Oh, so he was playing the blame game?
“If you hadn’t slung me over your shoulder in the first place I wouldn’t have been there for target practice.” My temper flared. He opened his mouth to argue but shut it quickly and dropped to the floor. It took only a second for me to cool off and realise it wasn’t the argument that had defeated him. I sighed. “At least let me help you clean it.”
His head snapped up and he faced me. “Why would you want to help me in any way?”
“Because whether we like each other or not, this is the second time you’ve saved my life and I’m racking up a debt. I hate owing people.”
I boiled water in the kitchen and grabbed a clean rag. We stumbled over to the fire and I pushed him down, close enough to keep him warm and so that I could see. The water steamed beside me and I dipped the cloth in, wringing it out until it was a more pleasant temperature. When I touched the first wound Ethan winced and muttered a violent obscenity. I huffed and slapped him across the back of the head.
“Ethan, I’m cleaning your back and you’re going to sit there without complaining, even if I have to pin you on the floor to do it.” It was like dealing with a child.
I wrung out the cloth again and pressed it to the first wound, wiping away the dirt and blood as gently as I could while he sulked. The firelight flickering from the hearth emphasised each of his features with a warm lick of colour: his sharp jaw; strong shoulders and every muscle in his powerful back. I’d seen men like it before, chiselled out of stone and marble around the Lords’ buildings. They stuck them in the palatial gardens outside the main complex Kaela and I went to. Common folk were allowed in the gardens from time to time. Ethan was every bit as glorious as those artistic figures. I ran a hand carefully across his uninjured shoulder, admiring the shape of the muscle as it tensed against my touch.
“Aren’t you afraid?” His voice snapped me back to consciousness and I felt blood rise to my cheeks. What had I been thinking? Ethan shifted enough to look at me; those silver eyes were chains that ensnared me; a convict trying desperately to run. “Normal people are.”
I chuckled nervously. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m not what the townsfolk called ‘normal’ back home.” My hands glided across his skin, finishing swiftly as the water turned bloody instead. “Besides, after all that we’ve been through, if you wanted to kill me you could have just let my brother finish the job back then.” I wrung out the rag.
“Ava,” Ethan’s voice was silken, “you need to be wary.”
“Why?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“We’re not like you. We look like you – but we’re different.”
“I am wary,” I said, “but I’m not afraid anymore. Whatever you did back there, strange as it was, it saved us both. I can’t be ungrateful after that, regardless of the circumstances.”
“You saw-”
“Yes, I saw.”
His face was a mask of anxiety. “But, I told you to close your eyes.”
“It happened before I had a chance to bat an eyelid.” I frowned. “I thought it was rather beautiful.”
A silence followed. The longer time passed, the smaller the room became as I grew more and more aware of Ethan’s bare skin in front of me. I’d seen plenty of half-naked men before, but none outside my own family who knew I was a woman. He shifted around so we were face to face and considered me. Timidly, he brushed my cheek and traced the line of Gabriel’s nails. In a single, slow movement he dragged his fingers down the side of my neck and across my collarbone. I had to suppress a shudder as the gentleness of his touch made every nerve in my body sing, before his hand rested on my old locket and his eyes caught mine again.
“Perhaps you are strange,” he said, his gaze softening.
I couldn’t breathe. The heat was stifling. My eyes flicked between his eyes and his lips but this couldn’t happen. A large BANG at the door reverberated through the house and Ethan was up in a second, ready for whatever came for us.
“Did you find her yet?” The door burst open and Ric hung in the doorway, his clothes torn and drenched in sweat. I didn’t move, though I so desperately wanted to sprint into the woods again at the sight of him. He stepped further into the room and he caught sight of me. “Thank the Daeus. Here I was about to call around town to rally a search party.” He pulled me up in his arms and hugged me tight before his eyes landed on Ethan. “Wait, why don’t you have a shirt on?” Ethan just shrugged in response. My intake of breath was enough for him to turn his attention back and put me down gently. “Still don’t trust me, I guess?”
“I’ve got a pretty good reason not to.”
Ric looked to Ethan dejectedly and back. “It’s like I said earlier. I really wasn’t trying to kill – if that was the goal, wouldn’t I just have let you die inside that old house? We needed to get to them before-”
“Before what?” I snapped.
“Before they got to you,” Ethan interjected.
I didn’t expect that. “What?”
“From what we understood, you were a tool for bargaining. You came into it because you were someone’s weakness.” Ethan and Ric exchanged a curious look. “But after we found you that night, the Berserkers were riled up about something else.”
“Perhaps it was the state of Gabriel’s face.” Ric laughed with grim humour.
“His face?”
“Gabriel had quite the injury when they retreated. Lost the use of his eye, it looked like. It won’t heal cleanly,” Ethan said.
“His eye?” I squeaked. “I didn’t realise it had been that bad. I almost feel guilty.”
The boys looked at me. “That was you?” Ric asked.
“He was trying to kill me-” I smoothed my hand across the fading bruise on my neck, “-and my knife was just there so I did the first think I could think of.”
“Ouch,” Ric grimaced.
“Knife…” Ethan muttered. He walked to the back of the room and pulled open one of the cupboard drawers. “This one?”
I had to dig my feet into the ground to stop myself ploughing into him as I ran. He handed it over to me and I could tell from the feel alone that it was mine. A smile spread across my face and I rubbed my thumb over its carved bone handle. “I thought it got left behind.” My joy was short-lived as I looked up at Ethan exasperatedly. “You couldn’t have mentioned it earlier? I might have stood more of a chance out there with a bloody dagger.”
“I like acting the hero.” He crossed his arms and tried hiding a smile.
I scoffed and looked at the blade again. It had been cleaned but I could still feel the blood on its handle; the metallic tang as it stuck into his flesh…
“He’ll hunt me down.”
“Gabriel will find other bait. He’s not known for his patience,” Ric said.