Chapter 13
Azul stood still in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the other hanging loose at her side. The fur cloak slipped from her shoulder and caught on her elbow.
"You're awake," she said, eyes darting around; there was no longer a corpse on her floor. But where was the little snake?
"You've been gone since morning." His voice was closer than she expected and calmer than the night before. He must have positioned himself behind the door the moment he heard her footsteps. Survival instinct, even half-dead.
Impressive, kind of.
He was still shirtless, and his bandages looked good with no blood seeping through; that reassured her.
"I had obligations." She didn't move. "Are you going to kill me with that, or are we doing this again?"
He paused.
"Where did you go?"
"A celebration on the water. Welcoming my sister into the family." She exhaled slowly through her nose. The room smelled of herbs and dried blood and the particular staleness of a space where someone had been lying very still for a very long time. "Your blade is shaking."
It was.
The faintest tremor, almost imperceptible. The stitches she'd put in were holding—she could tell by the fact that he was upright at all—but he had no business standing, let alone threatening people.
"It's not shaking."
"It is." She tilted her chin slightly, careful not to press into the edge. "You're using your arms to compensate for your core, which means your wound is pulling. If you hold this position any longer, you'll tear my sutures."
He declined to reply.
Azul closed her eyes for a moment. The room was spinning in a way it hadn't been a minute ago. The fur cloak felt suffocating. Her throat was dry and her heartbeat was doing something strange—not fast, exactly, but loud. Too loud; it made her head hurt.
"Lower the blade," she instructed and was surprised to find her voice had gone quieter than she intended.
"Tell me who you are."
"I've told you twice."
"Tell me again."
She sighed. It seems running laps around his mind when he was under a sedative was a bad idea.
The doorframe under her hand felt further away than it had a moment ago. She tightened her grip and felt the wood grain press into her palm.
"Azul," she said carefully. "Of the Borjigin. The Akwaugo."
He seemed not to react; did he perhaps not know the name of his bride? Did he still think it was Obiageli?
"You should be frightened of me."
The floor tilted. She adjusted her weight and the motion cost her more than it should have. "I'm currently more concerned about the fact that you've been standing for—"
Her knees buckled. Her grip on the doorframe held for one moment, and then her fingers slid free and she went down sideways, her shoulder catching the frame on the way.
The blade disappeared from her throat.
She almost fell to the ground, but she was caught in his arms, and the wounded man groaned as he made an effort to ignore the pain. Her cloak fell to the floor, and she could only look up at the masked face, his hair falling loose to tickle her skin.
"What's wrong with you?" The hostility in his voice was replaced by worry. He lowered her to the floor, arms still propping her upright. Her body felt like lead, unwilling to move.
"Nothing."
"You can’t seem to move."
"Something was in the cloak," she said, more to herself than to him. Her thoughts were moving like they were being dredged through water. "Contact through the skin, slower than wine… Clever."
"The cloak? What wine?"
"They tried two methods today." She found, distantly, that she was impressed. "The first didn't reach me. The second I didn't account for. I was sloppy."
"You were drugged?"
"Mildly." She attempted to lift her head. The world rocked. "Nothing that will kill me. I don’t think I'll die, but I might end up being killed regardless." Her throat felt painfully parched. "I just need a moment."
He was quiet for a while. "You saved my life last night."
She nodded.
He went quiet again. She could hear him breathing, and beneath that, very faintly, the sound of her snake moving somewhere across the room, disturbed by the unfamiliar presence.
"You should have rested," he said finally.
She laughed at the absurdity of his words. "How can I rest? I am someone with no backing in this place; if they called me to come and sing, to dance, to prance around like a dog, what choice do I have but to go? There was only so much I could guard myself against; I am only one mortal."
Azul noted something too close to pity in his gaze and opted to drop the topic. "Help me to the bed. I’ll check your wounds to make sure they're alright."
"The stitches are fine."
"You're in pain. I should at least give you some analgesia, if I can."
His eyes flashed with something dark.
Then, without further argument, he lifted her and deposited her onto the edge of the bed.
She sat there for a moment, head bowed, breathing.
