CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I moved through the rest of the day robotically. When the sun finally set and I had nothing else to do except climb into bed, it wasn’t a moment too soon. I was just pulling back the comforter when I heard a thud out on the balcony, followed by a whispered “Damnit!”
I hurried to the sliding glass door and slid it open to find Kieran hunched over on the concrete in front of me. He was rubbing his left calf muscle. Even in the darkness, I could see the rectangular shapes of blades of grass clinging to his clothes and sticking out of his hair.
He finally looked at me. “Consider this a heads-up that you’re going to have increased security throughout the city tomorrow.”
I would’ve felt his smirk even if my eyes were closed. That expression was so normal, so typical of him, that it made my heart swell to see it.
“Do I even want to know?” I asked, stepping aside so that he could enter.
“Hmmm…probably not.” He limped past me and over to my desk, where he half sat, half fell down into the chair. He took off a bandolier and slung it on the desk. Another prize from the cave devils’ collection, I was sure. “Unless the story of me taking down four Enforcers would make you swoon.”
I shot him a look, which I knew he and his enhanced vision would be able to see clearly in the dark. How could he joke about something so serious?
“Thought not,” he chuckled, then added, “There were four Enforcers hiding near our usual spot on the inside of the wall. Obviously, they figured us out somehow. The Enforcers are…let’s just say they’re incapacitated.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. My eyes landed on the dagger that was poking out of the bandolier. “Did you…?”
“Did I stab them to death? No, I knocked them out with a powder from Sigrid.” He shook his head. “For fuck’s sake.”
I wanted to ask just why exactly he was armed then. But one thing at a time. I needed to see the extent of his injuries. I reached over him and struck a match, then began lighting the candles. As soon as the candlelight illuminated him, I let out an involuntary gasp.
Besides the leaves and grass sticking to him and whatever had happened to his leg, Kieran’s face, neck, and arms were covered in cuts and gashes of varying severity.
His shirt was torn at the top, between the collar and right sleeve, as if someone had yanked on the bottom of the shirt and ripped it in a desperate attempt to restrain him.
At first glance, his pants and boots appeared normal at least. Then I noticed the strange way that the light was reflecting off his left leg, and realized there was more to his leg injury than I had thought.
The black jean material was soaked in blood.
“What in the actual fuck, Kieran?”
He looked genuinely confused by my reaction. “I just told you what happened.”
“Right, but it looks like it was a really serious fight.”
He barked out a laugh. “What part of ‘four Enforcers’ didn’t sound serious to begin with? I’m not immortal, you know.”
I actually didn’t know that. Not for sure. I tucked that bit of information away for future reference, then began rifling through my cabinets. I gathered antiseptic, bandages, a jug of water, towels, and…food? Was he hungry?
Of course he was.
I hurried back to where he sat, my arms full. But before I did anything else, I found myself voicing the question that was on the tip of my tongue.
“Why are you here?” I tried to make my tone as even and non-accusatory as possible. But a little bit of hurt may have snuck through.
Kieran’s expression was unreadable. When he spoke, it was in that tone that grated on me, the one that made me feel like he was trying to be patient with me.
“You named a water spirit,” he said slowly.
“And received a gift from a water spirit. You really think we were just going to say, ‘Thanks, see you later!’ and never seek you out again?”
I had already forgotten about the larimar stone that was tucked in the underside of my mattress. “I don’t know what any of that means, though.”
“Neither do we.”
After an uncomfortable moment, I set the jug of water down in front of him, along with a drinking glass and one of the blueberry muffins that Brielle had baked.
I filled his glass with water and pushed it toward him meaningfully, then went to work cleaning his cuts and gashes, one at a time.
I wet the towels and used them to carefully dab away the dirt and dried blood from each laceration, then followed with Medical division-issued antiseptic and a bandage.
Even with the state Kieran was in, I couldn’t ignore the warmth of his skin and the solid curves of the muscles of his arms as I applied each bandage.
There was still tension fizzing in the air between us.
Tension after how he had acted the day after we kissed.
Tension that seemed to come from words unspoken on both ends.
