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As we move around the side of the cottage, I try to get a peek inside the windows. Something brown is splattered on the other side of the window and curtain. It’s covered in frosty dust so I can’t see anything else inside. The grass around the perimeter of the house is long and full of weeds. I bet it was once groomed and flourishing with garden beds. The small shed is around the back. Walnut wood, worn down by rain and time.
Dessin kicks open the door. The air is stale and musty, smelling of sawdust. Thankfully there are windows letting in light, otherwise, I don’t know how well he would see to take care of my wound.
“Can you take off our coats and throw them to the floor?” he asks, still holding me in his arms. I do as he says but expect a rush of frigid air to bite and claw at my skin. But this barn is like a greenhouse. It’s not exactly warm in here, but not exactly cold either.
He gently sets me down on the coats, cushioning my back and bottom. I lean my back against the wall while he walks back to the shed door to prop it open. My eyes instantly flash to the burns on his back. How have I not ever noticed this before? When we’ve hugged? Where did they come from?
“Oh, Dessin…” I whisper, my hand covering my mouth like I have to filter the next words that come out of it. “Your—Your back… what happened—”
“An unfortunate side effect of training.” He’s now kneeling in front of me, peeling the tunic from my ankle. It’s stiff and sticky with my blood. I want to pry and ask him more, but I can see he is trying to process being within this close proximity to Kane’s house, and I don’t want to add more to that burden.
“Shhh!” I hiss, dropping my head back in pain and bang it against the barn wall. “Ow!” I thump my fist against the floorboards. “It stings!”
He chuckles while examining the damage. “I need alcohol, water, and clean cloth.” He thinks for a moment. “Wait here.”
He returns with a crate of bottles of vodka, white towels, and two jugs of water.
“Where did you get that?” I ask.
“There’s a cellar under the house.”
He hands me a slat of wood to bite down on.
The gesture sends me back a year, when Scarlett’s wrists bled. The carpet was stained. Her dress was dark and sodden. But she missed the vein. I had her bite down on a washcloth while I cleaned it and sewed her up.
Mentally, I draw the strings, the arms, the head.
Dessin wraps a coat around my shoulders as I shiver. The cap for the first jug of water falls to the floor before he pours it over my ankle. The coolness is soothing and relieves some of the sting. Blood and water snake around each other in the streams that travel down the sides of my leg.
“Bite down now,” he orders.
I groan. Place the stick between my teeth. Squeeze my eyes shut. I nod to let him know I’m ready, and for the first millisecond it feels cool like the water, then I’m resentfully biting down on the wooden slat as hard as if I were trying to break my own teeth. My skin boils under the stream of poison. A cast-iron skillet, fresh from the stove, melts around my ankle.
I whimper, gasp, and squirm under the river that seeps into my wound and straight to the bone. He switches back to pouring the water and is now dabbing my wound with a white cloth.
I spit out the wood with a gasp. “Doesn’t it ever get lonely? Knowing what you know and not being able to share any of it with me?” It’s a genuine question. But I’m mostly asking to distract myself from the pain.
“I share a lot with you.” Another tight pinch. He’s done binding my ankle.
“You tell me stories and keep me entertained, sure. But something’s going on and it involves me. Neither you nor Kane will let me in on it.” I try to straighten out my legs. “Must get lonely.”
“Kane is dying to tell you. Sometimes it is all he really thinks about. But I’m afraid it’s as simple as… telling you would mean the difference between life and death.”
My eyes snap up to meet his. Death? “Whose death?”
He begins to smile again like I’ve just said the punch line to an inside joke.
“What? Whose death, Dessin?”
“Both of ours.”
11. The Valdawell Family
When the sun is waving farewell to the earth, Dessin returns.
Blankets, pillows, water, a gas lamp, and a few nonperishable canned goods. I get a peek of the sky before he closes the door. It’s the color of a candle when the fire is about to burn out.
“Hi.” He smiles with dimples and an endearing expression. The look of seeing an old friend after years of being apart. Hello, Kane.
