Page 60 of Revealing Fate

Despite the delicate precision of his touch, Kitty ground her molars as a fresh wave of pain lanced her. “How bad?”

“Bad enough. The wounds need to be disinfected.” He paused. “You need stitches.”

“How…ironic,” she gritted. “Don’t suppose…I can refuse…like you did.”

The new scar above Kal’s eye itched. The one she referenced. He’d sustained the injury during a good-natured bout with Adder in Cindamar, before Kitty knew Adder was an ally. She told him to have it mended. He spent the night drinking whiskey instead.

“No.”

“Then why…the hesitation?”

“Because I’m no mender. These will scar. And it will hurt.” Like a sonofabitch.

Kitty’s nostrils flared, and she clenched her jaw. Despite the attempt at a brave face, Kal sensed her fear. Her exhaustion compounded every raw nerve. He knew what she was feeling, but then, he was no stranger to suffering. Facing necessary agony was uncharted territory for the tender creature before him.

“I don’t have an anesthetic, but I’ve got something that’ll help,” he offered.

“What?”

“Whiskey.”

Kitty’s honey-green eyes collided with his. Gods, how he wished he could inoculate himself against the spell she cast. Even now, after all her secrets and lies, Kal couldn’t break free from the power this woman still didn’t know she wielded. She lay before him, battered and bleeding, yet without an uttered word, Kal was the broken one being pieced back together by her gaze.

“Pick a good bottle,” she said.

He chose his best.

An hour later, Kal sat on the top step of his front porch, listening to nearby crickets sing their discordant song. Every few minutes, the chirping melody was punctuated by the throaty hoot of an owl. Kal’s finest bottle of bourbon dangled from his fingers, nearing empty. He swirled the amber liquor, its color dark in the encroaching dusk, and swallowed the remainder.

Kitty was out cold. She’d doggedly downed three respectable gulps of whiskey, passed out roughly twenty minutes later, and hadn’t woken since. He cleaned her wounds and stitched them as best he could. Kal hadn’t exaggerated; he wasn’t a mender, but he’d sewn flesh on more than one occasion, and after tying off the last suture, couldn’t help but admire his work. She would undoubtedly scar, as he’d warned, but the edges were approximated well enough, and he felt confident the wounds would heal without any complication.

Kitty had begun snoring as he smeared an old warrior’s salve on the injuries. He debated removing her filthy clothing and cleaning the rest of her but settled on wiping the dirt and sweat from her face, arms, and torso, before folding a blanket over her sleeping form. Kal wasn’t sure whether further intrusion would be well received, and, if he were honest with himself, he didn’t need the added torment of seeing her naked. His own imagination was torture enough in that regard, and it didn’t involve her injured, inebriated, or unconscious.

Now, here he sat, respectably buzzed and wishing his tumultuous mind would seek oblivion as easily as hers. His body desperately needed sleep. However, once again, Kal’s needs went unfulfilled, another sacrifice to circumstance. In this case, a visitor. Even with his vision going fuzzy at the edges and the blue-black shades of the nighttime forest, Kal recognized Santhe’s approach. It was slow, cautious.

He waited until she got within ten paces of the porch, then patted the step beside him. “I won’t bite.”

Santhe eyed him warily. “It’s not the teeth that concern me. It’s the dashing me against a boulder and tossing my broken corpse in the dirt.”

Kal made a show of looking about. “You’re in luck, San. Not a boulder in sight.”

She sat beside him. “What the hell was that, Kal? What were you thinking? Why did⁠—”

Kal stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and a shake of his head. The motion rattled his brain. “Please. Not tonight, Santhe.”

She studied him. “Are you alright?”

Kal searched for the familiar burn of anger but only found weary irritation. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she mused, ticking items off on her fingers. “Because we attempted to rescue an Asterosian Fate and it went horribly awry, your reckless—and rather annoying—friend now hates you, you violently impeded a prisoner’s physical trial—something that’s never been done, by the way—and afterward, you single-handedly leveled a sizeable section of ancient woodland.”

Kal inspected the shallow cuts and abrasions that riddled his hands. He’d scrubbed them thoroughly before attending to Kitty’s wounds but still felt like his nails were crusted with dirt and dried blood.

“Oh yes,” Santhe said, noticing his scraped knuckles. “I saw the results of your tantrum—the aftermath, if you will.” When he didn’t answer, she added more softly, “I’m asking because I care about you, you idiot.”

The oppressive loneliness from before lifted just barely, allowing a tentative flare of gratitude to soften Kal’s heart. He wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot. But he didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in despair. Leaders never did. “I will be,” he said, answering her original question, more out of reassurance than sincerity.

“Did you…Did you kill her?”