Chapter 14 The Best Medicine
The Best Medicine
Ragnar
However long he’d waited, it had been too long.
Ragnar let Brioni go because she ordered him to. He didn’t deserve to be in her presence anyway, not after his thoughtless cruelty. She was right that he had never properly thanked her, never shown true appreciation for her gifts, her kindness, her presence.
But she was wrong too, wrong that he didn’t care about her, didn’t want her around, didn’t like her.
Blazes, that was an understatement—too simple a word for the way his heart grew when she appeared as if by magic to brighten his day.
He had just been so embarrassed that she risked so much when he could have easily been the bigger demon weeks ago and gone into Heck to have the water rune fixed himself.
These were all things he needed to tell her, but he didn’t deserve her audience let alone her forgiveness, especially when she’d told him to leave her alone so forcefully.
Brioni’s words were always run through with playfulness, taunting him to crash through the flimsy fences she built, but not this time.
This time he had been so cold that she’d meant it.
So he paced the barn and worried a rough rope between his hands and mumbled words to Moar that were supposed to be soothing but felt like the weight of two injured veilhounds on his shoulders.
“It’s all right,” he told the dog in a tone that was anything but convincing.
“She’ll come see us again. And if not, I can order something.
She’ll have to come for the delivery, and by then I’ll know how to fix it… maybe.”
About twenty maybes later, Ragnar gave up on waiting and strode toward the city with every intention of throwing himself at her mercy on the post’s doorstep.
Years of fear about entering Heck proper dried up like a cracked rune faucet the instant he made his choice, but he was abruptly stopped by a broken twig on the path.
Ragnar’s heart hammered as he lifted it from the ground and eyed a bowled over bush.
That wasn’t natural but the work of a woman fleeing from the horrors of a demon.
Ragnar barreled into the Veilwood, catching her scent. It was faint and tinged with something new, but he would know the smell of her anywhere. She’d left physical marks too, like a wild animal stumbling through the wood, tearing off bits of bark in terrified pursuit and…injured.
Blood. Ragnar howled her name into the trees, and the forest echoed back in mockery.
There was no answer, not even the sound of small animals scurrying away.
He clutched at his chest and continued to run.
If something got her, if something hurt her…
it was because another monster already had done far worse.
“Ragnar?” A feminine voice rang out, cutting through his own call, and though it was much different than Brioni’s, he stopped short and listened.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?” It came from up high, and Ragnar spun in place, searching the trees until he found the shadowy form of Angroda, a member of the guard, glaring down at him.
“The human…” was all he could muster between gasps for air.
“Oh, the red one?” She rolled her black eyes and sank back against a branch. “She’s in the infirmary. Oz’s squad—”
Whatever else she said could never have mattered—Brioni was found, and he needed to be with her now.
His breath was lost by the time he flung open the infirmary doors, barreling over the scribe at the entry. He could still smell her and didn’t need directions, and permission could fuck right off. Corridors, corners, stairs, and then finally her.
Brioni lay on her back, eyes closed, a linen drawn up to her chin.
The voices that followed him were drowned by the sound of his own heart beating with terror.
Her curls were spread out on the pillow like a cascade of human blood, a color no creature should leak, but her face wasn’t pinched in pain or lax with death.
He reached out to gather her up and run off, then miraculously his logical brain stepped in and stopped him.
What am I doing? What if she doesn’t want me here? What if I hurt her?
“It’s all right,” a soothing voice said from the bed’s other side.
He’d not even noticed Balran when he entered the chamber, but she was there, gesturing to the door behind him where two other healers stood.
Relief washed over them when they were dismissed, and then it flooded into Ragnar too.
The fewer eyes the better—the bright yellow glow of Balran was bad enough.
The healer offered him a sympathetic smile. She was always good at that. “She’s been asking for you in her sleep.”
Brioni’s chest rose and fell slowly, her body dwarfed by blankets and the demon-sized mattress. She didn’t stir or speak, but she was most definitely alive.
“Well, she was mumbling something that sounded like radgnawsh, but I eventually figured out she wasn’t asking for vegetable soup.” Balran chuckled and brushed a curl away from Brioni’s face. “The straw I picked off her dress was a helpful clue too.”
Ragnar swallowed a lump that burned all the way down to his gut.
Balran had taken good care of her when he himself had spent gods knew how long pacing and worrying and not being the protector his small human needed.
The healer’s careful fingers pulled down the linen to touch the bandage on Brioni’s upper arm as she looked for pain on her face, but there was none.
“What happened?” he whispered, afraid his voice would wake her, and she would send him away.
“Sarthisci.” Balran bit out the name of the six-legged monster with the vitriol it deserved.
Rage boiled in Ragnar’s gut. How she could survive—
“Her friend was there, though, the angry one with the interesting eyes. And Ozirax and Rand and the others too. Just in time because she lost quite a lot of blood. That was caused by something else, probably an alder by the splinters I plucked out of her thigh, so it was an easy mend, as you can imagine. The sarthisci wounded her too, but our antidote works on humans, it seems. She’s just quite a bit more groggy than a demon would be.
