Alex took almost exclusive care of her, being gentle when she needed it, but also tough when she resisted. Every few hours he spread a pungent, oily balm over her burns, murmuring apologies for hurting her, but she no longer needed the strap to get through it. Twice daily he forced her to stretch and move her arm and leg in multiple directions, saying it was necessary to keep muscles and tendons and skin limber. During those exercises she unleashed torrents of obscenities at him, but he only smiled and told her she needed to be more creative. Every hour he made her drink water and broth—laced with sedatives, she was sure.
Clare was often there as well, stroking her hair as Alex washed away the dead skin every day. Her friend’s face was drawn and pale, and her red-rimmed eyes never focused on Sage, even as she talked to distract her from Alex’s work. Despite the haze of pain and medicines, Sage was never able to forget Lieutenant Gramwell or how he’d died, but she didn’t know how to tell Clare how sorry she was.
“Did we stop the invasion?” she asked Alex one day.
Alex nodded. “Once the army was severed, most of the Kimisar scattered. I don’t think Casmun or Demora needs to worry about an invasion through here for many, many years. There’s a wall of black glass blocking the way, thanks to you.”
Another time she asked about Gramwell, but she wasn’t surprised when Alex said they hadn’t found him. He was probably buried under the wall of melted stone.
Her beautiful sword, too, was gone. She was the only one bothered by that. Banneth said he’d have a new one made as soon as they returned to Osthiza. “Like your friend, it perished in saving us, and there is no greater honor,” he told her.
That sentiment wasn’t likely to console Clare.
It was almost two weeks before Banneth and Alex agreed that Sage could be moved. They traveled slowly for the benefit of the wounded, of which there were many. All told, over a dozen Norsari had been lost either on the ridge or in the bowl, plus ten other Demoran soldiers. Banneth would be leaving behind about forty of his own men, and Sage cried for a day when she heard Darit had survived, but lost his left arm.
Before they put her in the wagon, Alex wrapped her burns in bandages for the first time and helped her into an outfit Clare had tailored to cover her where her skin could be touched. It was an awkward-looking affair that laced in strange places to make it easy to get on and off, but it was better than the blankets that kept slipping. Until they were moving, however, Sage hadn’t appreciated being as still as they’d kept her. The constant rocking of the wagon set off waves of pain reminiscent of the first few days, and after an hour she begged for more of the opiates Alex had been weaning her off of. Alex frowned but allowed it.
By the tenth day of travel she needed higher and more frequent doses to keep the pain at bay, and she’d grown to like the hazy hours when she didn’t have to think or remember what had happened. When Sage asked for a sedative that night after they’d stopped and Alex refused, she screamed at him. He tried to gather her in his arms, and she fought him until the pain was too great, and she collapsed against him, weeping.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he rocked her. “I shouldn’t have let it go on as long as I did, but I couldn’t stand to see you in pain.”
“Then let me have it,” she sobbed. “I want to forget.”
Alex looked stricken. “Forget what, Sage?”
“Gramwell, Charlie…” She kept going. “The guards in the barracks, the men on the river, the Kimisar in the pass—I killed them all.” Alex said nothing but continued to hold her. “And me,” she finished.
“You?”
It was selfish. She was alive, and she should be grateful, yet that wasn’t how she felt.
He kissed the top of her head. “You’ll heal, Sage. It just takes time.”
Sage didn’t want to say it, but she was in too much pain to stop the words. “I’ll be scarred all over.”
“Yes, probably.” Alex’s lopsided smile was belied by the tears in his eyes. “You’ll have me beaten for battle wounds. I don’t know if I’ll be able to live that down.”
She tried to laugh, but instead the fears and emotions she’d drugged away for the last weeks came rushing in at once, demanding to be felt. Sage could only cry uncontrollably as they hit her in wave after wave.
Alex remained silent but held her to him even after she fell asleep, exhausted.
111
THE NEXT DAYS ran together in one long, terrible stretch of time. She was dimly aware that Alex insisted on stopping for her, but Banneth and Clare and most of their group moved on. The only pain relief Alex would let her have was that which came from the burn salve he still applied several times a day, and it wasn’t nearly enough. Her mood swung wildly between rage and depression, and very little of what she ate she kept down. She tried appealing to Casseck, but he shook his head sadly and sided with Alex.
No one would listen, so Sage screamed and threw fits and lapsed into sullen silence for hours. Or she lay weeping, too sad to even lift her head.
At times she was so cold she shook as though caught in a blizzard. Then suddenly she would be gasping with heat, sweat soaking her hair and dripping into her wounds, burning like molten lead.
And there was pain. Always pain.
Pain that itched and pain that stabbed. Pain that rolled like thunder and struck like lightning. Her skin felt like it was sewing itself together or crawling with insects. They tied her hands and feet together like a slaughtered hog to keep her from scratching.
Nightmares, too, came.
She dreamed of fire, of being trapped under a melting wall of black glass. One night she dreamed of cutting her burned limbs off and of the look of horror when Alex saw her. Yet even in her nightmares, he never left her, and he was always there when she woke, hoarse from screaming.
Once she saw her father, or thought she did. He walked into the camp and sat by the fire without looking at her, even when she called out to him. Then Alex came over and forced her to look in his eyes while she tried to tell him what she saw, and he insisted she was wrong. When she looked again, Father was gone, and she cried all night.
Then one morning she woke feeling clearheaded and alert—and hungry. She carefully pushed herself into a sitting position, wincing with the pain, and looked around. They were camped at the base of two stone columns—the Protector’s Gate. So they were near Osthiza.
Alex lay nearby, a bucket she remembered vomiting into repeatedly near his head. There were dark circles under his eyes and dirty trails of tears on his cheeks. Movement by the smoldering campfire caught her eye, and she saw Casseck squatting next to it, coaxing it back to life in the gray light of dawn. He jumped a little when he saw her.
A few seconds later he was untying her wrists and giving her a cup of water to drink. “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.
“Like a newborn foal,” she answered. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, but it was different from how they’d shaken and writhed for the last few days. It felt cleaner somehow. “What happened?”
“We had to let the medicine work itself out of your system. I’ve heard of it being done with those recovering from severe injury, but it’s quite different to watch it happen.” Cass glanced over at Alex. “He never left your side.”
Memories surfaced in her mind, but she wasn’t sure which were real and which were hallucinations. “Did I ever hit him?”
Cass smiled ruefully. “Once or twice. Mostly you scratched. But with your injuries it was hard to restrain you too much.”
Her cheeks burned with shame. “How long did it take?”
“This is the eighth morning.”
“Eight days?” She dropped the cup and put her hands over her eyes, her left arm throbbing with the movement.
Alex stirred and sat up, instantly awake. “What’s happening?”
“I think she’s finally out of the woods,” Cass said, refilling the cup with water.
Alex crawled toward her, and Sage reached out to touch the streaks of red on his face and neck. She had done that. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry.”
“No, no,” he said, pulling her carefully into his strong arms, the way he’d learned to do over the past weeks. “It’s over, love.” Alex rocked her and stroked her hair as he kissed her again and again. “I’m just glad to have you back.”