Chapter 17 #2
“It’s barely a scratch,” Talyn said as her hand went to her stomach.
“Let me see anyway,” I said. “Maybe you can lie down on the table.”
“Not the table,” she said quickly, and I blinked.
“Very well,” I said. “You can stand I suppose.”
I stepped closer to her, noticing the way her muscles tensed as if she meant to run, but she stayed where she was. I lifted my hands and let my magic search for injuries. She had a gash on her arm and two deeper cuts across her abdomen.
“Let me see your arm,” I said, and she pulled up the sleeve and held it out. It looked like she’d tried to bandage the cut, and I removed the bindings so I could see it.
“This wasn’t made by a blade,” I noted. “It’s jagged instead of clean.”
“There were a few symbionts among the soldiers,” she said. “I let a couple of them get too close.”
I nodded and hovered my hand over the wound to heal it.
“At least I understand now why you resisted my attempts to be friends so strongly,” I said. “I suppose it’s hard to make friends with someone you plan to kill.”
If I’d expected an apology, I was disappointed. Talyn only clenched her jaw and remained silent.
“Let me see your stomach,” I said.
She lifted her shirt and unwrapped the binding from around her waist.
“You put the bandages on?” I asked.
There was a long pause before she answered. “Samhail did.”
Something twinged in my chest. Samhail had bound her wounds. He’d insisted I heal her, and he’d been standing close to her when I’d first opened the portal.
I clamped my jaw shut to keep from asking the question I wanted to ask right now, especially given how creased and matted the bandages looked. Instead, I focused my energy on healing Talyn’s stomach wounds.
We didn’t speak as I healed her, and I stepped away when I was done.
“Thank you,” she said.
Then her eyes lit on something behind me, and she blanched. I spun around to see what had caught her attention, but there was no one there and nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I saw it.
I walked toward the side of the tent where a rumpled bedroll lay on the ground, the blankets streaked with blood.
“Gods above,” I breathed. “What happened here?”
I looked at Talyn. She watched me with wide eyes, her jaw working to speak although no sound came out.
“It looks like someone used these blankets to clean blood off them,” I observed.
“Yes,” Talyn said unsteadily. “That’s certainly what it looks like.”
Her carefully worded answer didn’t fool me, nor did the false look of calm she was trying to effect.
I looked back at the blankets on the ground. Someone’s bedroll...
The pieces all fell into place as I took in the streaks of blood still smeared on Talyn in places. Samhail’s clothes had been clean, but I’d seen blood on his skin. He would’ve removed his clothes to shift…
“Did…did you and Samhail have sex here?” I asked Talyn.
I wasn’t going to tiptoe around this with her. I suddenly needed to know what they’d done. She could tell me to go to the three hells if she wanted, but I had to ask.
Talyn opened and closed her mouth again. “Yes,” she said finally.
My stomach felt like something was trying to claw its way out.
I knew I had no claim on Samhail, that he was free to be with whomever he wanted, but being faced with the evidence he’d moved on was an entirely different thing.
That he’d chosen to fuck a woman who’d been sent to kill me was even harder to accept.
Exactly what had happened between Samhail and Talyn on their journey to cause such a turn?
“You had sex here? While you were both still covered in blood?” I asked incredulously, still not quite willing to let myself believe it.
“It was…battle lust,” Talyn said, her voice a bit hoarse. “We were both wound up from the fight. It was nothing more.”
My chest tightened as the rosy glow bloomed on her skin. Like Samhail earlier, though, I suspected she didn’t realize it for the lie it was.
“This was the first time?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You won’t be with him again?” I had no right to ask such questions, but they jumped from my mouth before I could stop them.
Talyn seemed to wrestle with herself before she said, “No, I won’t.”
I waited to see the glow again, but her skin remained its normal hue.
The tightness eased in my chest, but I chastised myself inwardly at the relief I felt. Raina had recently told me my problem wasn’t that I still wanted Samhail. It was that I’d chosen Bressen, but I didn’t want Samhail to have anyone else, and that wasn’t fair.
She’d been right, of course, but it appeared I still had a ways to go before I could accept the idea of seeing Samhail with someone new. I wanted him to be happy, and I had to acknowledge that his happiness might involve someone other than me.
“Why not?” I asked, then forced myself to add, “I can see the two of you being compatible in a strange sort of way.”
It was true. There was something about Talyn that reminded me of Samhail, and now that I let myself consider the possibility of them being together, I couldn’t shake the thought.
Talyn only huffed an incredulous laugh. “We’ve tried to kill each other a few times now,” she said. “I’m not sure compatible is the word I’d use.”
I opened my mouth to ask her when she’d tried to kill Samhail, then shut it again. I’d choose to believe she was just exaggerating.
“We should burn those blankets before anyone else sees them,” I said.
Talyn looked relieved by the suggestion, and we gathered them up. I followed her to the entrance of the tent, but she jerked to a stop.
“The gargoyles. We can’t-”
“Surgeon and Serise will be asleep for a few minutes,” I told her. I’d already slipped into their minds and put them to sleep standing up.
We both looked out to see the coast was clear. Sure enough, the two gargoyles still stood at the entrance to the tent, but they didn’t move when we walked out, and I heard Surgeon snoring softly.
We couldn’t see the others from here, so we stepped out to the fire pit in front of the tent, and Talyn started to feed the blankets into the fire.
“Just toss them on top,” I told her. “I’ll make sure they burn.”
She nodded and dropped the blankets onto the fire. It began to smoke as they smothered the flames, but I held out a hand, and my fire magic engulfed them. We stepped back as the flames roared up in the pit and the blankets burned in earnest.
I looked at Talyn, but she was staring into the fire with a strangely vacant expression.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
She started at my voice, then shook her head. “I’m fine.”
We went back inside the tent, but now that she was healed and we didn’t have anything to do, an awkward silence fell. Until Talyn broke it.
“You’ve fucked Samhail as well,” she said.
I choked. On what, I had no idea. Air apparently, but I coughed for several seconds before I could talk. Fair enough. I’d been blunt with her.
“He…he told you?” I asked.