And then what?
Would his men come looking for him? Hear about the witch who’d dragged his bloody body out of the dark woods?
It would be funny if savinghimwas what got her killed.
With a grunt, she hauled him to his feet. He was still trying to twist around.
“I need the sword,” he gasped out. “It’s blessed. It will protect us.”
She snorted. Fat lot of good it had done him. “I’ll get your sword as soon as you get on the horse. Can you sit in the saddle?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t know if she believed him, but he did manage to get a foot in the stirrup and with her hands on his ass and a lot of shoving and cursing, together they got him up there. He hunched forward, practically falling across the horse’s neck. She passed him the reins while she turned to grab the sword.
When she turned back to the witch hunter, he was sitting more or less upright and watching her with those piercing blue eyes she remembered so well. His lips were bloodless but he only swayed in the saddle a bit.
“Do I know you?” he asked harshly.
She barked out a laugh and handed him his sword. “We need to get out of here.”
He looked past her into the woods. “My men?—”
“They’re gone. I don’t know where they went, but there’s no one else out here. If I don’t get you stitched up soon, you’re not going to make it.”
He scowled at her like this situation was somehow her fault. His hand flexed on the hilt of his sword and for a moment she wondered if it had been a mistake to give it to him. But heonly sheathed the thing and then held out his hand. “Take my arm and climb up behind me. Kenzi will carry us both. You can steady me if I pass out again.”
She hesitated, not wanting to climb on the big animal. Not wanting to be so close to him. Her desire to get out of the woods as quickly as possible won out.
She didn’t take his hand. He’d probably just fall out of the saddle and hurt himself worse if he tried to pull her up now. Instead, she climbed onto the fallen log and hauled herself up behind him while he kept his horse steady with soothing words. She was perched awkwardly behind him, sitting half on the bedroll. The height made her a little dizzy, but she gritted her teeth and wrapped her arms around him, careful to avoid his injury as much as possible. He grunted and turned his head. “Which way?”
She hated the determined set of his jaw. The way his blond hair caught the light. She hated that even after all these years, even covered with mud and blood, he still looked like some kind of hero. And that was a filthy lie. There was nothing heroic about him.
“Back up the bank and to the left,” she said. “Straight out to the edge of the woods.”
He urged his horse up the embankment. When he swayed, she tightened her hold on him, but he steadied and turned the horse in the direction she pointed. A fast walk was all he seemed able to manage, but it still got them away from the sound of the wolves faster than their legs would have carried them. Certainly, faster than she would have been able to carry him.
She couldn’t help but feel as the sun began to drop and the sky darkened, that they weren’t alone in that breathless woods. The hair lifted on the back of her neck and she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. Something waited back there, malevolent and aware.
Something that watched their every step as they painstakingly made their way home.
6
Rowan listened to the wind howl outside and tried not to think about wolves. A storm had rolled in near dusk. It had raged for the last hour in fitful downpours of icy-cold rain, punctuated by the crack of ground-shaking thunder and flashes of lightning. The door rattled every so often as if something were trying to get inside, and the shutters trembled with every gust. There hadn’t been a storm this bad in years.
“He’s not going to make it,” she said dispassionately, staring at the man sprawled across her bed.
A storm raged inside him too.
Sweat darkened his hair and glistened on his skin. There were two bright splotches of feverish color on his cheeks. His lips moved as if he were speaking to someone, though no words came out.
With a jerk, he flung out one arm and barely missed hitting her mother. The thin blanket covering him shifted, baring his right flank. A collarbone. A glimpse of a well-muscled chest. The white bandages stood out in stark relief against his tanned skin. At least there was no red showing through anymore. They’d finally stopped the bleeding.
Bending down, she tugged the blanket back up to cover him. She’d done her best by him. Cleaning and stitching up the cuts on his side. Plundering their supplies for herbs to make a poultice when infection set in. Tending him through the fever and wrestling him back into the bed when he tried to fight his nightmares. Dribbling water over his parched lips when he became so unresponsive he would no longer swallow it down.
She’d gotten to him too late. He’d lost too much blood and his wounds—three great slashes across his torso that definitely looked like claw marks—had been open for hours before she’d cleaned them out. She thought he actually might have dragged his belly through the dirt and muck of the forest floor trying to get to the river. The fever had started before they even made it out of the woods.
Her mother wrung out the cloth in the basin beside the bed and continued to serenely wipe the sweat from his brow. “God’s will be done.”
