He pulled it out, gasping. “Can’t you see?”
“Sit down,” she commanded, and when he didn’t move, she placed her hand on his left shoulder, forcing him down.
She took the forceps and needle.
“You’re a stubborn idiot. You know that?” she said as she cleaned her hands. She examined his arm, but there was no disgust in her eyes, only a resolute sternness, like the steady gaze of a medic.
“How many people have you stitched up?” he asked.
“Few, but enough. Ferma made me volunteer at an army hospital on the southern border,” she muttered as she threaded a new needle.
“Really?” He gasped as she pierced his skin, jerking his arm back, but Elena held him firmly, her hands sure and steady.
“Quit squirming,” she said, handing him the bottle of whiskey, “and drink.”
Yassen hesitated. He never drank. But the pain in his arm made him toss back his head and take a long swig. A mistake. The whiskey burned his throat and his nose. Yassen coughed as Elena knotted the thread.
“Easy there, yeseri,” she said.
She was so close to him that he could feel her breath on his skin, see the scratches on her forearms and neck from her fall in the Agnee mountains. He wanted her to sit. For him to clean and dress her wounds. The ones on her skin, and the ones that went deeper.
“Elena,” he began.
“Mm?” Her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, but when she felt his gaze, she looked up. Locked eyes.
He stilled, breath caught somewhere between his chest and throat.
Damn her eyes.
They seemed to hold some power over him, some intoxication that made him want to draw closer, to hold her, to take her arms and kiss the pain that she carried.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice low, her breath brushing his lips.
“For what?”
“Last night,” she said and looked away. “For staying.”
She opened her mouth to speak again, but no sound came out.
“It’s all right,” he said gently. “Grief is like that.”
She looked at him, her eyes bright with tears and a tremulous smile tugging her lips. “There’s a song that begins that way,” she said. “‘Grief is like that, my love, but the stars are here, and they will lend us their eyes.’”
“‘So that we may gaze upon each other when we are apart,’” he finished. It was the same song he had been humming earlier.
He began to hum it now as Elena smiled, picking up the needle again.
“Keep going,” she said as she threaded.
She worked quickly, her hands gentle yet firm, and despite the pain, Yassen found himself continuing the song.
If only to hum it for her.
“There,” she said after a while. She stepped back, surveying her work. “That should patch you up for the next few days.”
His forehead was damp with sweat. His arm smelled like whiskey, and he had a sour taste in his mouth, but the stitches were neat, clean. They would prevent further infection.
Hopefully long enough for us to reach the Black Scales.
