I have no time for emotions today. Today I am not a man, but a King. "Have his body taken to the palace. I want Talyn and his team assigned to Onyx, with you and yours assigned to Renna. I'll take over here on the beach."
"You need sleep, Rexxan," she whispers, crouching down at Renna's side and stroking her hair. She runs a manicured thumb over Renna's eyebrows gently, pressing her lips to her forehead. "We all owe hereverything."
* * *
Reluctantly,I leave Rennalya nestled in my huge bed back in the palace. I have washed her face and her hair, and put her in one of my shirts. She looks the size of a pea buried between soft pillows and duvets, deeply asleep. Gently, I place another blanket over her and kiss her cheek, telling her I’ll be back as soon as she wakes up, even if she cannot hear me in her unconscious state. Lynna and two of her healers stay in the room and seventeen guards stand outside. Obsessive, perhaps, but I'm not risking her safety ever again.
When I make the two hour long ride back to the floodwaters’ edge, my soldiers are pulling a small ship out of the water to make room for more to arrive. I pull two children and their mother out of a tiny row boat. It is half underwater and it's a miracle they have even made it this far. I direct them to one of my palace staff who takes their names and where they've come from, and then to a healer who checks the three of them over before sending them to the fields that house hundreds of tents and shelters.
The next boat is not so lucky, and I take a life-threateningly sick teenage boy to the mortal healing tents. As I leave through the tent doors, a tall hooded figure catches my eye, pulling a body out of the water. For the first time in weeks, I feel a glimmer of happiness.
It's him.
Relief unlike anything I’ve ever felt washes over me as I jog over, putting a hand on his shoulder. He turns to face me and disappointment washes over my body, heavy and crushing like tar that I cannot wash off.
Brown eyes stare back at mine. It's not Siddie.
The man steps back and bows to me. "Your Majesty?"
I clear my throat. "Bodies go in the black tent."
"Thank you, my lord," replies the hunter, giving me a wary look. I am surely going insane.
I spend the day on the riverbank, lifting wounded and sick people out of the water. It's horrific, it's haunting, it's exhausting, but when I reunite a father with the children he has feared dead all week, it's rewarding. I just wish I could have the same thing happen to me. I head into the tents of bodies, scanning all the ones from today. None of them is my son, and I suppose that in some kind of sick and twisted way, for that I should be grateful.
"My lord, Lynna sent me to say the Shadow Commander is finally awake."
Jansa, one of my healers, appears at my side with a message, batting her lashes at me. How she thinks I could possibly be in the mood to entertain her flirting after spending my day sorting dead bodies is beyond me. There is only one woman who ever occupies my thoughts of late, and I'm desperate to be at her side to help her. I give Jansa a quick nod of acknowledgement—I need to keep all my healers on my side at the moment—and bolt back to the palace on my horse.
Renna isn't in the bed, and panic shoots through me like a knife.
"We're in here, Rex," comes Lynna's soft voice, drifting from the bathroom.
I lean against the doorway, watching Lynna kneel at Renna's feet, one hand holding her hip to steady her as the other helps her out of her leggings. Lynna folds them neatly, her blonde hair reaching the pale stone floor beneath them. Orange tears glisten in Renna's eyes as her legs shake violently, leaning her weight against the wall behind her.
Coloured tears for deep emotional pain, clear for physical pain. I’d learned that about her in a book. She’s a peculiar creature, my Renna, and I’ll help her feel proud of that in time.
"She'd like a bath," explains Lynna, gently, as she undoes the hooded cloak around Renna's shoulders. "Renna, would you rather I stepped outside and let Rexxan help you?"
She nods, thanking Lynna quietly. I take her small bruised hand in mine, steadying her as she slowly pulls her top over her head, wincing as she raises her arms. The cut on her thigh has been neatly closed by Lynna, but bruises cover her beautiful body, head to toe. I hold both of her hands and walk her to the water’s edge. She's limping, but she makes it, dipping a small foot in the steaming blue pool.
“Okay?" I ask, holding her upright as she dips her toes an inch beneath the glassy surface.
"This is so humiliating," she whispers, and my heart cracks. That's how she sees this?
"That you are even standing here right now is enough to have me and the rest of this kingdom worshipping at your feet. This—,“ I gesture at her entire body, “—isn't humiliation. This is strength. Now, I'm going to put you in this water and I'm going to wash your hair, not because you cannot, but because I want to. Because I don’t find that a lot of things make me happy, but looking after you makes me genuinely happy."
A ghost of a smile crosses her lips as I sink her beneath the waterline. I hear her breath catch in her throat, watching the muscles beneath the brown skin of her back and abdomen tense as it hits her thigh. It's once she's in the water and running a cloth over her arms that the dam finally bursts. It's one quiet sob, and then it's hundreds. She's held herself together in front of others, she's been so strong, but she shatters to pieces in front of me now with her beautiful head in her hands.
I sink down to face her in the water, pulling her to me as she finally has time to process the death of her closest friend. I've known loss better than most; I've lost most people in my life, and so I know there is nothing I can say or do except be here for her to cling to whilst she succumbs to the cruel hands of grief. When the sobs eventually subside to quiet sniffs, I gently wash her hair, massaging her head how she likes me to, hoping she's feeling loved.
It’s important to me that she feels loved.
It’s important that she knows thatI’m in love with her.
"They wouldn't let me see Onyx when I woke up," she mumbles, through silent tears.
"No, you can't visit him just yet. They're working on his wrist to realign the bones. I saw him earlier and his breathing was stronger than it was yesterday."
