could answer with redirection, a ‘why do you give a fuck?’
But no answer comes from me, because before my lips can part, a shout lifts from the camp.
I flinch and, twisting around on the pew, glare at the gap between two mausoleums.
The warrior stiffens.
The shout rises up again, but this time, it’s undeniably a collective cheer.
A gasp cuts me.
I’m jolted by the sudden throw of my foot from his lap, and before I can right myself, his cold hand snatches my jaw, firm, and yanks my face back in place.
The tip of my nose is smooshed against his, the iciness of his breath on my lips.
“You do what I say.” His warning is threaded with a growl that trembles me. “You do not speak.”
All I manage is a whimper.
His fingertips are harsh, digging into my cheeks, pushing out my lips in a pout.
I loosen a hitched sound.
His fingers slip from my face to my wrist, slick with balm. The rope he ties around my skin slips around the oily surface—and I note that he’s careful to fasten it loose enough to push two fingers between.
He doesn’t fasten the other side to his belt.
Instead, in a quick moment, he’s packed his satchel, tugged the strap over his head, grabbed the strap of my backpack, then kicked the canvas bag towards me, the one I forgot all about.
“Better for the walk,” he says, cold.
I look down at the canvas bag, parted and partially spilled over the soil.
I reach down for the boot poking out of the edge—and my mouth flattens into a grim line.
I should be pleased to see them, boots much better for the snow, the walks, like he said, with stronger, deeper grips and thicker soles.
But the worry inches into me, gnawing that bit more at my insides. It’s a worry I can’t acknowledge, not if he can sense me and my thoughts, my feelings, my whatever.
This one is too dangerous.
So I beat it down to the dark, ugly place it belongs and pull on the boots.
The laces creak as I fasten them in a rush.
And when I look up at him, I’m met with the sight of his sharp face, severe enough to twist my gut.