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But she didn’t want Hakkan’s attention either. She peeled off the bed, wincing as she rose, and shuffled toward Gireth’s form on a makeshift bed of sticks and hide. Vesara and Hakkan looped her arms over their shoulders to escort her.
“He’s alive. Just heavily medicated,” Hakkan clarified. “Passed out the second his head hit something soft.”
Tenah took Gireth’s rough, bronze hand in her own, willing life into him. “His back…”
“Fractured,” Hakkan said, eyes flashing with remorse.
She clenched her jaw until her teeth hurt. She could wallow in all the ways this was her fault. Cirel. The armies she’d helped him acquire. The massacre at the gathering. Gireth’s broken body. Aeyis’s Corruption. Ames’s death.
But that would only allow Chaos to fester. She had to build upon those horrible mistakes instead.
Focusing her mind, she invited Rama into her channels. Strands of holy, comforting magic flowed from her fingers into Gireth. She wasn’t certain this would work. Rama had healed wounds inflicted by Chaos, but could it heal natural wounds too? She debated how much magic to give him in one session, knowing she needed to keep some for her father. Gireth hadn’t so much as twitched, his breaths heavy with a drugged sleep.
Holding her fear in check, Tenah dared ask, “Renton?”
Vesara and Hakkan exchanged confused looks.
“He wasn’t with you in the Void?” Vesara asked.
The vision Rama had shared in the temple was real then. “Fuck!” Tenah said. “Stupid Murfell brothers!”
Vesara stiffened at her side. “What’s going on?”
“Aeyis is a self-sacrificing bastard who is trapped in Adra, and my father has Renton—whether that’s against his will or not is yet to be uncovered.”
Vesara clicked her tongue. “Idiots. The both of them.”
A hoarse voice interrupted. “If this is another mirage, I give up. Tell the gods to smite me.”
Tenah’s head whipped around to Gireth. He had a fist raised in the air, shaking slightly in feigned anger. Her heart swelled as he rolled up and swung his legs around to stand.
“Gireth!” she cried out, throwing her arms around him, ignoring the sharp lance of pain everywhere the sun had burned her. She’d not allowed Rama to touch her blisters. Not when she needed every drop to heal others.
His hands gripped her hips, pulling her flush against him.
“Is this real life?” he murmured against her neck.
“Real life,” she replied.
“You did it, Tenah. We all knew you could.”
A feminine snarl broke them apart. They turned to Vesara stomping over to a dark brown horse. She mounted it.
“Hey!” Hakkan shouted, lurching toward her. “What do you think you’re doing with my horse?”
“Something I should have done ages ago,” Vesara said.
“What, steal it?” Hakkan’s brows furrowed.
Vesara peeled away from camp, her residual anger enough to warn that, whatever her task was, it wouldn’t be pleasant. In a spray of dust, the assassin became a speck on the heat-warbled horizon.
“Yeah, all right. Sure, you can borrow her,” Hakkan grumbled, shoulders dropping in defeat as he stalked off. “You wouldn’t think I commanded a band of ferocious warriors.”
* * *
The ride south to Firesteep eroded Tenah’s sanity.
Would Aeyis be able to hold on while she saved Renton and healed her father? Was she sacrificing one life for another?
