She was lying on a bench when she came to, staring up at a shadowed ceiling. The air smelled like crushed herbs, stringent salves, honey, and black tea. For a moment, Adaira thought she might be in Sidra’s house, and her heart twisted in her chest when her memories flooded back.
She was in the west. She had been sparring with David in the rain. Her blood had spilled like gemstones through her fingers.
Adaira turned her head, blinking into the candlelight.
David was sitting on a stool before a battered worktable. Shelves lined the stone wall before him, crowded with glass jars and earthenware vessels, pestles and mortars, clusters of dried herbs. He must have felt her gaze because he turned to look at her.
“Did I faint?” she asked, mortified.
“Yes. Do you want to sit up?”
She nodded, allowing him to help ease her forward. Her vision swam for a moment, but she blinked until she felt steady.
“I don’t understand what happened,” she said. “I’ve never fainted at the sight of blood.”
“You should have told me you were still feeling the effects of the Aethyn,” he gently chided.
Adaira licked her dry lips. When David handed her a cup of water, she saw the small blue jewels, gleaming on the tabletop.
“I thought your sword was enchanted,” she said.
“No. The poison was still in your blood.” He took one of the jewels between his gloved fingertips, holding it up to the light before setting it on her palm. Adaira studied it, realizing the jewel was similar to the gemstones she had worn in her hair at the thanes’ dinner. The same jewels Innes had been wearing in hers.
“Whose blood was in my hair last night?” she asked in a wavering tone.
“It belonged to the thane who murdered your sister,” David answered.
“I still don’t understand.”
“Aethyn is a flower that grows here,” he said, refilling her cup with water after she drained it. “It blooms only in the most perilous of places, which makes it deadly to harvest. But if one does survive in obtaining it, then the true strength of the flower comes forth, and it creates a poison that settles in the blood like ice. It slows the heart, the mind, the soul. In heavy doses, it is lethal, and there is no antidote to counter it. In lighter doses, one builds up a tolerance to it, or it can be used to punish one’s enemies. Either way, it turns shed blood into blue jewels, and many of the nobles wear these stones as jewelry to display their ruthlessness.”
Adaira continued to gaze at the jewel in her hand. It was tiny, not nearly the size of the ones she had worn in her hair. The blood of the man who had killed Skye.
“I take it the higher the dose, the larger the jewels?” she said.
David paused for a moment before saying, “Yes. As your blood foretold in the arena, you have only a trace left in your body.”
“When you pricked my finger earlier, to unlock the door,” Adaira began, meeting David’s gaze, “why didn’t it turn into a jewel then?”
“Because the door accepted your blood before it could,” he answered simply.
She stifled a shiver. Her clothes were still damp from the rain, and she could feel the gritty sand that had worked its way into her boots. She wanted to bathe in the warm cistern, to wash away the past hour. But when she set the cup aside, a sharp pain flickered through her arm.
Adaira pushed up her sleeve.
A long, thin wound wrapped around her upper arm, but tightly woven stitches had brought her skin back together. She traced them, feeling the ridges and the dull ache they inspired.
“I’m sorry,” David said hoarsely. “I never meant to hurt you.”
Adaira let her sleeve fall. She was almost afraid to look at him because she could hear the layers of his apology.
I’m sorry for breaking your skin. I’m sorry for reading your post. I’m sorry for abandoning you to the spirits. I’m sorry I let you go without a fight.
She could feel the raw edges of her heart. She could still see Alastair, reaching down to draw her up from the ground. From her pain and her confusion. Only it had never been him. It had been nothing more than a poison-addled mirage—she had seen what she wanted in that moment.
She cleared her throat and drawled, “Are you afraid of what Innes will do when she finds out you scratched me?”
David laughed, a sound so rich and warm it startled Adaira, but she soon smiled, unable to resist.
“Yes, Innes will be very displeased with me,” he said, reaching for a swath of linen on the table. “I will be paying my penance for a while. Here, let me see your arm.”
Adaira drew up the sleeve again and watched as David carefully dabbed a honey salve over the stitches.
“You’re a healer,” she stated.
“Yes. That surprises you?”
Adaira bit her lip, gazing at the leather gloves he wore, as if he didn’t want to touch others. “A little, yes.”
He began to wind her upper arm with the linen. “It’s how I fell in love with Innes.”
“That sounds like the making of a ballad,” Adaira said.
A corner of David’s mouth lifted, but he suppressed the smile. “Innes was the third child of the laird. The youngest. She felt as if she had much to prove to be chosen as the next ruler of the west, so she was constantly training, pushing her body to be faster and stronger than her brothers. She was constantly sparring, until whatever weapon she chose to wield became a part of her.”
He paused as he finished bandaging Adaira’s arm. “As you might imagine, she garnered quite a few wounds over the years. She would always come to me, asking me to heal her. And so I did, though I was angry with her for how frequently she knocked upon my door, bleeding and broken, sometimes so battered that she had to sleep in my bed so I could watch over her through the night. I was angry not because she was inconveniencing me, but because I was afraid she would one day push herself too hard and fail to show up at my door.”
Adaira was silent, imagining this younger version of Innes. The vision roused tender and sad feelings that made her shoulders curl inward.
“She would always say that her wounds made her resilient, that her scars prepared her for the lairdship more than fine quarters and richly spun clothes and abundant feasts,” David said, rising from the stool. “But that’s enough for one day. You’ll want to visit the cistern, I take it?”
His abrupt change of topic was jarring, but Adaira sensed he was closing whatever door had just cracked open. His face looked flushed, as though he regretted speaking so openly.
“Yes, that would be nice,” she said.
“Then I’ll make arrangements for you to visit,” David offered. “In the meantime, this sword is now yours.” He indicated the sheathed blade propped by the door. The one Adaira had chosen for their spar. It wasn’t an enchanted sword, but it was still a weapon in her hands.
She arched a brow. “You’re officially arming me?”