33. Katya
33
I can’t get to the slave camp fast enough. Raiden made us watch the rest of the bouts—of which there were many—then took his sweet time getting back to the boat. I’m certain he did it on purpose. He was not pleased when I called out to Aemon in front of all his “friends.” Now, my face feels like it got trampled by an elephant, but I can handle pain. It’s Aemon I’m worried about. I was so elated when he killed the manticore, then he passed out, and I didn’t know what to think.
Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
Leina holds my hand as I watch the boat crawl through the water with ever-increasing agitation.
I was so angry with him the other night. I was cruel. I blamed him for everything, and maybe much of what I said was true, but what he said about trying to protect me was true, too. Dammit. Can’t this boat go any faster ?
Finally, we reach the gate crossing the river into the slave camp and pull up to the decrepit dock. I want to jump out and make a beeline for Aemon—not that I know exactly where he is—but I know if I run now, Raiden’s going to send his people after me, and Veda knows when they’ll let me go again. I’m like a spring wound so tight I’m liable to go off at any moment, but I keep my head down as we’re bade to get off the boat. I follow the other ladies’ lead and wait on the shoreline, head bowed while the stupid shackles are reattached to our ankles. The moment I’m dismissed, I bolt, or as near as someone can get to bolting with a chain between their legs.
“Aemon,” I shout as I shuffle toward the common area. I come to a sliding halt and spin around searching… searching… “Aemon.”
An old man with thinning gray hair limps toward me. “This way,” he says, waving a hand for me to follow.
I do so without hesitation. He leads me in the opposite direction of the mines. We move around the toilet shacks, and now it’s occurring to me that this might have been a bad idea. Just because he looks like a sweet old man doesn’t mean I should trust him.
That’s when I hear Aemon’s scream. I hurry toward the sound, leaving the old man to limp after me. I find Aemon lying belly down on a flat slab of rock with only a towel draped over his backside, and Jael pouring water from a pitcher over his torso.
Huge gashes stretch down the length of Aemon’s back. They’re so deep, I catch glimpses of white bone in the moments between gushes of water and the blood flooding his wounds again. Blood, water, and bits of skin and tissue rush down the rocky slope and over a jutting ledge of stone into a deep crevasse like a macabre waterfall. I skip across the floor and crouch at Aemon’s head. His face is a mask of pain, his skin pallid and beaded with perspiration. His jaw is clenched hard enough to crack a tooth and his eyes squeezed so tight white lines radiate from the corners. It’s surreal seeing him like this. I guess I afforded him god-like status in my mind, and now I’m shocked to find flesh and bone where I expected steel.
Aemon’s whole body is rigid, muscles taut and straining against the pain. Finally, Jael’s pitcher runs dry, and his body goes slack.
“Aemon,” I whisper, so as not to startle him. I pat his hand where it grips the stone. His head pops up, eyes wide, and a smile stretches across his haggard face.
“Katya.” He says my name like a prayer, releasing his vise-like hold on the slab to grasp my hand. I press it to my damp cheek. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. “I was worried,” he says. “Are you alright?”
I shake my head and chuckle, even though this isn’t at all funny.
Aemon’s brows knit in confusion. “What?”
“Your back is shredded and you’re asking me if I’m alright?”
“I saw him—” He pauses, grimacing when Jael begins pouring another pitcher of water down his back. “I saw him hit you.”
“It was nothing,” I say, though my cheek would disagree.
Finally, Jael finishes and sets the pitcher down. Her face is drawn, hair a messy cloud of brown floating around her head—it reminds me of the way Mama looked after baby Max kept her up all night. “Katya. Can you please ask this stubborn male to stop being a martyr and let me sew up his back?”
“Aemon—”
He shakes his head. “Do you trust me?” he whispers.
“Yes, but…”
“Jael,” he calls, unable to turn his head around to see her.
Seeming to realize this she steps into his line of sight. “Yes, stupid male.”
Aemon lets out a startled laugh, then cringes at the ensuing pain in his back. “Can you give us a minute? Please.”
Jael looks from him to me, then back at him again. “At least let me dress your wounds first.”
“Just leave the bandages. Katya can do it.”
I can?
“She can?” Jael asks, mirroring my thoughts.
“Yes.” Aemon attempts to shift slightly and his face twists in pain.
Jael gives me a pointed look that says, “Please help me talk to this crazy person?”
I take her hand and squeeze. “I’ll talk to him.”
Her eyes flick to Aemon.
“Really. I’ll get you later, I promise.”
She nods. “Fine, but if you get an infection and die ,” she says, turning back to Aemon, “don’t come whining to me.”
A smile plays at the corners of his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mumbling to herself about idiot men and god complexes, she scoops up her pitcher and tosses me a ball of torn strips of fabric. “That’s all we have,” Jael says when she catches me eyeing the ball of scraps.
Of course. They’re not going to waste real medical supplies on a bunch of slaves. It’s a wonder she even managed to get these. “Thank you.”
Her lips pull into a warm smile. “Anytime.” Then she shoots a glare at Aemon and scurries off to give us the privacy he asked for.
Aemon lets out a breath as though he’s relieved she left .
“Jael’s right. I don’t know anything about non-magical healing.”
He grabs my other hand, so he’s now clasping both of mine in his. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, Aemon.”
“Shh.”
Did he just shush me?
I’m about to give him a good tongue lashing—injured or not—but before I can get my thoughts in order, he throws me for a loop. “I can heal myself.”
I draw back. “What? How?”
“I just need a little time to do it, and I don’t want anyone to see,” he says, not really answering my question. “Just stay here with me?”
He’s being all sweet and pitiful and my stupid heart is fluttering like a hummingbird got stuck in there. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Thank you.” He closes his eyes and takes long, deep breaths through his nose.
