Chapter Two #2
The old apothecary’s larder contains nothing worthy of a royal feast. Yet I doubt Penn will mind the simple fare I’ve been living on lately.
He may now be a king, but he will always be a soldier at heart.
On the road, in the wild, I have seen him eat hare off the bone, watched him devour strips of venison and stale bannocks without a single murmur of complaint.
I pull together a simple dinner from my stores. While the rice simmers on the stove, I grab a dishcloth, run it beneath the tap, and carry it from the kitchen, dripping across the hardwood planks with each step.
Penn’s eyes lift to me the instant I reappear, scanning me head to toe, seeming to catalog every dried bloodstain and singed tatter of my ill-fitting work uniform.
It must have belonged to one of the young Life Guild novitiates at some point—probably an adolescent male, given its unembellished breeches and simple stitching.
But it suits my purposes quite well. It is a rare day when someone does not cough, bleed, or vomit on me at some point during my time at the infirmary.
Penn is sitting on the worn sofa, holding the book I spent last night studying by candlelight—a heavy tome of medicinal herbs and their many uses.
The bookshelves along the far wall are bursting with similar reading material.
It looks odd in his hands. Those hands seem meant for gripping swords and throwing punches.
I have rarely had an opportunity to see them do anything so mundane as turn a page or trace the shape of a word.
The sight strikes me somewhere between the ribs, a direct blow to the heart.
He is still shirtless, clad only in black breeches.
There is an ornate glyphed blade tucked into the top of his boot, twin to the one I so often carry.
Even now, its comforting weight is sheathed at my left thigh.
I rarely go anywhere without it. When I do manage to sleep, I do so with it close at hand, on my nightstand or tucked beneath my pillow.
“Here…” I lift the damp rag. “I thought I might…”
His brows rise in silent inquiry as I move to him and kneel on the floor at his feet.
He sucks in a sharp breath as he registers my intention.
Leaning forward slightly, elbows to knees, he brings his face down to my level.
Our gazes tangle together for a charged moment.
The depths of his eyes still smolder with banked heat.
I do my best to keep my expression flat, calling on all my experience as a healer to remain composed.
Still, it takes considerable effort to keep my hand from trembling as I press the limp washcloth to his face.
His teeth lock down tightly as I begin to wipe his skin clean of all traces of blood.
It is crusted in the shadowed rings beneath his eyes, the fragile hollows beneath his ears.
I am methodical in my efforts, moving from his cheekbones to his jawline, down the tanned column of his throat and across his chest. One singular drop of blood is dried directly over his Remnant mark, where the skin is slightly raised, like scar tissue from a brand.
I wipe it away last, the whorls and spirals hot as a fever against my fingertips.
His whole frame trembles as I do. The skin there, I know, is hypersensitive.
By the time I am done, the white rag is red with blood and both of us are breathing fast.
“Finished,” I murmur, for lack of a better thing to say. I begin to pull back, but find my wrist clasped within his hand before I’ve ever seen him move. My eyes flicker up to meet his.
“Thank you,” Penn says haltingly. I know he is not only speaking of the washcloth.
“You’re welcome.”
I swallow hard. I have not been this close to him in more than a month.
Since the battle, he has hardly crossed my path.
If anything, he seems to be going out of his way to avoid my presence.
Even so, there is no forgetting the last time we found ourselves alone together.
The last time he touched me. The heated exchange we shared the night of Fyremas is scored in my mind too deep to expunge with any amount of avoidance.
Don’t you understand? his voice whispers in my memory. You have undone me completely…
When I close my eyes, I can almost remember the taste of his mouth devouring mine. The feel of his callused hands, seeking out my most sensitive skin. The channel of need burning down our bond, an exquisite torment of lust neither of us was strong enough to deny.
I might convince myself I’d imagined it, if not for the strange new tension that charges the air between us now, with his hand on my skin and our faces a hairsbreadth apart.
No, it was real enough. That stolen moment of passion on the lookout point above the city as fireworks exploded in the sky happened—whether he wants to own it or not.
My teeth dig sharply into my bottom lip as the memories flood me.
Penn’s eyes drop to my mouth, tracking the movement and seeming to get stuck there.
I am blocking him as best I can, trying to keep my unruly emotions tucked behind my mental shields before they spill over into him, but the way he is looking at me has me questioning my own success in that endeavor.
While I am getting better at muting my emotions, I have not yet mastered it.
Not like Penn. Except on the rarest of occasions—or when he is expelling so much maegic he can no longer afford to hold up those impenetrable bastions—he seldom gives me anything to go on.
His true feelings remain an utter mystery.
Whatever he feels for me, whatever he wants from me…
he does not share. Not willingly, anyway.
A part of me longs to ask if my suspicions are true. If he laments letting his rigid sense of self-possession lapse long enough to expose his true desires. If he regrets how close we came to crossing an irrevocable line that night. But I find, when I try to ask, the words will not come out.
“I’ll go take the rice off the stove,” I say instead, voice thready. “You must be hungry. Mabon said you haven’t been eating.”
Penn grunts noncommittally as he releases me. The moment broken, I practically bolt back to the kitchen and turn my focus toward the meal.
Not a quarter of an hour later, I return to the parlor with food piled on a tray.
Fresh bread, sliced cheese, a steaming bowl of long-grained rice, and a few of the apples I’ve been hoarding for a special occasion.
Trade is finally starting up again, but for several weeks after the attack, no fresh produce moved in or out of the city.
It will be some time before things are fully back to normal.
I freeze at the threshold.
Penn is fast asleep on the sofa, slumped over in what cannot be an entirely comfortable position, with his boots still tightly laced and his torso twisted against the cushions.
The exhaustion on his face is so evident, I cannot bring myself to disturb him.
I wonder how long it has been since he rested through the night.
My own sleepless evenings have left me brittle and weary, but my burdens are nothing next to his.
Backing out of the room, I set the untouched feast on the counter with a soft thud.
On the lightest tiptoes, I creep back into the parlor, drape a worn wool blanket over Penn’s slumped form, and douse the gas lanterns.
We will talk more in the morning, I resolve, as I get myself a helping of food and eat it in the darkened kitchen before retreating into my bedchamber to read until I fall into a fitful slumber.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, we will discuss our relationship and everything we’ve spent the past two months avoiding. Tomorrow, all will finally be resolved. I am certain of it.
But in the morning when I wake, the sofa is empty, the wool blanket neatly folded. Pendefyre is long gone—not merely from my apartments but from the city itself, no more than a hint of flame on a distant wind somewhere far beyond the crater’s rim.
And growing fainter by the moment.