"Lie down," he instructed.
"I need to—"
"Lie down."
She looked up at him. He was standing over her with the blade still in his hand, which she supposed said something about the kind of man he was—couldn't quite bring himself to put the weapon away even now.
"You're going to fall over," she told him.
"So are you."
Fair enough.
She lay back. The ceiling swayed, then steadied.
He didn't move away immediately. She could feel him standing at the edge of the bed; she wanted to tell him to sit down before he fell down, but her mouth didn't cooperate.
The heat was getting worse.
She'd thought it was the day, the sun on the dock, the hour of standing. But the cloak was off her now and the shrine was cool and still the heat climbed, spreading from her shoulders down through her body. Her thoughts kept slipping. She would reach for one and find it had moved.
Sloppy, she thought again. She should have accounted for contact delivery.
The Ugoeze was not a woman who relied on a single method.
She clearly had a backup plan, and she had fallen for her trap.
If the Third Wife hadn't warned her, it would've been worse.
At that thought, something strange flickered in Azul's eyes.
Yes, if I hadn't been warned, I would've suspected you, wouldn't I?
"What did they give you?" His words were welcomed, for her mind struggled to focus on anything else.
"I don't know. Something through the skin. The cloak was warm; it kept the blood moving. Made it work faster." She exhaled. "I should have considered it."
"How long does it last?"
"I don't know." She was honest. If she even knew what they gave her, she would’ve found a way to counter it. But drugs like these were sold like market sweets; with so many different strains, they were hard to guard against.
He was quiet. She could feel him looking at her; she tried not to writhe under his gaze, no matter how uncomfortable.
"Your neck," he said.
"What about it?"
"There are marks. Along the hairline… Small ones."
Her hand moved instinctively, slowly. She pressed her fingers to the back of her neck and felt a few tiny raised points. She hadn’t noticed them, but now that she had touched them, they were tender.
"How many?" Her words shook.
She felt him lean closer. Close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him, which she didn't need on top of everything else.
"A few."
She closed her eyes. Needles, beneath the cloak's collar, pressed against her skin while the Ugoeze draped it over her shoulders.
"They need to come out," he said. "If they're still in, it’ll only get worse."
"I know." She opened her eyes. Looked at the ceiling. "Fine."
"It will hurt."
"...Will it?" The moment her words left her lips, she paused. Was she afraid of pain? Since when?
He seemed to calculate his next move and, after a while, sat at the edge of her bed and slid his arms under to sit her up. He let her rest her head on his shoulder as he shifted her hair out of the way.
"You can bite down on me if it hurts that much."
She let her chin rest on his shoulder, her eyes closing as she braced herself, unwilling to do as he suggested. His fingers were cool against her skin, each touch sending a bolt of electricity down her spine.
It hurts, but it feels…good.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek when she felt him freeze.
He pulled.
Pain wracked through her body, nerves irritated at the removal; she nearly screamed, but she bit down on her tongue, letting that pain, the more mechanical one, ground her.
Sweat beaded at her temple as she sat, trying her best to keep sane as he pulled out the needles, one after the other; he found twelve in total.
When the last one came free, she let out a shameful cry before biting back down harder on her bruised tongue. When he was done, he let her back down on her bed.
"Thank you," she said, because it cost her nothing.
He grunted.
As she waited for the symptoms to pass, she realised the heat wasn’t receding.
She'd hoped removing the needles would help, but whatever had already entered her blood was still moving through it. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears and her skin felt too tight and she was not going to think about the man sitting on the edge of her bed. He hadn’t left.
She was not going to think about it.
She thought about it.
His hands.
Inconvenient.
One rested loosely on his knee, holding his blade.
Perhaps he was still contemplating killing her.
He was a man who lived by the sword. She knew, from stitching his side, exactly how much damage had been done to him over the years—the layered scarring across his ribs where slashes had met him more than once.
The puckered marks on his shoulders that could only be arrows and the ones across his back that she had not let herself look at.
Long, raised lines, some healed clean and some not, crossing each other in a pattern that suggested cruelty.
Whip scars. Many of them were old, some new.