And I watch his back.
At first, I don’t see much of anything. Then, my mouth hanging open in awe, I watch as the blood rises from his wounds like liquid squeezed from a sponge, and rolls to either side of his back to spill onto the rocks below. Four slashes, gaping and bloodless, remain. They extend all the way from his right shoulder to the small of his back, bits of bone and even one knobby vertebra jutting out from the severed skin. I can’t even imagine how much pain he’s in, but Aemon remains stoic. Eyes closed, his hand gripping mine so tight it hurts, he takes slow, measured breaths and concentrates. At Duje, the healers would heal an injury by simply pulling the ravage bits back together, but Aemon builds himself anew. Slowly, millimeter by excruciating millimeter, pink tissue fills his wounds. Then fresh skin forms along the ragged tears and works its way across the newly formed flesh, leaving his back as smooth and unmarred as the day he was born.
“H-how did you do that?” I’d seen acolytes heal using a spelled stone, but nothing like this.
Aemon gives me a smug smile. “I’m not exactly sure, to be honest.” With a grunt of effort, he pushes up onto his knees, then settles back on his heels.
He hasn’t got a stitch of clothing on.
Too late, I divert my gaze, looking at the floor, the ceiling, the outhouses I passed on the way here, back to the floor. Anywhere but at Aemon. It’s not that I haven’t seen a nude man before. Thanks to my penchant for jumping into others’ minds while I sleep, I have been an unwilling participant in many a late-night tryst. In fact, I am possibly the most experienced virgin to ever live. But this is different. Aemon is different. One look at him, and I’ve lost my ability to breathe, to think. My belly drops to my feet and my mouth goes dry.
Aemon’s body is a work of art. He’s not bulky, but long and lithe, his impossibly broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist where a dusting of hair runs between the V of his hips, like a big damn arrow, pointing right at his cock. My fingers itch to reach out and touch him, feel the way his muscles stretch and flex beneath velvety skin.
I’ve taken a few steps back, my eyes still searching for something to look at besides Aemon when he says, “Good gods, Katya, what are you wearing? ”
“What am I wearing?” I scoff and glance his way. Yep. Still naked. “Have you looked at yourself?”
“Katya,” he says, his tone dead serious. “What happened to your clothes?”
“This conversation would be a lot more productive if you covered yourself up.”
He huffs. “Better?”
I peek back at him. He’s wrapped Jael’s towel around his waist. It’s so tiny, it barely covers that beast between his legs and does nothing to conceal its shape. “Marginally,” I reply.
“Now tell me what happened to your clothes.”
“Tell me how you healed yourself.”
“Katya,” he warns.
“Aemon,” I throw right back at him, hands on hips for added effect.
“I told you. I don’t know. It’s just something I figured out when I was a kid. When I shift, it’s like my bones, skin, hair, whatever are physically changing, and I can control that change down to the tiniest detail. So, I focus on shifting my skin back together and it heals.” He throws his legs over the edge of the rock and stands, flashing me his backside as he reaches for the pants left on a nearby rock.
I let out a tiny squeak and whirl around. It flexed. Oh, my gods. Why is that so sexy? “It sounds like you understand how it works to me,” I say, trying to sound flippant, but the words come out all breathy instead.
I hear some scraping, then a soft chuckle. “You can turn around now. ”
He’s laughing at me. I have half a mind to go over there and smack him atop the head. “Are you decent?”
“Define decent?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m sure you think you’re hilarious, but I’m not turning around until you promise me you have pants on.”
“I have pants on.”
Hesitantly, I turn back around. He does indeed have pants on, but they hang so low I can see his pubic hair peeking out from under the waistband. From the stupid grin on his face, he is fully aware of what he’s doing too. Fine. Two can play this game. “Laugh all you want, but I’d bet you’d feel differently if I was the one stripped naked in front of you.”
I swear that grin gets bigger. “Please, be my guest. It’s not like that dress is concealing much, anyway.”
My skin heats in embarrassment, which means I’m probably all red. Gods dammit, why can’t I ever get the upper hand with this man? I curl my hands into fists and give him the stink eye. “So, if I, say, knock all your teeth down your throat, can you grow those back?”
“You can try, but you’re more likely to break your thumb than do anything to me.”
I lift and rotate my right fist, inspecting it. My thumb is safely tucked under my fingers. “What are you talking about?”
That smug smile still firmly plastered on his face, Aemon crosses to me and takes my hand. He gently opens my fist and moves my thumb to the outside, then closes it again. “If you punch someone with your thumb tucked in like that, it’ll most likely break. You want your thumb on the outside of your fist, like this.” He lifts my hand to show it to me. His thumb absently brushes back and forth across my knuckles, and electricity sizzles between our skin. I snatch my hand away before he can get me any more discombobulated than I already am.
But the ghost of his touch lingers. I stretch and wiggle my fingers, trying to dispel the sensation, but it isn’t going away. “Noted.” I turn for the camp, but he stops me with a hand to my arm.
“You never told me what happened to your clothes or your wrist,” he says, nodding to my bandaged forearm.
I glance at him over my shoulder. “They’re blood fae. What do you think they did?”
His lips tighten, but he doesn’t make me elaborate, thank the gods. I still haven’t fully processed everything that just happened and I’m not going to do it with him. “They didn’t…” He lets the words hang there, like he’s afraid if he says what he’s thinking, it’ll make it real.
“No,” I say, and I’m honestly not sure whether that’s the truth or a lie. Raiden didn’t actually touch me anywhere except my arm but being forced to orgasm like that it front of him certainly felt like a violation. “No,” I repeat, but whether it’s for my benefit or Aemon’s, I can’t say. Then I shrug my arm free and head back into camp.