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“Come on, Dessin!” Niles waves a wet hand toward him.
Dessin glares in his direction. A dark flash of impatience.
“I mean,sir….” Niles corrects himself.
I smirk, debating on whether I should do this or if it’ll even work like Niles said. One last glance at his silent-suffering expression, and I decide.
Letting my head fall back to the trickling water, I let out a soft, satisfied moan that dances across the water. Just like Niles suggested I do before.
And in the corner of my half-closed eyes, Dessin tugs his shirt over his head and jumps in. The waves splash in a cool mist over us. Ruth cheers that she got everyone to stop running and go swimming instead.
“I might be a genius,” Niles mutters under his breath, impressed that his own advice worked.
And that’s when the splashing starts. Niles, Ruth, and Warrose break out into a war of bickering about who would die first if they had to swim against the current while continuing to splash each other in the face.
Dessin places one arm over a boulder, keeping himself in place as the water brushes past him. He turns his back to me, and I see it. The intricate pattern of burn marks from a collapsed ceiling. The way it was melted and healed, morphed a shade darker than his tan skin tone.
I float closer to him, reaching my hand out to his back, grazing the tips of my fingers over the raised skin. I sigh. He got these because of me. I’m not bothered at all by the appearance or feel of it under my hand, but I am frozen, numb, and unable to decide how I feel about this.
He got these scars from saving me. From trying to save Scarlett. He’s put his life at risk so many times, walked through fire, fought off an army of beasts, carried my broken body to an infirmary for miles.
Why would he do all of that just to lie and betray my trust?
Dessin lets his head fall, reacting to my featherlight touch on his back. I know he’s tired. When I fall asleep at night, he tosses and turns, gets up, walks around. Whatever weighs on his shoulders is killing him slowly. And that’s suffocating to think about. A man so powerful, so genius, so magnificent is being brought down by what he knows.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
“Not anymore.”
I wince, realizing he was a patient in the asylum when Scarlett died that day. He had to return to the asylum with third-degree burns. He had to suffer through his treatments without being cared for. My heart cracks right down the middle.
“I’m sorry you were only there because of me…”
He sighs, still not looking back at me. “I’d do it a thousand more times.”
“Why?”
Stupid question. But is it? After everything I’ve learned. Why would he put himself through all of this for me?
“Because… I’d never let you burn alone.”
“Well done, idiots. Now we have to run the rest of the way in solid water weight,” Warrose shouts back at us, his footsteps making loud squishing sounds in his boots.
Ruth laughs, keeping up right behind Niles and me.
We’re only a few yards away from hitting the forest line of Hangman’s Valley. The sky is cloudless and sunny, the wind is gentle, and the air smells of lavender and honeysuckle.
“Why do you suppose Rydran helped me?” Niles asks.
“Who?”
“The merman.”
“Oh. He’s not a merman.”
“Yes, he is.”
“I saw him on land—walking—twice,” I say.
