Page 50 of Heart’s Rescue

Rowan

She Came Here for a Reason

The river moved in the night.

It’s not a surprise, of course. I know this landscape moves through space along predictable paths, and I’ve long suspected it follows predictable temporal patterns as well, like the tiny, interlacing gears of a pocket watch. Given enough time, I could probably chart its rhythms well enough to predict the river’s position. My stomach groans and I hunch up my cloak against the cold. Given enough time, and food, and if I didn’t freeze to death, that was.

I turn toward the shelter with a sigh. The glowsoft orbs are back, swimming slowly through the gloom above, and thin, hard balls of ice are drifting lazily down to the snow, filling the air with the gentle rustling whisper of ice on ice. I rock forward on my toes, which are already cold, and try not to think about how utterly miserable I feel.

I’d decided this morning that we’d just skip breakfast unless Arryn said something, and of course, she hadn’t said anything. It was a little disconcerting, the trust she placed in me. Her unspoken assumption I knew what in the voids I was doing and that I’d be able to keep her safe.

Heh. I've done a bang-up job of that so far. She’d been attacked by a void monster, we’d lost half our supplies after I’d stupidly dragged us over thin ice, and then I’d taken my sweet time breaking away from her kiss when she was weak and vulnerable and probably hallucinating that I was someone completely different.

Voids. I huff out a little cloud of steam, then drop to my knees and push the shelter door aside. The quicker I get her through that thin place and back to her world, where she belongs, the better. For both of us.

I crawl through the entrance. Arryn is sitting on the bedroll staring at the flames and pulling her fingers through the wild tangle of her hair. The soft, orange light of the fire caresses her cheeks and lips in a way that makes it hurt to look at her and, for a moment, I just freeze there, my knees in the snow, the warmth of the shelter leaking out into the cold emptiness beyond. Then she turns to me and smiles, and I look down at the pool of slush around the fire before I can embarrass myself any further.

“How is it out there?” she asks.

“Cold,” I reply. “And miserable.”

“That’s a surprise.”

I look up and find a smile dancing around the edge of her lips. Cute. I could get used to this woman’s dry sarcasm, the way she can twist her words into something like a knife.

And, no. I’m about to shove her through a hole in the barrier between our worlds and then never, ever see her again. I turn away and begin shoving stuff into my pack as though the box of tea, empty wooden bowls, and banged-up kettle have deeply offended me.

“Is there anything I can do?” Arryn asks.

I glance up. Arryn’s absently rubbing her left arm in a way that tugs at my memory. Yesterday, dragging her from the frozen river. Trying to pull her soaking wet clothes off without touching or looking at her breasts like a total creep. Somehow I’d managed to pull everything off. Everything, including my amateur bandage around the gash the void beast left on her arm.

“How’s your arm?” I ask. “Did you put another bandage on?”

Her hand drops to her lap. She lifts her left arm, moves it in a slow circle. “It feels okay,” she says. “I think it’s fine.”

She’s probably right. And anyway, my first aid supplies are now scattered across the bottom of the riverbed and, most likely, hidden by a fresh sheet of ice. Still, I realize I’m frowning as I watch her move.

“Have you looked at it?” I ask.

Her eyes widen slightly, and she shakes her head. I get the feeling she doesn’t want to look at it. Honestly, neither do I. Better if all our clothes stay on, really.

But. I settle our remaining two meals into my pack and turn back to her.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s have a look.”

She nods; the firelight catches her throat as she swallows. Then she pulls off the blue sweater, tugging gently on the torn sleeve that’s being held together by my half-ass mending. She’s still wearing my faded red shirt underneath, which is way too big for her and not exactly revealing or even remotely sexy, but my cock still perks up when the sweater hits the bedroll.

Shit. My cock is an idiot. I ignore him, as usual, as Arryn rolls up her sleeve with an expression of grim determination. And then she looks like she’s going to cry.

There’s the thin, red line where the void beast drew blood. It’s scabbed over, and for a moment I’m distracted by imagining that I really should have stitched it. Phaedron probably would have stitched it.

Arryn draws a breath, and it catches in her throat. Thin black lines, a dozen or more of them, leak out of her cut and spread across her dark skin like the first tendrils of smoke rising from a fire.

Oh. Shit.

I stare at Arryn’s arm, at her perfect, dark Worlds Above skin and the tiny, thin little tendrils of the void-touch, and I feel like all the air has gone out of the world. All I can think of, at first, is the way Memodyan screamed as he’d died of void-touch. He’d been the first from the Outer Ring to enter the void, or at least the first of those early explorers to come back. Void-touch covered his entire body by the time he’d come limping back to the World’s End. A runner had gone through the teleportation hubs to the Crystal City for the king’s healing herbs, but by the time she’d returned, Memodyan had already howled his way into the grave. Phaedron had tried to keep me out of the World’s End pub as Memodyan died, but I’d piled wood beneath an open window and watched anyway. In the end, even the whites of his eyes had turned black.

“Rowan?”