I expect she’ll experience the other side effects more intensely as well. ”
Ragnar ran them over in his mind: bouts of cold and flashes of hot, cycling nausea and intense hunger, sleepiness and fatigue though no rushes of vigor. Nothing life threatening. Nothing he couldn’t handle. “Can she leave?”
Balran hesitated. “By morning, if she wakes, yes, but”—she lowered her voice as if Brioni could hear—“the humans don’t exactly have family to care for them, and she won’t do well on her own.”
Ragnar nodded and fetched the closest stool to sit at the edge of the bed.
The healer didn’t question him as she bustled about, casting monitoring spells and checking bandages.
Ragnar clasped his hands under his chin and waited, squeezing his own fingers like he wished they were hers, but he didn’t dare hold Brioni’s hand.
She didn’t want you to follow, and she still may not want you now, he reminded himself, but he would deal with that when it happened, sitting vigil until the rising moon shone in the chamber’s window.
Laughter bubbled up out of Brioni before her eyes even opened.
Ragnar was startled by the strangeness and then by the sound of Balran rushing down the corridor and back into the chamber.
The healer sprinted in with a wide grin, and Ragnar eyed the yellow lanterns hung above the bed, recognizing the calming spell woven into them, one of Balran’s specialties.
“Oh, I love it when she does that,” Balran chirped, laying a hand on Brioni’s forehead. “How are we doing, sweetheart?”
Brioni blinked open her eyes, the green rings wide as they struggled to focus on the healer. Through her laughter, she asked where she was and why her leg hurt, but then her gaze rolled toward Ragnar, and the laughter stopped.
She hates me.
Her face scrunched up, and tears spilled onto her cheeks. “Ragnar! Please don’t be mad at me!” she wailed. “I’m sorry I ran!”
The demon’s arms were moving before his mind knew what they were doing, though to be fair, that had made itself up long before she woke.
He scooped her into his arms, covers and all, and crushed her to his chest. A tangle of whispered words came out of him, begging her not to apologize and professing his own idiocy.
“By Vitae, what do you think you’re doing?” Balran grumbled, yellow tail slicing through the air.
“You said I could take her home when she woke. She’s awake. I’m taking her home.”
“That is a very generous version of what I said.” Balran hastened around the chamber, but Ragnar ignored her, intent on the slight weight that fit perfectly in his arms.
Brioni rocked herself toward him and clutched his tunic, eyes closed again but no longer leaking. She sniffled and mumbled something too hushed to make out, but she was pawing at him like she could be even closer.
“The post may not be equipped to care for her,” Balran groused.
“No, I’m taking her home. Tell the postmaster she can have her back when I think she’s ready to return to work.”
The healer clicked her tongue and strode up to Ragnar with a satchel in hand. “Do I look like a drayk to you?”
“Maybe like one of the buff ones.”
“Oh, very funny,” she hissed, then stuck her face between his and Brioni’s. “Is that all right, dear? You want to go to that stinky barn with this brute?”
The human nodded vigorously, nuzzling against Ragnar’s chest.
“Fine. At least take this with you.” She looped the satchel over Ragnar’s shoulder then bundled up the excess linen and tucked it in around Ragnar’s arms, shaking her head all the while.
Finally, she eyed him, hands on her hips and face pinched as she stood before the door.
“One more dose of antidote tonight, plenty of fluids and sleep, check her wound every eight hours to be sure it doesn’t surprise us and reopen, and don’t get distracted by your bond’s pull. ”
Ragnar’s eyes widened, but his grip on Brioni only tightened.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Balran opened the door and gestured to all of him. “I could sense it on you the moment you arrived.”
He hurried out from under her knowing stare as she called that she would be checking in. It was impossible for Balran to sense a thing that didn’t exist, but it was curious that she let him leave with the human so easily.
Ragnar carried Brioni out of the infirmary, ignoring the looks the other demons were giving the heap of linens he was toting around as if laundry day had gone amok down at the barn. For all they knew, the spigot was still broken.
“I can…do walking,” Brioni said from the bundle of blankets, her eyes closed but her hand pressed to his chest like she was wide awake.
“No, you can’t.” He didn’t know which was true, but it didn’t matter because putting her down meant separation, and that could not be allowed.
“Okay,” she said, and her lips tipped up. “Maybe get Stephan?”
“No need.”
She snuggled against him harder. “But I’m heavy.”
“I’ve carried an injured veilhound through a rainstorm,” he said. “You are like a sack of drayk feathers in comparison.”
She snickered lazily against his tunic, her breath warming over his heart. “Kat will help me at the post. You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” He left Aldgate Square and headed north.
“But the hounds need you.”
“They can endure a little less of me.”
Brioni hummed, voice weak. “Ragnar?”
“Yes?”
“What’s a bond’s pull?”
“No more questions,” he said quickly, focusing hard on the way home. “You need your sleep.”