“You should sleep. You barely slept while we were traveling.” He motions toward the fire where the gambeson hangs on two sticks. “It’ll be dry now and so warm. It makes a right bed, if you remember.”
How can I do anything but grin at him like a fool? There’s so much to think about, and yet he’s worried about me sleeping and having a ‘right’ bed.
“I remember,” I sign.
It would be impossible to forget.
Before, I wondered how Nephele could be friends with Alexus, but now it isn’t hard to imagine. I can’t say I understand it, why he takes people from the vale and why they don’t hate him for it, but I can’t seem to hate him either, much as I wanted to before all of this happened.
I reach across the small space between us and take his hand in mine. There’s a bone-deep knowing when it comes to him, and so I’m not surprised when the lines crossing his palm call to me. I’m sure they’re not calling to me the way palms called to Mena, but the need to see them closer is real.
I trace Alexus’s lines into memory, reveling when he shivers at my touch. I’ve no idea what they mean, but I wonder.
“Do you read palms?” he asks. “We’ve a lady at Winterhold, from Penrith, who does.”
“No,” I sign. “Not a clue.”
“Minds?”
I laugh and press another No into his palm.
He winks and smiles, then lets his head fall back as I tickle his skin. “That’s probably a good thing. Though I bet you could if you tried.”
Funny how he worries about me knowing what he’s feeling and thinking. First, he asked if I read people’s emotions, and now this.
I wish I could read him—his emotions, his mind, his palms. Mena always said the lines of the hands define who we are. She labeled me well enough, calling me an idealist with volatile tendencies and someone who struggles with a mundane existence. She called me impulsive, impatient, and imaginative, a restless being who needs freedom to flourish and love to thrive.
I think she was right, but I fear those last two requirements for peace might be impossible anymore.
Alexus exhales and relaxes, as though my touch is all he needs to unwind. Though we’ve been pressed against one another for days, I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to touch him outside the mode of sheer survival, just like it felt good when we touched at the stream. His hands are big and calloused, scarred in the way of a swordsman, strong and warm in ways I shouldn’t be thinking about.
Delirium. It must be.
But maybe it isn’t. Because ever since his words before we left Helena, I can’t stop ruminating about how much I do trust Alexus, how I knew that I trusted him the moment he asked me to as we stood in the snow. Trust is earned, and though he hasn’t had very much time to do so, he’s only proven himself as unfailing. If I had to imagine what his palm would tell me, it would be that.
Unfailing.
When I’m grieving, he provides comfort. When I’m angry, he lets me rage but tempers my fury. When I’m frightened, he’s right there beside me, facing whatever comes my way. And sometimes tossing pebbles to scare me.
I stifle a smile. My mind is in tangles over him.
Shaking my head, I snap out of the spell and rest his hand in my lap. He still has a little frostbite in places and blisters from the reins, so I set to healing him.
He winces and flinches and even hisses a time or two as I weave the tattered threads of his flesh back together. Eventually, he settles, watching my hands as I sing and work. Such a mystery, this man, though he also feels like an open book. Perhaps there are pages and lines I simply haven’t had the time to read yet, chapters to lose myself inside. And perhaps I shouldn’t want to.
But gods, I do.
Once the strands of his injuries are entwined, I ask, “Any more wounds?”
He twists his mouth up to one side as though considering if he should tell me something.
“No shame, just show me. Is it your feet?”
He barks out a laugh, as if what I said were funny, but I meant it. My toes looked horrendous, black-tipped and covered in blisters from too-small shoes. Feet are bad enough without all that damage.
“Frostbite?” I spell out, stifling a laugh myself. “On your toes?”
“No,” he laughs again. “Somehow, my shameful feet are fine. But this…” He hooks his thumb in the hem of his tunic and tugs the fabric up his long torso. “Is another story.”
I swallow hard. Not just because awful scrapes zigzag from navel to collarbone, but because I did not need to see this much of him right now. Sometimes I wish my face wasn’t so expressive.
This is one of those times.
“When did this happen?” I ask, distracting myself from the dark dusting of hair on his chest and the even darker trail that disappears inside his britches. But I remember when he had to receive these marks, and he sees the recollection on my face.
“Damn thing dragged me a good ways. Rocks and roots and sticks and gods know what else lay beneath the snow and upturned soil. It’ll heal fine on its own, though. No need for you to exhaust yourself even more for a few scratches.”
I shove my stirring feelings aside and shift to my knees.
“More than scratches. Some are deep, probably painful. It should be easy,” I tell him, which isn’t a lie. They’re not complex wounds, but they’ve been there for days now, and they don’t look good. Even though I feel like I could sleep for a week, eating and drinking have replenished much of my strength, so I begin my work.
His strands are becoming so familiar, and each time I tinker with healing him, the tiny darkness of his stolen death hums and churns and sparks, a little lightning storm inside my heart. It’s strange, that connection, that reaching out of energies, but I find I like it, feeling attached to someone other than myself.
It doesn’t take long to heal his scrapes. I decide to heal the cut still marring his lip too—the wound I gave him. When it’s over, I relax and open my eyes.
A yawn awaits, but my mind shuts it down, instead opting to send my hand straight to Alexus’s body before I can think to rein myself in.
I dance my fingertips lightly up his healed skin, where a shallow cut traveled over his rippled stomach to the bottom of his chest only moments ago. There are scars I couldn’t see before. Strange markings that remind me of runes, raised and rough like someone carved into him with a hot knife.
His midsection flinches at my touch, and he shifts his hips. “Raina.”
I freeze at the sound of his husky voice, stopping my inspection over his pounding heart.
Only it wasn’t an inspection. It was an exploration. My hand caressing, not analyzing.
When I look up at him, my pulse throbs so hard it’s all I hear. Those green eyes stare back at me, dark and promising, and I can no longer make myself care that he’s the Witch Collector. All I can see is the man who’s been with me for days now, the man who carried me from a fiery village, who washed blood from my hands, who thought of me and me alone when he woke from near-death, a man who kept me warm while he froze.
I see a man. Nothing more and nothing less.