Chapter 2 #2
A small smile spread across his lips, and her heart fluttered in her chest. Somehow, he was looking a bit better already, his face coming back to that dark pink it had been before.
“I’m always hot,” he said. “Will you help me sit up?”
“Oh, yes! Of course.”
He finally let go of her hand, and she set the cup down on the floor while he rolled onto his back, grimacing, but not making a noise of pain. They clasped hands, and she pulled against him until he was sitting up beside her.
“Thank you,” he whispered and graced her with another one of those easy smiles. It practically lit up his entire face, his eyes were so soft and kind, even with their harsh red color.
“Who are you?” she suddenly found herself asking.
He placed a hand at his side, gingerly touching the bruised area, and cocked his head at her. “I’m not sure I know how to answer that.”
Riya eyed the stack of books beside her bed, remembering that there was a map of Svakland, though not entirely up to date, but close to it, in one of the books her grandfather loved to read through. It was full of Svakland’s histories and traditions.
“Here, I have a map. Maybe you can point to where you come from on it.” She rose and tugged at the atlas wedged at the bottom of the stack.
The tower of books toppled to the floor with a series of thuds, and a curse escaped her lips.
Kneeling, she gathered them with trembling hands, each heartbeat hammering in her ears like the echo of distant drums. She clutched the tome against her chest and returned to his side, drawing in a deep breath to settle her nerves.
Opening the book, she flipped through its worn pages to the main map of Svakland.
Her finger traced northward, beyond the jagged illustration of the White Giants and past the dense forest, finally coming to rest on the thin curve of shoreline that marked the northernmost edge of the known continent. “This is where we are now.”
Vax’s face fell as he took in the map. “I do not know this place, nor this map.”
Another rumbling of thunder boomed, shaking the cottage just as rain began to pitter-patter on the roof. The storm had finally made it to shore, and now she was stuck here with a stranger in her home until it passed. Yet somehow, that didn’t make her as anxious as she would have expected.
“The shape is all wrong. There should be desert here, not water. And here,” he pointed to the White Giants that cut across the northern half of Svakland from west to east. “These mountains should be like a circle, around the Gnomeic stronghold in the northwest quadrant. And here, there are scorched lands, from a war centuries past.”
His voice was flat, but something in the way his hand trembled at the edge of the page told her he wasn’t merely lost. He was no longer on his home continent and there was no knowing how far away he truly was from that home.
He frowned, moving his finger to the Storm Sea along the east coast of Svakland. It was a death sentence sailing into those seas. No one ever came out alive. The storms were endless and lethal.
“These stormy seas are familiar, but they should be west of the land, not east.”
It was Riya’s turn to frown. “West? Whatever land you hail from must lie beyond our charted waters. If your home is on the other side of those seas, there is no getting back. I’m not entirely sure how you could have even made it here in the first place. No one ever comes out of those storms alive.”
Vax was quiet for a long moment, his eyes scanning the map as if something else familiar might jump out at him and he would realize his home was somewhere on the page.
He ran long fingers through his red locks, hand shaking, and Riya could only watch the array of emotions that moved across his face before settling on something that made her heart twist painfully in her chest—hopelessness.
He snapped the book closed with a grimace, his hand flying to his side. “I might take you up on the offer of something to help the pain. If it’s not too much trouble.” His voice dropped lower. “You’ve shown me more kindness than I deserve, being just a stranger who washed up on your shore.”
Riya blinked at the undercurrent of grief in his words.
His face remained composed, but something in the tightness around his eyes betrayed deeper wounds.
If their roles were reversed, she would be a sobbing wreck, not calmly discussing maps while lost in a foreign land with seemingly no way back to everything she’d even known.
She nodded solemnly, rising to her feet, “Of course. It’s the least I could do.”
Before walking to the kitchen, she couldn’t help but notice how he shifted restlessly on the cold stone floor, his face tightening in an attempt to hide his discomfort. “Let me help you to the bed. You should lie down and get off the hard floor.”
He glanced over at her meager bed, just barely big enough for one person, let alone two. She would be lying if she said she didn’t claim every inch of that small mattress at night, stretching her limbs across it like a starfish.
“I’m not going to take up your bed, miss…you know, I’m not sure I asked your name.”
She huffed a laugh, “I suppose if you are to stay in my cottage for the night, you should know my name. I’m Riya.”
“Riya.”
Her name rolled off his tongue with that strange accent of his and she swallowed hard against the tingle spreading through her.
“Thank you for offering me shelter from the storm. I am in your debt.”
She wasn’t used to having someone else in her space, especially one who was, well, a large, surprisingly handsome man. A heat crept up into her cheeks and she turned from him, trying to hide her blush. What in the name of the Gods was going on with her?
Embers glowed in the hearth as Riya added a few logs, coaxing the fire into a flickering warmth that spread through the entirety of the cottage.
She hung the kettle over the flames before rummaging through her stores of flowers, herbs, dried mushrooms, and other foraging to prepare a tea she knew helped with ailments.
Her mother and grandmother had taught her all about them over the years and what each concoction did.
In the end, though, the teas couldn’t save her, only take away the pain to make her more comfortable in her final days.
She tried to shake those somber thoughts away and could feel Vax’s eyes on her as she worked.
Chancing a glance back at him, she saw that he had moved himself toward the bed, leaning his back against its soft edge, still sitting on the floor.
His eyes met hers, unblinking and fervent, making her look away again as the heat spread through her more rapidly, threatening to turn into an inferno.
A violent gust rattled the window panes, snapping Riya from her thoughts. Outside, the rain had given way to snow, thick flakes already blanketing the ground in white. The wind howled furiously, whipping the snowflakes into swirling clouds, and she shivered, happy to have gotten Vax inside in time.
She finished his tea and handed him a steaming mug. “You should rest.” She said the words softly. “Please, it’s still morning, and you are welcome to use my bed to find a more comfortable rest.”
He took the mug with a nod and opened his mouth with what she anticipated would be a refusal of her offering, so she held up a hand to stop him.
“I insist.” She grabbed his arm and started to help pull him up until he stood on wobbling legs before practically falling onto the bed. “There now, lie down and drink all of that brew. You will be feeling a bit better in an hour or so.”
His lips curled into that easy, unhurried smile she was beginning to anticipate, as he raised the cup to his mouth.
She almost laughed as his face twisted, nose scrunched from the bitterness of the earthy brew, but he persisted, draining the contents without pause before returning the cup to her waiting hands.
The bed creaked beneath his weight as he shifted, easing himself down with a deep, relieved exhale.
“D—do you need anything else? Are you too cold?”
“I’m perfect,” he said, and she could see his eyes starting to grow heavy. “I think that magical tea is working already.”
She huffed, “It doesn’t work that fast. Maybe your body is just relaxing now that you are out of the snow and by the fire.”
“Mmhmm,” he murmured as his eyes finally closed fully.
Riya watched him for a long moment, her arms wrapped tight around her ribs, until the gentle rise and fall of his chest and the soft breathing noises told her he was asleep.
Gods, but she hoped his injuries weren’t as severe as they looked.
It was promising that what she supposed was his natural skin color had mostly come back in his cheeks, and he had been smiling and talking just fine.
She only hoped she wouldn’t end up with a corpse on her bed, because that would be the worst omen of them all.