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Sunlight was flooding the cottage through windows Gwyn hadn’t bothered to shutter when her eyes finally opened again. For a moment, she was confused, her eyes taking in her own hearth from an unexpected angle, her bed unusually hard and unforgiving beneath her, her body aching fiercely as though she’d hauled a great weight over a vast distance. As she sat up and rubbed the grit from her eyes, her gaze fell on her actual bed, and recollection of the night before caught up with her like a hound to a rabbit.
The man still appeared to be either unconscious or asleep on the bed, though he must have moved at some point since she’d put him there, because his unbound arm now hung limply over the side, and so did one bare foot. Gwyn stared at that foot, wavering between relief and fear.
He’s in no state to hurt me even if he wakes up, she told herself with a confidence she didn’t feel. Yes, he looks like he could be very strong, but he’s badly wounded. His arm is broken. He can’t hurt me.
But she was uncomfortably aware of how low her magical reserves were at the moment after healing some of his internal damage only the day before. Her ability to defend herself wasn’t exactly at its peak at the moment, and it made her uneasy that he didn’t look like the ordinary farmer she had initially assumed him to be when she had first found him.
Even so, I never could have left him there like that, even if I’d known then what I do now, Gwyn thought miserably, forcing herself to her feet. Lord, what was Emily thinking, leaving me here alone? Even grown, I don’t have the sense of a goat! But how could I have known he’d actually make it?
She approached his bedside warily, but he did not so much as twitch. Cautiously she brushed her hand across his forehead, but he still felt cool and did not stir, though he was clearly breathing. Relief began to take the lead as she went to check his bandages, only to evaporate in an instant when she actually looked under them.
Gwyn stared at open wounds that had somehow shrunk in the night, already fully scabbed over. Her throat constricting, she threw off the blanket covering him. The bruises that had stood out so starkly even in the storm had already faded to a greenish color.
That’s impossible, her mind screamed at her. Those bruises were fresh last night! If my magic had healed them somehow...they would have already been healed when I went to bandage him up last night. But they were dark, I’m sure they were!
Her breath came too fast, too shallow, as her chest closed up like a fist. She backed away from the bed until she ran into the table on the other side of the room, her clenched hands going to her mouth to smother a cry.
Oh gods, oh gods, what the hell did I bring home? And what do I do with him now?
He was still unconscious, but if she tried to move him again, would he wake? Would he have enough strength to attack her if he did?
He made a small noise low in his throat and she jumped, knocking a bowl off the table behind her. It smashed to the floor, and though his dangling arm gave a jerk in response, he did not wake.
Calm down, Gwyn, just calm down, she ordered herself, bending down to pick up the broken pieces. I’ll figure something out. One thing at a time. Her eyes darted back and forth between the man and the fragments of bowl warily as she cleaned them up, but he showed no further signs of movement.
Gwyn stood again and turned briefly to deposit the pieces she had carefully gathered into the bucket by the table. She immediately turned back to the bed and shrieked.
The man was sitting bolt upright in the bed, watching her intently with almond-shaped eyes that were almost entirely black, and she hadn’t heard so much as a rustle. He cringed at her scream, his hands going to his ears.
Gwyn recognized the look of those eyes, all dark with scarcely any white to be seen. Eyes like that were the reason there were so few places to safely gather the herbs she needed. She thought of the knife, her gut twisting.
But he can’t be one of them, he can’t, she thought wildly, her mind already frantically taking an inventory to reassure herself. He had hair on his head, and for all the oddities she had already noticed, his features were human, and so were his hands, his feet. He can’t be.
He hadn’t looked away from her for a moment, but his face had gone completely white, and his mouth had gone slack. He looked like he was in some kind of shock at the sight of her, as though he were even more startled by her presence there than she had been to see him awake and upright.
Something about seeing him that way was like a splash of cold water in Gwyn’s face.
“What a dreadful way to wake up,” she told him, making an effort to keep her voice quiet as she lowered her hands. “I’m so sorry. It was an accident. ” She made a futile gesture towards the bucket behind her. His eyes didn’t move from her face, but he dropped his hands from his ears.
“I...I don’t feel right,” he said slowly. His voice was so soft that it took her a moment to make out the words.
“Oh, you’ve been hurt, don’t you remember? I found you out in the woods,” she told him, taking a step toward him.
He cringed away from her, his eyes somehow going even darker, and she froze where she was. “Well, I’m not the one who did it, and I didn’t bring you here to hurt you. I’m only trying to help. ” She tried to sound reassuring, but her voice trembled. “That’s what I do,” she continued, “help people. Herbs and such, you know. ” She forced a smile and shrugged a little, as though she had these sorts of conversations with strange naked men in her cottage every day of the week.
