“I can see more than you think.” She gestures at the ground beside her. “Now sit. Please.”
I sit.
The hollow feels smaller with both of us in it. Our shoulders nearly brush against the curved walls. Her scent reaches me beneath the blood and sweat—clean and sharp, a fragrance that doesn’t belong in this place of death. Her breathing is still too fast but steadying. Her hands move with practiced efficiency as she begins treating her wounds.
I should look away. Should give her privacy. Should do anything except sit here watching like some lovesick youth who’s never seen a woman before.
I don’t look away.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THAROS
She works without complaint.
The gash on her side is worse than I thought. Deep enough that I can see the layers of muscle beneath, though thankfully not deep enough to have hit anything vital. She threads the needle with hands that barely tremble, then begins stitching herself closed with the same matter-of-fact efficiency she brings to everything.
I’ve seen soldiers do this. Mercenaries who couldn’t afford to wait for healers, who learned to patch themselves in the field because the alternative was bleeding out in some nameless ditch. But watching her do it—watching her face stay controlled as she pierces her own flesh, pulls the thread through, ties off each stitch with a precision that speaks of too much practice?—
“You’re staring.”
I jerk my gaze away. Too late. She’s already noticed.
“You should be dead.” My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “The fight in the Heartgrove. The possession. Any one of those moments should have killed you.”
“You’ve mentioned.” She ties off another stitch, snips the thread with a small blade from her kit. “Several times, actually.Is there a point to this observation, or are you just enjoying the reminder?”
“You keep surviving when you shouldn’t.” I watch her reach for the medicinal salve, begin coating the burns on her arms where the vines touched her. The skin there is angry red, blistered in places. It must hurt like hell. She doesn’t flinch. “What makes you different?”
“Stubbornness, mostly.” She finishes with the salve, starts wrapping the burns with clean bandages. “And a healthy disregard for odds. Numbers have never impressed me. What matters is what you do when the numbers are against you.”
“And what do you do?”
“Whatever it takes.” She meets my eyes finally, and there’s raw intensity in her expression. The air in the hollow feels suddenly thinner. “I fight. I survive. I refuse to stay down no matter how many times I get knocked there.” Her mouth quirks—not quite a smile, but close. “My partner used to say I was too stupid to know when I was beaten. She meant it as a compliment.”
“Cyrilla.”
“Yes.” The smile fades. “Cyrilla.”
Silence falls between us. The kind of silence that has texture, that fills space with things neither of us is saying. I think about what she told me before—about the relationship that was dying, the contract taken without goodbye, the years of guilt and grief that brought her to this forest.
“You know all of that already.” She’s wrapping the last bandage now, her movements slowing as the immediate work is done. “What I don’t know is why you saved me. The truth, this time.”
“I told you the truth.”
“You told me you chose to. You told me I matter.” She sets aside her supplies, turns to face me fully. In the dim light ofthe hollow, her eyes are dark steel, sharp enough to cut. “What you didn’t tell me is why. You’ve spent your whole existence avoiding attachment. Knowing that caring about anyone gives the King leverage. So why care about me? Why risk everything for someone who came here to kill you?”
The question hits somewhere deep. I feel it reverberate through me, stirring things I’ve kept buried for years. Decades.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” I look at my hands. The scars there, layered over decades. The dark staining of sap and soil that never quite washes off. The claws my nails have become, useful for violence and little else.
“And now?”
Now. Such a simple word for such a complicated truth.
