“Why are you doing that?”
The healer didn’t answer, since she was mid-chant, and neither did Ryker.
Speed and split. “Wait, you’re going to…” My mouth dropped open, and this time it wasn’t to cough.
“I can’t have you sick for weeks.” He looked down at his chest before he told the healer, “Give me as much of it as you can.”
The healer added more marks, and seemed to do it gingerly, too. Not that I faulted her for it. He could be a bit of a bastard.
His entire chest was marked by the time she was done. He was doing this because he needed something from me. He wasn’t a good person. This was motivated. Now, I just needed to repeat that to myself a thousand times so I didn’t feel bad.
And why should I feel bad? He was the one to throw me in the lake. I had punched him in the mouth. But he had pushed me first. He was also holding me hostage in exchange for help with the Debt Collector. He wouldn’t have gotten his hands on me if I hadn’t been scoping out his place to rob. My head was spinning with the back-and-forth. Maybe we were both bastards.
The healer left, and I tried to crawl out of the bed. I’d go tough it out in my room. I didn’t want to do this alone, but I could do it alone. I’d be fine.
“Where are you going?”
“Figured I’d give you your bed back, since you might need it more than I will.” I wrapped my pelt around me as I sat up.
“Stay there. Your room isn’t comfortable.”
“You sure?” Was he going to leave? I couldn’t tell if he was putting on a fresh shirt because he was leaving or just because. I certainly wasn’t asking him to stay. No way. If he stayed, though, maybe that wasn’t so bad. If he left, whatever. I could do it alone.
“We have to stay in the same room for it to work,” he said.
I settled back down. At least if it got too bad, I had a way to stop the magic and release him from what he’d just done.
“How bad is it going to be?”
“Hard to say.”
It was a little pain, that was all. No big deal. No reason to break into a cold sweat. I swiped my arm across my brow and wrapped the pelt a little tighter around myself, waiting for whatever was to come. I certainly didn’t want to be curled up in a ball sobbing in front of him, that I knew for sure.
“I’ve seen grown men, twice your size, piss their pants and cry like babies, though.”
I nodded. Okay, so as long as I didn’t pee all over myself, I was ahead of the curve. I had a surprisingly strong bladder. “They really cried?”
“Sobbed like babies.”
Large buffer zone for embarrassment. That was good to know. I guessed it wouldn’t be too bad that he had to hang around, knowing he expected the worst. Most people looked at me as if there was no way I’d be as tough as a big, burly man. They were always wrong. Ryker probably expected the worst, probably thought I’d be begging for mercy.
Considering he might get it worse than me, why did he look like he wanted to laugh? “You’re screwing with me about the crying like babies.”
He smirked. “Maybe a little.”
He walked across the room to a table that sat in the corner and appeared to be used as a desk. “Since you’re awake and we’ve got some time to kill, thought I might go over the game plan for Bedlam.”
I felt a clamping feeling across my chest. As soon as that subsided, I said, “Sure. No reason to waste the day.”
He came around to the side of the bed with another one of his maps and sat down, his hip not far from my head on the pillow. He handed me a flask. I tilted it to my lips and took a long swig.
When I would’ve handed it back, he nudged it toward my lips again. “It won’t be horrible, but it’s not much fun, either.”
It was probably a good idea. I took another large swig. He took it back when I handed it to him this time. He took a long swig himself before he placed it on a table beside the bed.
He shifted down slightly, held out the map in front of both of us, and pointed to a spot along the border of Bedlam. “That’s where we’re going to get you close enough to drop the ward.”
I nodded, breathing through a sharp, stabbing pain that was hitting my midsection. I turned on my side, settling in as I looked over the different spots on the map he pointed out.
Wards were fine and dandy, but Bedlam had bigger defenses than wards to deal with. “What about the dragons?”
He turned his face toward mine, with a real smile this time. “Dragons won’t attack Wyrd Blood.” His eyes narrowed for a second, and I knew he was getting some of those shabby pains, too.
“They won’t?” I asked, looking to distract him as much as he was doing for me.
“No. Most people don’t know that.” He turned back to look at his map as I watched him. For a total bastard, he had a nice profile.
“Why won’t they?” I wanted the answer, but I liked hearing his voice, too, the way I could almost feel the deep rumbling of it when we were this close.
“It’s said that whatever magic brought dragons into creation is the same magic that Wyrd Blood carry. They might sense something of what they are inside of us.”
I listened as the waves of pain came closer together, and tried to stay focused on his words.
He tilted his head slightly toward me again, and then his eyes focused on mine and my breathing hitched a bit—and it wasn’t from the bad spirits this time.
A cough attacked my chest and I turned the other way, breaking whatever spell had been building between us.
When I finally stopped, he said, “Do you want to hear about the first dragon ever found?”
“Sure.”
“A few months after magic had come into existence, a man called Xavier Windfrost was stuck in a winter storm along the High Cliffs of Marander. He found a small cave to weather it out in. That’s where he found these large eggs, a kind he’d never seen before that were the size of his head, with shells the color of the most vibrant sunsets ever seen.”
I curled tighter into a ball as the pain continued to grip me. It felt like someone was taking a saw and trying to open me up from the inside out. I tried not to focus on the pain as I listened to him talk about how Xavier watched the eggs hatch during the worst of the storm and then saw the small dragons fly off.
I felt Ryker’s eyes on me then, and met them. He nodded slightly. “This should be as bad as it will get.”
If this was the worst, it was bearable. Not pleasant, but I’d make it without embarrassing myself.
He put the map to the side. “Want to hear about the Ruined City before the war?”
He might still be my enemy, but it didn’t feel like that right now. I nodded, curling deeper into the covers as he described what everything had been like hundreds of years before I was born.
Chapter 22
I woke up alone in the bed and felt fairly normal. Yesterday had been uncomfortable, but all in all, not nearly as bad as I’d expected. I stretched again, my muscles not super happy but feeling a lot better than they had.
I found Ryker sitting at his table in the living area, reading something and eating breakfast. He waved to a chair on the other side. “Sit,” he said, not looking up.
I pulled the chair out, sitting and watching. Were we friends now? No. Not friends. That was way too far to take it with someone who still held your life in their hands. I didn’t know what the hell we were. Was I supposed to be nice to him after yesterday?
He shoved a plate of eggs and potatoes and a fresh set of utensils toward me, like he’d had them waiting. This was getting weird now.
I took a few potatoes. You didn’t have to offer me food twice. I opened my mouth, and he slid a shaker toward me, like he knew I wanted salt. Of course he couldn't have known. It was probably just coincidence. A lot of people liked salt. There was a reason it was so expensive.
He stood. “I’ve got some things to handle today. We’ll practice tomorrow.”
I nodded.