“That’s not all that’s wrong with me...I...I feel strange...” He shook his head, his face creasing in frustration. “I feel strange when I look at you. ”
The magic, Gwyn thought suddenly. Could it be that he can tell magic has been used on him somehow? But I’ve never heard of that kind of response to anima magic before.
Then again, it seemed plain now that whatever he was, he wasn’t entirely human. Perhaps that had something to do with it.
But she certainly couldn’t ask him about his unusual rate of healing now, not without the risk of raising his suspicion. What she had done for him was highly illegal, to say the least. Anima magic was forbidden; its only penalty was execution.
Gwyn cleared her throat a little. “You were hit about the head quite a bit, from the look of you. It’s normal to feel rather groggy after that sort of thing. With some rest, I’m sure you’ll feel much better. Perhaps you should lie back down. Do you think you could eat something? ”
“What are you? Did you do something to me? ” he asked abruptly. His voice remained quiet, but it had hardened.
Gwyn forced herself to swallow, her chest tightening again. He can’t know that I healed him. I don’t know who or what he is, but he could have me killed.
“I’m a healer. With herbs. I bound your ribs and your arm. I-I put bandages on you. ” She hated the tremor in her voice, in her hands. She felt like every inch of her was screaming her guilt at him, and she couldn’t make herself shut up.
“You did something else to me. You must have done. Why do I feel like this? ” he demanded, growing louder for the first time. His eyebrows lowered, his dark eyes flashing angrily. He started to swing his legs off the bed and she backed away, holding up her hands as if in surrender.
“No, please, I’ve only tried to help you, I swear,” she insisted.
But he stopped where he was before his feet touched the floor, grimacing with a pained expression as his arm went down to his midsection. “I need to get out of here,” he said faintly. Beads of sweat shone on his forehead. “I need to leave. ”
“You almost died last night,” she whispered. “Just...just lie down. I won’t hurt you. ”
Immediately she cursed herself. You’re a fool, Gwyn! Let him leave if he wants to leave!
He looked to her again, and the pain in his eyes wrenched at her. Again she heard herself saying, “Just lie down. It will be all right. If you still feel strange tomorrow, you can kill me then, all right? ”
“Kill you? ” His eyes widened again. “I just want to know the truth, I don’t want to-” Suddenly he groaned, pressing a hand to the side of his head. “R-room’s moving a lot now. ”
Gwyn was at his side in a moment, all fear forgotten. “For pity’s sake, just lie down. What part of head injury don’t you understand? ”
“Just don’t touch me,” he hissed, holding up a hand as if to ward her off, but he laid back on the bed, even as he watched her guardedly from the corners of his eyes. Redness began to tinge his cheeks, and he added quickly, “I don’t care for being touched. ”
“I understand. I’m the same way,” she assured him, not quite managing to suppress a shudder. “I can’t stand people who are always wanting to pat me or hang on to me. I’m not a dog or a bloody rag doll. ”
She snapped her mouth shut, flushing a little herself, but if he thought anything of her bluntness, it didn’t show in his expression. She quickly bent down and retrieved the blanket from the floor, draping it over him before putting a respectable arm’s length between her and the bed.
Going by the length of his arm, of course.
“Little warm for that,” he mumbled, but his dark eyes were still watchful. He pulled his arms out from under the blanket and began to fidget with its hem without even looking at it. His fingers were long and unnervingly quick as they danced along the edge of the cloth, and Gwyn forced herself to tear her eyes away, disconcerted by the odd, not entirely unpleasant shiver that rippled through her belly at their dance.
She shrugged and rolled her eyes, trying to hide her discomfort. “Sorry. Your clothes are still wet. It rained while you were out. ”
“Is that why you’re indecent? Your outside clothes are wet? ”
Gwyn glanced down at herself, startled. “This is indecent? I mean, I wouldn’t go to market in it, but as you said, it’s warm in here, so I’m afraid I don’t follow. ”
“You should put more clothes on,” he said firmly. “You look like a whore. Not even the kind in taverns, but the sort that wait in alleys. ”
“Are they a lot different than the tavern ones? ” Gwyn was too intrigued to be insulted. While certain women with questionable relationship goals occasionally visited her for remedies, she never went in taverns or in alleys and they had all looked the same to her. The idea of different kinds of whores was an entirely new one to her. “Are their clothes all that different? I mean, how can you tell? ”
The man frowned. “What difference does it make? Do you want to walk around looking like a whore in front of a man you don’t even know? ”
She considered that a moment. “Since I don’t know you, I guess I don’t really care what I look like in front of you. ”
“Aren’t you afraid of giving me bad ideas? Of inviting interference with your person with such a scandalous appearance? ” he persisted.
