Chapter 12 #3
The bellow of an especially furious pirate captain urged me to go faster, but I simply couldn’t with the bleeding man that weighed me down like an anchor.
Muffled shouts from Vaetrik’s crew became clearer every second as they searched for us.
If they looked behind the houses, they might spot the trail of blood Reiven was leaving behind, and it wasn’t like we could run with him in his condition.
Shouts and the stomping of boots came closer. I pulled Reiven into the forest and eased him down in the wet grass, right behind a cluster of bushes that just might hide us if we were lucky.
“Stop this! I told you, no non-Humans get hurt, or I am through assisting you, Shaddan!” Calinia raised her voice enough that I could just make out her words over the rainstorm, and Shaddan shouted back in turn.
“Leave then. You’re a fucking wildcard! I’ll do whatever I have to in order to destroy the Humans that ruined us. Sacrificing one Siren to a pirate is a small price to pay.”
A door crashed open, then another. Vaetrik must have had his men searching the abandoned houses for us. Maybe that would give us enough time to steal away through the darkened forest, but we had to move faster than we were.
“Come on!” I shook Reiven’s shoulder and tried to get him to his feet, but he hardly budged.
He squeezed his eyes shut, raindrops running down his face like tears and sweat.
Blood gushed between his fingers as he attempted to apply some weak pressure to his stomach wound, but it wouldn’t be enough.
I hastily cut two thin strips of cloth away from the long side of my skirt with his cutlass and fashioned them into makeshift tourniquets for his arm and thigh wounds, though he scowled at how tight I made them.
The only problem left was how to keep him from bleeding out from the gunshot to his abdomen.
I placed my hands over it, carefully as I could. “Let me slow your bleeding.”
“I don’t…want your…Siren magic.” He feebly tried to push me away.
“Don’t be stupid. You’re going to die if you keep bleeding like this!”
He grimaced. “I can’t believe I’m going to die in a Siren’s arms.”
“If you die,” I growled, “and you take me with you to rot in Hell, I swear I will haunt you and sing that same lullaby for eternity so that you never get any rest.”
His lips twitched into a pained grin. “Eternity with you sounds awful.”
But he made no move to let me help him. Instead, he removed my hands and his from his wound and closed his eyes again.
Is he…giving up?
My dreams of destroying Arvensis, returning the Voidtome to the Abyssal Deep, seeing my mother and sister again, all of it hinged on this one man’s life, and he seemed perfectly ready to accept death. But why? He had the strength to fight through this. I knew that. Surely he did, too.
I lowered my voice, forcibly softened it like melting sugar. “Rei, let me help you. Think about Ash. Are you really alright with leaving him alone in this fool’s quest of his? It’s going to crush him if you die. You’re his best friend.”
“Did…he say that?”
“Yes.”
“Ha. Dumbass kid.”
I pressed my hands against his wound again and manipulated the water within his blood to slow, and he didn’t bother to make a show of defiance.
I was right to use his weakness against him.
Hopefully, he would have enough time to get back to the ship, and we could take care of his wounds more thoroughly.
“Get up. Now. I know you’re in pain—”
“It’s funny. I’ve actually found that being shot three times doesn’t hurt that much.”
Maybe I should just bash him over the head with a stone and drag his body to Ashkade. I stamped down my frustration at his continued backtalk, leaning over him to place my hands on his cheeks.
His eyes flicked to mine, agony swirling in the darkness there.
“Rei, please,” I whispered, soft as satin.
“Let me take away your pain so we can get you back to the ship. We need to fully stem your bleeding.” I donned the mask of a compassionate healer.
Surely, I could pretend to care about him for a few minutes until I dragged him to his boss to be stitched up.
I brushed his wet hair off his forehead.
“You’ll be alright. Just please let me help you.
I won’t let you die, so don’t give up on me. ”
Raindrops that had gathered on my lashes fell to splash on his face.
Every drop of blood he lost further drained his resolve to refuse my help.
What I thought was ironclad determination wavered right before my eyes.
Another pulse of strange, magical energy burst out from the center of the road that led through the nearby cluster of houses, that same glimmering bubble interwoven with glyphs spread out much farther than when Calinia used it last. It even reached us in our hiding place in the forest. In the air all around us, drops of water hung suspended in time, like a cloud of sparkling crystals that stretched up towards the sky into eternity.
I turned my attention back to Reiven. The plea in my eyes was finally met with a huff and a tiny nod, thank the Spirits. I pressed my fingers against his temples, closed my eyes, and dove into the pain that crippled him.