“You want to—” The Berserker made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Kid, I could snap your neck without breaking a sweat, and you want to play nurse?”
“I know. But you’re hurt.” Cass’s hands were shaking as he reached for his bag, but he didn’t stop. “I can’t just not help. It’s not how I work.”
“That’s either the bravest thing I’ve ever heard or the stupidest.”
“Probably stupid,” Cass admitted, pulling out antiseptic and bandages. “Everyone says I don’t think about consequences properly.”
He pushed himself up on unsteady legs, and the Berserker went very still—that predator-stillness, like he was deciding whether Cass was a threat or prey or something else entirely. Cass took a step toward him, then another, his heart pounding.
Up close, the Berserker was even more overwhelming. Cass barely came up to his chest, which meant he had to tilt his head back to meet those unsettling green eyes. The strawberries and cream scent was stronger here, almost dizzying.
“I’m going to touch you now,” Cass whispered. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Christ.” The Berserker’s voice was rough, but he didn’t move away. “Fine. Do whatever you’re going to do.”
Cass reached for his hand. The Berserker’s fingers were huge compared to his—long and scarred and capable of terrible things. But he let Cass take them, let Cass turn his hand over to examine the damage. Some of the tension bled out of his massive frame as Cass began cleaning the wounds. There were scars layered over scars on those hands, a history of old violence. And when Cass glanced up (just to check his expression) he saw more scars on the man’s neck and face. Precise lines along his jaw, trailing down toward his throat.
The scars should have been ugly.
They weren’t.
Cass tucked that confusing information away in the part of his mind he kept to himself during harmony audits and focused on the split knuckles instead.
“You’ve done this before,” the Berserker said after a long moment.
“Done what?”
“Patched someone up. You know what you’re doing.”
“I like helping people. It’s one of the things I’m actually good at.” Cass kept his eyes on his work. “I’m not very good at the spiritual parts.”
“The spiritual parts?” There was something amused in the Berserkers voice, like he was smiling when he asked that.
“The philosophy. I understand healing—that’s simple. Someone is hurt, you make them less hurt. But the rest of it...” He trailed off, reaching for bandages.
“What’s your name?”
“Cassiopeia,” Cass managed, his voice still shaky. “But everyone calls me Cass. Are you going to tell me your name or should I just keep thinking of you as ‘the Berserker who might kill me but smells like dessert’?”
The Berserker barked out a laugh. “Riot. And I’m not going to kill you.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
The certainty in his voice made something in Cass feel a little bit better, but not much. “Okay. But if you change your mind, could you wait until I finish bandaging your hands? I don’t like leaving medical care incomplete. It feels spiritually untidy.”
“Jesus Christ,” Riot muttered, but he let Cass continue working. “You’re Elysian, right? I wasn’t aware they were sending out medical missionaries that look like princesses.”
“I’m just a regular missionary, not a medical one, but I always make sure I have stuff to help people. It’s a terrible feeling tobe injured and not have any help. I’m supposed to be recruiting people to come to my community.” Cass kept his eyes focused on Riot’s hands, hoping he could hide the fact he was blushing. No one had ever told him he looked like a princess before.
“Which community would that be?”
“It’s close to here, I think, but I don’t remember, I was so excited to leave the territory for the first time I didn’t pay attention to the route,” Cass said, focused on bandaging a particularly deep cut. “It’s my first time out here trying to help lost souls find their way to... to trans-send-dance.”
“Transcendence,” Riot corrected quietly.
“That one,” Cass nodded, grateful. “The words are hard sometimes. Brother Matthias uses a lot of big words that I don’t always say right. I can hear them in my head the right way, but then my mouth mushes them up.”