“Bad ideas? Interference with my person? What in perdition are you going on about? You can’t even stand up and you’re worried about getting bad ideas? ” She shook her head in disbelief. “Men. Honestly. ”
To her surprise, she saw a new flood of redness creeping up his neck as he turned his face away from her, evidently choosing to glower at the wall instead of her.
Something inside her relaxed at the very human reaction.
“I’m not worried, I’m saying you should be worried,” he said tersely to the wall. “Have you no sense of self-preservation at all? ”
“Not really, no,” she admitted, rubbing her arms a little self-consciously. “If I did, would I have brought you home with me in the first place? Probably not, right? ”
He made a noise that sounded like a groan but didn’t comment.
“You should rest,” she said after a moment. “When you’re feeling up to it, I’ll make you something to eat. ”
“You did something to me,” he said again, still not looking at her. “I’m sure you did. ”
Gwyn bit her lip, trying to decide how to answer, but she realized after a moment that he’d already fallen asleep; his breathing had slowed, his hands had gone still.
She watched him sleep for several minutes. It seemed plain that, at least for the moment, he wasn’t an immediate threat, and while he wasn’t entirely human, he also wasn’t entirely not.
Her fear of him had faded the moment she saw that he was indeed still too weak to be an immediate threat. The fact that he could also speak had also calmed her. She wasn’t sure if the creatures in the woods could talk or not, but this one certainly sounded human enough. Much like the rest of him, his voice was just a little odd. He sounded almost, but not quite, like he was speaking in sing-song, no matter what he said. But he wasn’t difficult to understand, and he hadn’t seemed all that threatening once he’d laid back down.
The trouble was that eventually, he would get up again, and he seemed convinced that she’d “done something to him. ” Hopefully, it’s just that he knocked his head and he’ll feel better when he wakes up, she thought nervously.
But she put on another dress anyway.
––––––––
Dominic hadn’t meant to fall asleep again, and he would have fought it if he’d realized it was happening. But one moment he’d been looking at the wall next to the bed, and the next, he was opening his eyes groggily, noticing immediately how much darker it was, as though no small amount of time had passed. While he maintained a habitual distrust of every stranger he encountered regardless of their origin, he especially didn’t trust the woman in the cottage.
It wasn’t that she was Lyntaran, or even that she was foolish enough to bring a strange man like himself into her home. It was that he couldn’t look at her without an unfamiliar tingling in his flesh, a sudden speeding of his pulse, an overwhelming awareness of her and parts of her that he normally ignored in other people: the curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, the delicacy of her wrists. It was all he could do not to stare at her, not to lick his lips when he watched her—and there was no question that he watched her, no escaping watching her. Forcing himself to look away from her and at the wall instead had consumed every last drop of his willpower; it was either fidget with the blanket or let his hands betray him with their damnable shaking.
It was horrifying. He felt as though his own body had abruptly turned into a stranger’s, and not just a stranger’s, but a traitor’s. Women did not interest Dominic, but that was perhaps too narrow a term: people didn’t interest Dominic. He was content on his own, and after many dismal experiences, only really at ease when he was by himself. He knew what desire was because he’d seen it in other people, but he’d never felt it himself before and had never wanted to, either. He had once thought his own lord similarly immune, before Carys had come and changed that so unexpectedly.
Still, he’d known Sebastien had once been married, so it hadn’t come as too great a shock. Dominic, on the other hand, had always found the very idea of being forced into such close proximity with another person, regardless of their gender, nothing less than abhorrent. Against his will, snatches of distant memory tugged at him, more felt than seen, and his stomach gave an involuntary heave as he struggled to push them back.
No, the whole notion of desire disgusted him. His skin crawled at the thought, the same skin that turned so treacherous when he looked at the woman in the cottage.
So there was only one answer, one solution: he must not look at her anymore. He must leave as quickly as possible and return to his mission with all speed. Then he would stop feeling these things he didn’t want to feel, and remembering these things he didn’t want to remember, and he would go back to being himself again.
All of this ran through his mind in a space of moments as he sat slowly upright in the bed, cautiously turning his head and peering around the room, braced to look away the moment his gaze found the woman.
Only it didn’t. She wasn’t there.
His stomach dropped like a stone. He looked the room over again, more carefully this time. There were various herbs hanging from racks by the windows that filled the air with their scent, at least confirming her earlier claim of working with herbs, but not much else: a couple of tables, one of which appeared to be some kind of work table covered with glass jars, a couple of chairs, a wooden chest against one wall, a fireplace with a cooking pot, and the bed he was on.
But the cottage consisted only of the one room, and there was only one door, which he had to assume led outside. If she was in there, there was nowhere she could go where he wouldn’t be able to see her from where he was.
The woman simply wasn’t there.
Far from the relief he expected to feel, it was suddenly hard to breathe. He felt like he couldn’t swallow.
Where is she? He felt like his mind had been submerged in fog, and that was the only thought that could pierce it now. Where is she?
