Chapter 3 #2
I tried again to jerk away, and for a moment, I thought I was successful, but then I realized he was just moving with me so he could turn my back toward the light of the fire. His fingertips brushed across the scarred skin of my upper shoulders, and I went rigid.
“What are these?” he asked in a quiet, dangerous voice.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to hunch forward as much as possible. He hadn’t noticed the brand on my chest yet. My breath came in sharp, gasping sobs, and my body shivered.
“Fuck, okay, okay, here.” He pulled my wet shirt off but stalled as the rest of my back was revealed. He swore under his breath, then grabbed his warm flannel shirt and started dressing me in it.
I shoved my arms into the sleeves, cooperating in my desperation to get the shirt on as fast as possible.
I still sat in his lap, giving him a perfect view of my back, but at least he couldn’t see my front.
He helped pull the shirt over my shoulders and reached around me to button it up.
I readied myself to lunge away when he finished buttoning, but he moved quickly, bundling us both in a blanket.
I tried to push away, but he just pulled the blanket tight, wrapping both of his arms around my torso and trapping me against his body.
Squirming only made his arms tighten further, and fuck, I couldn’t breathe. I was back in Juck’s tent, unable to move, panic spilling into my lungs and drowning me.
“I’m just tryin’ to warm you up.” His warm breath ghosted over my neck, making my skin break out in goosebumps. “I’m not gonna hurt you, Ember, I swear.”
I couldn’t answer him. The fire started to swim in my vision as I grew lightheaded from my short gasps of air.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay, Ember, you’re safe. Just try to breathe.”
I slowly came back to myself. I was lying on my side, and just a few feet away a fire had died to smoldering embers. I was wrapped up in a blanket?—
The blanket shifted, and I realized I was also wrapped up in another body.
I tensed in alarm, and the arms holding me released. I rolled onto my back and stared at Lee’s face above mine. He’d propped himself up on one hand resting on the blanket next to my head.
“It’s okay, you passed out.” He smiled, but it looked strained. “That tends to happen when you don’t breathe.”
I just stared at him. My brain felt sluggish, and my body felt heavy but different from the cold. This felt— fuck— this felt like I was sick.
“Ember?” His brow furrowed.
Was this the beginning of a burnout fever? Why would I get a burnout fever? I hadn’t healed?—
It hit me like a blow to the gut—the river. My powers must have worked overtime to keep me from freezing to death. I closed my eyes, feeling so fucking defeated. I couldn’t even die right.
“You don’t have to talk to me, but can you just nod or shake your head or somethin’ so I know you can hear me?”
“Fuck you,” I muttered without opening my eyes.
“Wow,” he sounded amused, “you’re just as grateful as your brother when someone saves your life.”
I rolled back to my side, staring at the fire. I wished he’d stop comparing me to my brother. My brother thought I’d run away. He thought the past twelve years meant nothing. He thought I hadn’t even begun to atone for Dune’s death.
“I’m pretty sure you have blood in your hair. Did you hit your head in the river?”
The back of my head was throbbing, but I just didn’t care.
“C’mon, Ember, please?”
I refused to acknowledge him, staring numbly into the fire.
Lee let out a long-suffering sigh. “You’re gonna make me do everything the hard way, aren’t you?” When I still didn’t answer, he shifted and grabbed my upper arm, pulling me upright. “Alright, the hard way it is.”
The movement made my head spin and throb, and when he released my arm, I swayed as the room tilted. He quickly grabbed me again.
“You’re probably concussed, Here, c’mere.” He tugged me backward between his legs, lifted my arms, and placed them on top of his raised knees. “You can hold onto me if that helps.”
I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to faceplant into the rocky floor, so I clung to his knees as the room spun.
His hands gripped my head and tilted it down, his fingers searching through my hair.
I sucked in a breath when his fingers pressed right at the source of the pain radiating through my head.
He parted my hair carefully to look at it.
“Shit, yeah, you got a good-sized lump here, but it’s not bleeding anymore.” He paused, then muttered, “Who knows how much blood you lost, though.”
His hands moved through my hair again, and I felt him pause on the large scar on my temple from the mercs. He tilted my head to the side to see the scar that disappeared into my hair, gently tracing the jagged line with his finger.
“What happened here?”
“Nothin’,” I muttered.
“Oh, so you are talking to me!"
Something about the way he said it reminded me of Sam, and grief washed over me.
“This is a pretty big scar for nothing.”
