“Let me see the arm. Those look painful.”
Indeed they were. Maia untied the cuff string and pulled the sleeve up to reveal the angry red slashes on her arm and elbow. Taking out his water flask, the kishion undid the stopper and bathed away the dried blood. His eyes looked so determined as he bent over her wounds. How could a man with violent hands use them in such a tender way? Images swarmed in her mind of their many journeys together. She was no longer disgusted by his severed ear and his grim scars. There was a man behind the hard flesh. A man who had somehow, despite years of killing, managed to grow the semblance of a heart.
His gray-blue eyes glanced up at her once, but when he caught her gaze on him, he glanced away and scowled down at the gashes he tended. He scrubbed one of the cuts clean and began stitching it, his fingers handling the implements with skill and precision. How many of his own wounds had he treated the same way?
“You must let me go,” Maia said softly, daring to speak the words that burned on her tongue.
His eyes flicked up again. He finished tending to one of the cuts and leaned back on his heels, eye level with her. He wiped his nose, his expression stony.
“There is plenty of food here,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the gardens. “Strawberries. Peaches. The greens poking up over there are carrots, I think. The Leerings in this garden produce food. We have enough to survive here forever.”
Maia looked into his eyes imploringly. “I cannot stay!”
His mouth turned angry and wrinkled into a frown. “It may take some time before you see I am right,” he said flatly. “Perhaps it will not happen until the Medium has destroyed everyone else. You are safe here.”
“I am not safe here,” Maia argued, shaking her head. “The Medium brought me here to stop Murer. But now it bids me to go.” She stared at the sun, watching as it slowly dipped across the trees, the light still blindingly brilliant. Suddenly, starkly, she knew something terrible would happen if the sun went down and she had not yet departed.
“Convenient,” he said with a snort. “It always does what you wish it to do. I brought you here, Maia. If others come, then I will take care of them.”
She felt the urgency grow more intense. “Please! You must let me go! The Medium is warning me to depart this instant.”
He looked incredulous. “And where would you go? No ship is waiting for you. You want to cross the mountains again into Dahomey? I murdered their king.”
She put her free hand on his wrist. “I know you believe you are doing right, but you must trust me,” she said, then cast her eyes around the ruins, the moss-covered rocks and trees. There was a haunting beauty to the place, a feeling of ancient splendor ruined. In her mind’s eye, she could see the ruins as Muirwood. No, she could not let that happen to her abbey. Not after all the sacrifices that had been made to rebuild it.
“You are a na?ve young woman,” the kishion snorted angrily, pulling his arm free of her grasp. He stood and began pacing in the garden, his expression turning angrier by the minute. “You want to forgive those who betray you. Pardon those who persecuted you.” His scowl became menacing. “I watched you from the window, Maia. At Lady Shilton’s manor. I saw how they treated you.” His jaw began to quiver with suppressed rage. “Your father was so easily manipulated by Deorwynn. She is the one who summoned me. It was her connections with the Victus who arranged it. But she was too greedy; she wanted her own child to rule as empress. I poisoned you . . . but not to kill you. I could not . . . I did not want to hurt you.” His face twitched with suffering. “I . . . care for you. I have never . . . cared for anyone.”
She could almost see the thoughts swirling around his mind. Their journey together from Comoros to the lost abbey had changed him. She had gone from being another assignment to someone he cared for personally. She had never treated him as others did. The more experiences they had shared together, the more her kind ways had broken down his defenses. Maia could sense all of this—his confusion, his gratitude, his possessiveness. He wanted to re-create that perfect trust they had once shared. He had brought her back to this place for exactly that reason. But she realized that he would only find death here—if he did not release her, the Medium would destroy him.
Her heart grieved for him, panged for his loneliness and abandonment. He had saved her life multiple times. Even though he had killed those she loved, he had done it to help her, to push her on top of a throne he felt she deserved in a world hungry for power.
“But you have hurt me,” Maia said, rising. She clenched a fist and tapped her heart. “After what you have done, I can never trust you again. You cannot be with me! This fancy you have is a dream from which you must wake!”