Ordinarily, he would have been able to imagine no end of scenarios to answer such a question, but now, it was as if his mind had gone utterly blank. He had no ideas. He couldn’t begin to think of where she was. It was as though she had dropped out of existence, just like that. His heart hammered as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, the blanket falling to the floor. He managed to stand without the room spinning, but then he stared around himself, at a loss as to what to do next.
He felt lost, lost to a sense of helplessness he had not known since he was a child. For the first time in nearly as long, he also felt afraid. He began to gasp but couldn’t get enough air. Where is she?
He heard her before he saw her, the door creaking as it opened. He rounded on it, blinking away spots. He heard something clatter to the floor and then she was standing in front of him, her eyes wide with alarm.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but they were a vivid amber that reminded him of a wild cat’s.
“Are you all right? What’s wrong? ” she asked him. Her voice sounded like it was coming from far away, even though she was so close.
Completely at odds with his earlier thoughts of revulsion, he now had a fierce longing to touch her, to assure himself that she was real and she was there, but the fog in his head was disappearing as suddenly as it had come.
He drew back from her, nearly tripping over his own feet in an effort to put distance between them as quickly as possible. Before he knew what he was doing, he was wedged between the bed and the wall, his face buried in his forearms because it was the only way to stop himself from looking at her. Pain seared through one arm up to his shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to shake him out of his panic.
Gradually, his heartbeat slowed, his breathing calmed. He began to feel keenly aware of the oddity of his position, of the less-than-flattering impression it must have been conveying, but he didn’t dare move. The cottage was silent, too silent, and Dominic felt as though he were standing on a cliff’s edge, at the verge of tipping over it.
She’s still here, he told himself, but though he strained to listen, he couldn’t hear anything.
Anxiety bloomed anew, speeding his breath once more.
It took only a few more minutes, a span of time he found absolutely mortifying in its brevity, before the apprehension in his chest had grown too thick to allow air to exist in the same space. He dropped his arms and immediately saw she was sitting at the table on the opposite side of the room, facing him. She was properly dressed now, though she was still barefoot, and her flaxen hair had been braided and put up. He wanted to swear when he saw it like that. There was just something about her neck...he forced his gaze to her face.
She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t even looking at him but at her hands in her lap. He could see by the set of her shoulders that she was very tense, but she remained very still.
Dominic was reluctantly impressed. He’d never met someone before who could actually be quiet enough to escape his notice even when he was actively listening for them.
She looked up at him then, and he saw nothing but concern in her eyes.
“Tell me how to help you,” she said, very quietly.
“I need to leave. ” He barely recognized his own voice, and he wasn’t sure at first that she heard him.
But then she nodded slowly. “All right. But you’re hurt. There’s no getting around that part. That arm’s broken. Or it was, anyway. ”
One arm was certainly more painful than the other, particularly when he moved it, and he could tell without looking at it that she had bandaged it somehow. Dominic’s tolerance for pain had always been high, but he suspected that his desperation to avoid looking at her would have overcome his discomfort even if that hadn’t been true.
“I know,” he said finally. “But it won’t kill me. I can’t stay. ” He thought a moment, and with difficulty, he added, “What do you want from me? ”
The woman frowned. “I don’t want anything from you. ”
“Then why did you do this? I won’t hurt you, but I need to know what’s going on. ” He tried to keep his voice calm and, above all, audible.
“I don’t understand. Do you think I injured you? Did you forget how you got hurt or something? ” She looked genuinely perplexed, her eyes wide, and it confused him. “I found you this way, I swear. ”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said, curling and uncurling his fingers rapidly in frustration. “Don’t make me say it. You know what’s happening. You must! And I don’t want this! I don’t want you! ”
A line appeared between her eyebrows, and her knuckles whitened in her lap. She was quiet for several heartbeats, and though she didn’t avert her gaze from him, he could tell by its unsteadiness that she wanted very much to look away. “I don’t want to upset you,” she said, her voice tremulous. “But I promise you that I don’t know what you’re talking about, or who it is you wanted to find you out there. Maybe if you tell me exactly what it is that happened to you, we can figure this out. Maybe I can help you find whoever it is you want. ”
Dominic stared at her. If she’s lying, she’s very good at it. Maybe she really doesn’t know. Or maybe she does and she’s too afraid of me to admit it.
But as his anxiety died down, his strength seemed to die with it. It was getting harder each moment to remain standing, even hunched as he was, and he was gaining an uncomfortable awareness of how bizarre he must look. Not that it matters, but I’m glad there are no other witnesses. I can only imagine what the men back in Kelemir would say if they saw me like this.
He realized uncomfortably that it probably wouldn’t be that much of a surprise to them. They all looked at him more or less continually as if they expected him to begin behaving like a wild animal at any moment. His rank as Sebastien’s second forced a certain amount of respect into their responses to him, but it did nothing to control the way they looked at him.
