A deep familiar voice swore nearby. Someone grabbed her arm in a powerful grip and shoved her, armchair and all, several feet back from the sunshine. The chair’s wooden legs scraped along the floor. She blinked until her vision cleared.
Rune crouched in front of her, the long broad muscles of his shoulders bunched. He held her by the wrists. Shaking with pain, her fingers curled, she tried to pull free but he refused to let her go. Strong as she was, he was stronger. Extreme emotion darkened his gaze, and his handsome face was settled in lines of severity. The skin around his taut mouth whitened as he watched the blisters on her hands fade.
Carling regarded him wearily. After her emotional storm earlier and the twin jolts of agony, she didn’t know if she had the energy to face Rune’s particular brand of volcanic energy. His presence blasted her hypersensitive nerves.
“Sorry about that,” Rune said, his voice controlled and even. His rigid grip on her arms relaxed and became gentle. “I had a knee-jerk reaction when I saw your hand burning. Does it help?”
Her weary look turned speculative. His control was not as reassuring as it might otherwise have been, coupled as it was with the violent upheaval she could sense roiling through his emotions. “What do you mean, does it help? Has someone been talking out of turn? I told you to go. What are you still doing here?”
“Yes, someone has been talking,” said Rune. “I know everything, or at least I know everything that Rhoswen knows.” He let his hands slip down her arms to clasp her fingers with care. “Come on, tell me. Why were you burning yourself?”
She looked over his broad shoulders toward the daylight, and chose not to struggle for the return of her hands. His were warm and callused, broad-palmed and long-fingered. “Sometimes the pain helps me to fight off an episode.”
“Rhoswen called it fading. Is that what it’s like?”
“Not really,” she said. “It is a disassociation from reality. Sometimes I go into the past. Sometimes I don’t know where I go.”
Rune eased one of her hands into her lap and released it. He took the long dark fall of her hair and smoothed it behind one of her shoulders.
Her eyelids lowered and she glanced sidelong at his hand. This Wyr had temerity, she would give him that. An impulse to violence flickered through her. She had struck at him once. Maybe she would again. Her gaze lifted to his face. Four pale lines still scored one lean cheek. They would be gone in another half hour or so.
She could see in his eyes that he knew her impulse to violence was there. That did not stop him from reaching higher to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, stroking along the delicate shell of flesh. He touched her as he had earlier, as if he thought she was exquisite beyond all words, his expression calm, un-afraid. It bewildered her. Why would he do such a thing? Why did his touch cause her to feel such a dark violent pain?
Why was her other hand still resting in his?
“I do not think you are a very sensible man,” she murmured.
“No doubt you are correct,” he replied. “And I am still here because I have to ask you a question. Why do you have a dog?”
“Rhoswen has asked me that many times,” she said. “I don’t know why. He was hurt badly when we found him. He was down to almost half his body weight, so the vet thought he had been a stray for a while, and then he had been hit by a car. Even though he is so tiny, he has a ferocious spark of a spirit. He was broken all over and he just wouldn’t die.” She shrugged. “And I brought him home.”
Rune’s gaze was too keen as he inspected her face. What did he think he saw in her? “And now you cook him chicken,” he said.
“He’s so happy to eat,” she said. She looked down. Her hand was still in Rune’s. He was rubbing her healed fingers with his thumb. “Dancing fit-to-be-tied happy.”
“I must say, he’s got a point there,” said Rune with a lopsided smile.
“I’ve been trying to remember what it’s like to be hungry,” Carling said. “I cook the chicken, and I smell it and l say to myself, this is food.” She whispered, “I think I’m trying to remember what it is like to be alive before I die.”
Her words ghosted through the silence in the room.
Rune was still crouching at her feet like a great lion. His presence was more intense than a fire’s. He had not only warmed her through, she felt nourished and revitalized. He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “I would far rather try to find a way to keep you alive before you die,” he said.
She stirred. “Rune,” she said.
His fierce gaze captured and held hers. “You threw away that favor I owed you.”
“I did worse than that,” she said. She touched his cheek with a finger. “And I may do worse again.”
He rolled his eyes. What a remarkably handsome man he was. “So what,” he said. “I kissed you and you slapped me. What an utter heroine you are.”
“You have got to be joking,” she said.