I was not about to explain my scars to this stranger. “It’s nothing, ” I said sharper, jerking my head out of his hands and facing forward again.
“Lemme guess, those scars on your back are nothing, too?”
My spine locked up as the memory of him touching my scarred back flashed back to me. I tried to remember what else he’d seen, but my memories were hazy and fragmented. I waited for him to ask about the brand with my heart in my throat.
“If I had to guess, I’d say those are scars from a whip,” he said with an edge to his voice.
I didn’t answer.
“And they’re not that old, either.”
I released his knees to tuck my trembling hands into my lap.
“Did Madame do that to you?” When I still didn’t say anything, he spoke again, his voice sharper. “You know your brother is not gonna let you get away with not answering these questions.”
Gods, that was why I didn’t want him to fucking know. I hadn’t planned for any of this. I was supposed to be too dead to answer questions. Lee must not have seen the brand, though. I doubted he’d stay quiet about it if he had.
“Is that why you didn’t want to change in front of Scar?”
The familiar smell of blood hit me, and I chased the distraction.
I looked at my bare legs, noting the numerous bruises and scrapes covering my skin from banging into rocks in the river.
I wasn’t bleeding, though. Where was it coming from?
I glanced at Lee’s legs and realized he had a messy bandage around one calf.
My fingers twitched with the urge to fix it.
Had he even cleaned the wound? No, it didn’t matter.
I didn’t care. I was not going to ask ?—
“What happened to your leg?”
“Oh no!” He barked a laugh. “You don’t get to refuse to answer my questions and then ask me one.”
“I answered your fuckin’ question,” I snapped.
“You answered one by tellin’ me you wouldn’t answer it.”
He sounded annoyed but also amused again, and the combination infuriated me for some reason.
“Fine,” I growled at him, “let it get infected and gangrenous from that shitty-ass bandaging job you did, but when you lose your whole fuckin’ leg, don’t come crying to me.”
A short silence fell.
“So she is still in there.”
“What?” I snapped, twisting to look at him.
He grinned at me. “The Ember I’ve heard so much about.”
I turned back around, hoping he hadn’t seen the pain flash across my face. “I’m not her.”
“So, who are you, then?”
Good fucking question.
I shivered, and dread filled me. I could feel the fever creeping closer. I had just minutes before I was fucking delirious. Should I warn him? My hands trembled, and I balled them into fists on my lap. I would be at his mercy, incapacitated. Who knew what he might do?
I needed to get some space. I started trying to scoot out from between his legs, but he caught my arm, and I cringed.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, Ember,” he said, his voice softening.
“Stop calling me that,” I snapped, trying to wrench free.
“Calling you what? Your name?”
“That’s not my name.”
“Okay, so what is your name?” He raised an eyebrow and waited.
I looked away. I didn’t know what to tell him. All I knew was that Ember died in the desert when she was ten years old. The sun, wind, and predators peeled off her flesh until all that was left was Bones, but Bones wasn’t me, either.
I never told Trey my real name. I never got to hear him say my real name with reverence, desire, and love. He gave me all of him, and I never trusted him with that final piece of me. He died without knowing who I really was. The tears I’d been fighting started rolling down my face.
“I have to call you something. What do you want me to call you? Freckles?”
I didn’t care.
“Here, look at me.” Lee’s voice sounded like he was speaking in a tunnel. “I need to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”
I closed my eyes. I never even told him my real name.
“Freckles? Hey, what’s wrong?”
I clenched my jaw, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
The cold ached in my bones. He pulled me around to face him, and my eyes opened again.
He leaned in close to me, frowning, and I stared at his dark brown eyes.
They weren’t brown like Trey’s eyes or brown like Griz’s eyes.
I blinked as my vision blurred with tears, trying to bring them into focus.
I jumped when his fingers connected with my face, and his eyebrows rose, but he just slowly wiped away the tears spilling out of my eyes. His frown deepened, and he moved his hand to my forehead.
“Fuck, you are burnin’ up,” he muttered.
My eyeballs felt hot and dry as sandpaper.
His hands wrapped around my upper arms again and moved my body, pulling me into his lap and wrapping the blanket around both of us again.
I wanted to shove him away, but I was so cold, and he was so warm.
My traitorous body curled into him, desperately seeking his warmth.
“Those damn eyes,” he muttered, seemingly to himself.
There was something I was going to tell him, wasn’t there? Or was it something I wasn’t going to tell him?
It was something important, something I needed to remember, but my eyes drifted shut.