He felt a wave of dizziness pass over him, and he found himself sliding down to sit on the floor, pressing his knees against his chest and his forehead against his knees.
“A-are you more comfortable like that, or can I help you onto the bed? ” the woman asked a moment later. Her voice sounded closer than it had before, but it wasn’t close enough to alarm him. Yet.
Embarrassment flooded him, and he was grateful his burning face was hidden from her for the moment. What exactly does she think I am? he wondered, trying to muster some anger. Who in their right mind would be more comfortable sitting on a floor and wedged between a bed and a wall?
But the anger wouldn’t come. No, I deserve the question for acting this way. Maybe it isn’t her. Maybe it’s me. Maybe my brain was knocked loose. That man was huge, easily Sebastien-sized, maybe bigger.
Dominic felt more tired than he had in his whole life, and for the moment, he had the relief of feeling only that: bone-crushing fatigue. His head had begun to throb at some point, and he could no longer ignore it.
“I’ll get up on my own,” he said at last, his voice muffled by his legs. “I need a minute. Maybe several. Don’t touch me. ”
“Understood. No touching,” she replied, and the heat in his face redoubled at the obvious relief he heard in her voice. He heard her moving quickly away, back toward the table if he had to guess.
I must be mistaken. If she’d done this to me, she’d want to touch me, or else what would be the point? As soon as I’m able, I’ll be on my way and I will do my damnedest to forget this ever happened, he vowed silently. With a head injury, that shouldn’t be too difficult.
Unlike returning to his earlier position on the bed. He managed to get himself back onto it, all right, but it was a clumsy, bumbling affair that he was eager to purge from his memory sooner than was physically possible without getting bashed in the head again. He forced himself not to look at the woman, either before, during, or immediately following the regrettable spectacle. He had all but thrown himself on top of it, and to his everlasting agony, he had almost missed, only barely catching himself before toppling off the other side.
What the hell kind of peasant has a raised bed, anyway? It’s more like a couch, really. This ought to be a proper pallet on the floor! he fumed, squeezing shut his eyes to block out a universe that he was sure had to be laughing at him.
He felt a blanket settling lightly back over him, but he refused to open his eyes.
“I’ve made you a tea to help with the pain,” she said a moment later.
He listened very hard but heard none of the laughter in her voice that he was dreading.
“I’ll just leave it here next to the bed if you want it. I have a garden out back so if you need anything...” Her voice trailed off.
Dominic held himself very still, and after some sounds of movement, he heard the door creak and then close.
Cautiously, he cracked open one eye. One of the chairs had been pulled up next to the bed, and a mug filled with steaming dark fluid sat on top of it alongside a plate with bread. With as much pain as he was in, he didn’t feel hungry, but his discomfort was more than sufficient to move him to try the tea. He sat up carefully and sniffed the contents of the mug, uneasily aware of the simplest way to get rid of scary-looking house guests, but he’d put her to so much trouble already that even his innate suspicion was having a hard time convincing itself that she was trying to poison him. It smelled all right and tasted horrible, but he drank it down anyway and made himself eat the bread.
As he drank and ate, his mind kept returning to the woman. She’s outside, he told himself firmly. She’s right outside. I know where she is.
But the tension inside him refused to ease. When he was done, he took a deep breath and laid back against the bed again, but though he closed his eyes and tried to rest, sleep refused to come, and his mind refused to leave the woman. She’s outside, he chanted to himself. Outside, in the garden.
His fingers plucked restlessly at the blanket’s edge, loosening fibers.
After some time, the ache in his head and body had eased somewhat, no doubt due to the tea, but his torment had only increased. He looked desperately at the door, hating himself for looking at it, for being unable to drive his thoughts from it because of what it was keeping from him.
Keeping from me. This is madness.
But the fog was returning. He could feel it creeping in, cold and thick, slowing his thoughts, making it harder for him to keep control of them.
The impending threat of losing control again was all it took. He hated himself violently, but there was nothing he could do. He took another deep breath and then bellowed as loudly as he could the first thing that came to mind: “OWWWWWW! HELP! ”
Then as an afterthought, he knocked over the mug. It fell from the chair and rolled smugly across the floor, refusing to so much as crack.
The door creaked, and his eyes flew to it. The woman was round-eyed and wiping her hands on her skirt as she hurried in.
“What’s the matter? Are you all right? ” She came to an abrupt halt about midway in the room, but already he felt the knot inside him relaxing, his clarity of thought returning.
“The tea was hot,” he answered. Then he could have kicked himself, because he sounded rather calm for someone who had just implied that he’d scalded himself.