I was already looking ahead to the cuts on his face with dread. I wasn’t sure if I could bear to be that close to him.
Kieran was quiet while I did all of this.
If the antiseptic burned as I applied it to each open wound—which I was certain that it did—he didn’t show it.
I had started at his wrists, traveled up his forearms, across his biceps, and was finishing bandaging his shoulders when I realized that the fabric of his shirt was glistening with the same blood-soaked sheen as his jeans.
Before I had time to feel nervous, I ordered, “Take off your shirt.”
Still without a word, he complied. I wasn’t sure if it was the uneasy energy between us that kept him from making one of his usual suggestive remarks, or something else.
But I decided not to push my luck by questioning it.
As he dragged his shirt over his head, I allowed myself exactly one second to marvel at the sight of him.
And then I forced my brain to return to the task at hand.
He had a slash along his left pectoral muscle, the shape of which told me that it was from an Enforcer’s dagger or sword.
And he had a gash between his right hip and his abdominal muscles, which was still bleeding and had tiny rocks embedded in it, as if from a bad fall.
The hip appeared to be the worse of the two, so I started there.
When my fingertips grazed over his lower abdominal muscles, he inhaled sharply.
I jerked my hands away and looked up at him.
“I’m sorry. Did that hurt?”
He blinked a few times. Then turned and grabbed the untouched muffin and the glass of water. “You’re fine,” he mumbled around a bite, not making eye contact. He chased it down with a quick swig of the water. “Just took a hard fall on that side. As you can see.”
“Yeah, I can.”
Something flitted across his face. Was it…humor? Disappointment? Both?
I felt like I had said the wrong thing somehow, so I lowered my head and returned to bandaging the wound. When I was finished with his hip, I moved on to the slash across his chest. Afterwards, I sat back on my heels to survey what was remaining.
The cuts on his face and the wound on his leg.
In retrospect, I should have started with his leg.
That was probably going to end up being the worst of his injuries.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, I had known from the way the shine of the blood traveled up his pant leg that he was going to need to take off his pants.
Between that and tending to the wounds on his face, I didn’t know which made me more anxious.
I wouldn’t have given it a second thought if it were anyone else.
But not knowing where we stood with one another, it all felt too intimate.
Even though these thoughts flashed through my mind in a matter of seconds, that was apparently enough time for Kieran to pick up on my hesitation. He swallowed the last bite of muffin and drained what was left of the water from the glass.
“Don’t you have a shower?”
Fuck.
If I could have burrowed through the floor of my apartment, and the floor below that, all the way until I was burrowing deep into the ground, I would have done it.
“Uh, yeah,” I stammered, my face blazing with humiliation. I forced out a laugh. “That probably would have been the more efficient thing, huh? Rinsing off in the shower instead of me wiping you down one cut at a time?”
My self-deprecating humor fell flat. I didn’t even have to look up at him to know it.
Just fucking great. He probably thought I wanted to sit in the candlelight and tend to him like we were in one of those romance novels on the eighth floor of the Library.
Actually…he had grown up Outside and had probably never seen those kinds of books before.
Or had he? Cecil had said he brought Irene books because the Strangers didn’t have much use for them, as in they weren’t necessary to survival.
It didn’t mean that people outside the walls didn’t read for fun.
It didn’t matter. There was no denying how it looked, and he wasn’t about to let me off easy.
“I can’t say what the smart thing would have been.” He started to stand, then leaned over at the last second so his lips were an inch from my ear. “But I did enjoy this.”
Pre-Awakening or Post-Awakening, there was no bigger idiot than me.
Kieran limped in the direction of the shower.
The limp kind of detracted from the effect of his words, but I was too frazzled to even begin to think of how to point that out.
I grabbed a towel from one of the cabinets and thrust it into his arms, not meeting his eyes or even checking to make sure he had a grip on it before I hurried back to my desk.
I grabbed the empty glass and saucer and deposited them in the sink.
On the other side of the bathroom door, I heard the shower turn on.
I couldn’t think of anything else to do with myself at that point other than climb into bed and pull the comforter over my head.