“Tea generally is,” she said cautiously. “Er, sorry. I guess I should have warned you. ” She glanced at the chair, then started to look around. Spotting the mug, she retrieved it without pause, but again Dominic’s face flamed as he saw her raised eyebrows when she straightened up again.
“You drank it all in one go, even with it that hot? ” She looked back at him, and he suddenly wished with all his heart that he had never crossed that border.
I shouldn’t have insisted on it. I should have listened to Sebastien’s misgivings. He hadn’t predicted anything like this, of course, but how could he? Lyntara is trouble, beginning to end. We all know that, yet here I am. In Lyntara. In trouble.
“Have you ever tasted it? ” he asked, struggling to find an explanation that would preserve his dignity.
“Yes, I have. Are you going to tell me it tasted so good that it was worth burning yourself over? ” She crossed her arms, still holding the empty mug.
“No. Because that would be an obvious lie. ”
She watched him expectantly. He watched her back.
“So that’s it, then? ” She broke the silence at last. “What did you need my help for? You just needed someone to listen to you complain? ”
The short-of-breath feeling that was becoming far too familiar, far too quickly was returning with alacrity. “Are my clothes dry yet? ”
The woman blinked. “Maybe. I’ll go check. They’re hanging out back. ”
“No, no, not yet,” Dominic said quickly. Why is it so hard to breathe? I’ve been doing it just fine all my life, and now it’s a struggle! “I need more tea first. ”
“You can’t have too much of that, it will make you sick. I’ll make you more as soon as you can have it,” the woman said, frowning a little. “I wish I could do more for you, but that’s the best I’ve got. I’m short on a lot of herbs right now. That’s why I was up in the forest, you know, when I found you. ”
He hadn’t known, but it was a sensible explanation.
She gave a little shrug. “Well, if you don’t need me...”
“No, I do. I do need you,” he blurted, cringing inside but momentarily unable to recover control of his mouth in his panic. “Let’s talk about something. People like to talk about things, don’t they? ”
“I don’t know, do they? ” she echoed.
“Well, you’re a person, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you know? ”
“Shouldn’t you? ”
Dominic wanted to hit himself. “Well, I think it’s plain I’m not like most people. ”
The woman snorted. “And it’s not plain in my case, is it? I spend most of my time alone out here, just so you know. ”
“So you won’t talk to me? ”
She gave him an odd look. “I am talking to you! What did you want to talk about? ”
Dominic yearned to end this ill-begotten attempt at conversation, but he knew if he did, she would leave. And she can’t leave. She can’t. I only need to breathe for a little while longer, that’s all.
He adamantly did not want to think about anything further in the future than that. Not while he was so clearly out of sorts.
He glanced around himself in desperation and seized upon the obvious. “Have you lived here long? ”
“Five summers, give or take,” she said, glancing around herself. “It’s not much, I know, but it’s enough. ”
“And you gather herbs? ” he prompted.
“Yes. I make remedies. People come here from the surrounding villages to buy them. Or sometimes I go to one of the market days. ”
Dominic caught the lack of enthusiasm in her tone at once. “You don’t like the market days. ”
“No. ”
She said nothing else. So he waited. It was a tactic that had held him in good stead on those occasions when he’d needed to interrogate someone for Sebastien. People hated silence and would hasten to fill the void sooner rather than later. It never failed, particularly when Dominic was the one waiting. He knew his eyes unnerved people.
“Well, if that’s all then,” she said after a moment, already moving towards the door.
Dominic blinked, taken aback. “It’s not! Why don’t you like the market days? ”
The woman paused. “It doesn’t matter, does it? You’ll be long gone before the next one, I’m sure. ”
Now she was the one waiting, watching him, and it was her amber eyes that unnerved him. He could read no expression in them at all.
And then it happened: his mind just went empty. He wasn’t used to this kind of interaction with people. He had no idea what he was supposed to say next, or how to keep her there. He wanted to speak but couldn’t think of a single word.
So he blurted out the truth, hating himself more with every word. “I don’t want you to leave. ” For the first time since he’d laid eyes on her, it wasn’t hard to look away from her; his mortification finally conquered whatever mysterious pull she had for him.
At least for the moment.
“Oh,” he heard her say. Only that. He heard her moving and glanced up to see her sitting down at the table again.
He let out the breath he was holding. When she said nothing more, his curiosity got the better of him. “You’re not going to ask me why? ”
“Well, you were beaten and left for dead only last night, so it’s not exactly a massive intellectual undertaking to come up with a theory on that one. I should have thought of it before. I’m sorry. ” She smiled ruefully. “I doubt you’ll trust me on this, but very rarely do I see anyone up here. It was part of the draw of moving here, actually. I don’t think whoever did this to you would even think to look for you with me. I did have to drag you here, but it was raining so hard that I can’t imagine there even being much in the way of tracks left behind. You’re as safe as safe gets, whether I’m in here with you or not. ”
That the woman had so quickly come up with such a logical theory and evidently considered what his concerns might be surprised Dominic, and he found himself looking at her with new eyes.
She’s very perceptive, she just doesn’t know enough to get on with, he thought, struggling not to frown. I need to be careful what I say to her. She could piece together more than I want her to. Even if she really is only trying to help me for some unfathomable reason, she’s still a Lyntaran. I can’t expect her to be sympathetic towards a possible spy.
“Just having you here...helps,” Dominic said carefully.
“Well, that would be a first,” she muttered under her breath, looking down at her hands. He doubted anyone else would have heard it and made sure to keep his own reaction in check. But then she spoke a little more loudly, still not looking at him. “I don’t want to alarm you, but if someone did come after you here, I’m pretty much useless in a fight. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this in case you do decide to wring my neck or something on your way out, but I feel badly for you if you think I can protect you. I can’t. If someone were to come, you’re better off running. ”
The reference to her neck made the blood drain from his face, and he fought the urge to keep his eyes from returning to it. She must have caught me staring, and there is absolutely no way I can explain that away, he thought miserably.
She looked up at him in that moment, and immediately a frown darkened her face. “No one’s going to come, though. You don’t need to worry. Please don’t get upset again. ”
“I’m not,” he said quickly.
But already her eyes were wary again, and she rubbed her own arms, looking uncomfortable. “You should ignore me when I say stupid things. You see now? It’s best we stop this talking rubbish. You don’t really care what I have to say anyhow. ”
He blinked. He wasn’t totally sure whether she was right about that, but he found himself in the bizarre position of being equally unsure of whether she was wrong. “Why would you say that? ”
The woman clicked her tongue against her teeth. “If you were actually interested in getting to know me, you would have asked my name by now, I think. You were just trying to keep me here before, right? Well, I’m staying, so don’t feel like you have to continue putting in the effort. I think it’s just upsetting for both of us. ”
“You’re upset? ” He thought she looked fairly calm.
“Since the moment I found you in that forest. ” She paused, briefly drawing her bottom lip between her teeth. His eyes were riveted to the gesture, his own mouth going dry, his thoughts momentarily frozen. “You don’t have to tell me what happened out there...but would you? ”
That snapped him out of it. He tensed, bracing for an argument. “I’d rather not. ”
“I don’t blame you. ” But again she hesitated. “Still...can you tell me one thing? Was it...Raiders? Did Raiders do this to you? ”
Only long years of bearing insults both thinly veiled and utterly blatant allowed him to keep his shock from showing on his face. His voice came out perfectly level. “What do you mean? Have you had trouble with them here? ”
But it was as if a shutter had dropped behind her eyes. Her expression was impenetrable to him, and she said nothing more, rising and going to the other table, fiddling with some jars on its surface...by all appearances, acting as though he’d just disappeared and her life had resumed without interruption.
The conversation was clearly over.
––––––––
It was curious how Gwyn never felt truly alone until she was with someone else. She could spend days without seeing anyone or uttering a word and was perfectly content with life, but the moment the strange man had woken up in her cottage and insisted on speaking with her, she could feel the loneliness begin to encroach, and she despised it. It wasn’t enough that she felt out of place even among other, entirely ordinary, people; no, she felt even more distanced from both those people and the one presently occupying her bed with every hour that passed.
I just want him to move on and for everything to go back to normal, she thought unhappily. She couldn’t leave the cottage without him panicking, apparently, but she also couldn’t relax in the same room with him. Far from becoming accustomed to his oddities, she only seemed to keep noticing new ones the longer she was around him. He moved too quickly, more quickly than even a healthy man should have been able to move, let alone one in his battered state, and it wasn’t just his hands. She had hardly been able to believe her eyes when he’d jumped behind the bed.
But the oddity that made her the most uneasy was the way he kept staring at her. His eyes would drift to her neck before jerking back to her face or sometimes to her hands, and she couldn’t imagine what thoughts must be going on behind those dark eyes.
Her stomach was in knots every moment, waiting for him to regain his strength, wondering what he would do when he did. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t seem to stop worrying about him, ever watchful in case she had missed something important when she’d tried to heal him before. She was afraid he would relapse if she had and felt frustrated at his determined prohibition on physical contact that kept her from continuing to tend his wounds.
That insistence on his part should have been comforting in a way, but perhaps strangling her or whatever he was daydreaming about when he looked at her wasn’t the kind of contact that he opposed. The thought made her shudder.
The hours passed silently, and Gwyn did her best not to look at him apart from cautious glances from the corners of her eyes as she moved about the cottage. She didn’t have much to do, not when her last herb-gathering trip had been such a failure, but she made work for herself. She was as quiet as she could manage, knowing that noise disturbed him and not wanting him to be disturbed. He slept off and on, and she tried to pretend he wasn’t there, but by the time night had fallen again, her stomach was sick with the anxiety of it all and she could barely force down some bread for her supper.
She dared not approach the bed to check his wounds, but it seemed to her that the quick healing she had noticed before was continuing. His bruises were continuing to lighten, too gradually for her to catch it happening but quickly enough that she thought she could tell a change just from hour to hour, albeit a subtle one.
Did I do that? I couldn’t have. My magic isn’t that powerful, and it doesn’t work like that. But it was hard not to second-guess herself given the evidence before her eyes. She studied him as he slept and went over and over again in her mind what had happened that night, but she could come up with no answers. She supposed it had to be another oddity of his, nothing more. She both longed to ask him about it and balked at the idea. It doesn’t matter. He’ll be well enough to leave soon. That’s what’s important, she told herself.
But she was scared, and she couldn’t deny it to herself for long. When night fell, Gwyn laid down on the floor before the hearth, feeling chilled in spite of the relentless heat. She lit a small fire anyway and curled up on the floor in front of it, her back to the man in the bed even though it made the skin on the back of her neck prickle.
She shut her eyes tightly and held herself very still, trying to slow her breathing and the pounding of her heart. Somehow she fell asleep, only to startle awake again and again. She would sit up and look around, but the man remained in the bed unmoving, and she heard and saw nothing.
The moment she was sure dawn had broken, she was on her feet, relieved beyond words that day had begun. She turned back to the man on the bed and saw he was sleeping, so after a moment’s hesitation, she slipped from the cottage without fully opening the door, almost giddy with freedom for the short span of time it took her to gather his clothing and bring it back inside the cottage.
The door creaked when she came back in despite her best efforts, and he was sitting upright and wild-eyed before she could draw her next breath. She waved his clothing silently like a flag of surrender.
“You left. ” His voice was distinctly accusatory, his eyes narrowing as he watched her.
A chill ran through her, and her stomach knotted back up in an instant.
“Just to get your clothes. Aren’t you tired of being indecent? Have you no concern about being mistaken for a whore in an alley? ” Gwyn tried to keep her voice light, but inside she was quaking. He seemed terribly alert and didn’t look pale at all anymore.
Unexpectedly, the corners of his mouth twitched. “I shouldn’t have said that to you. Now you know about things decent women aren’t supposed to know about. ”
“I already knew about whores,” she protested. “I may live out in the middle of nowhere, but I’m not that sheltered from the rest of the world. ”
“You know they exist but little else, I expect. ”
The confidence in his tone annoyed her.
“You know, decent men don’t know much more about them, either,” she said pointedly. “I sell herbs to them, you know, so I suspect I know a hell of a lot more about their private affairs than you do...unless you’ve needed the same remedies? ”
His eyes widened, his nose wrinkling in obvious distaste. “I think not. ”
Despite what she had only just said about “decent men,” she still found his reaction irritating. She barely kept herself from glaring and threw his clothes at him. “They’re still human beings, you know,” she told him sharply. “They don’t deserve your disgust. They have their own reasons for doing what they do, as do we all. Thank the lord if you’ve never had to do anything difficult to survive. ”
She turned her back on him, ostensibly to give him privacy. Inside she was already regretting getting snappish with him, worrying about what he could do in retaliation obliterating her irritation in seconds. Oh lord, Gwyn, why can’t you keep your big mouth shut?
“Have you really been upset since you found me? ” he asked. His voice sounded closer than it should have, and she shut her eyes, her blood running cold. She gripped her own arms to still her fingers.
“Why would I lie about that? ”
“You don’t know me. And I’m clearly different from you. You gain nothing by helping me. ”
“That’s not true,” she mumbled. “I’m heading straight for a nervous collapse. That hardly counts as nothing. ”
“You’re afraid of me. ”
She hoped she was imagining it, but he sounded a little closer. She swallowed hard.
“You have no reason to hurt me,” Gwyn told him as firmly as she could. “You gain nothing by hurting me. I’ve done nothing to you, and I have nothing worth taking. ”
He was silent a moment. Her fingernails dug into her skin.
“Upsetting you was unnecessary, and I...regret that. Maybe we are not so different from each other, in that we are both different from everyone else. ”
She sucked in a breath. He has no idea how close to the mark he is on that one, she thought, her pulse quickening. But he can’t have guessed what I am? I mean, it isn’t possible. He was unconscious when I used my magic on him, and I’ve done nothing with it since...probably couldn’t even if I wanted to, I’m so tired. It’s all I can do to keep my shield up.
“I’m decent,” he added.
She reluctantly turned to face him, barely able to make herself open her eyes for fear of what she would see.
But wherever he had been a moment before, he was standing next to the bed now, leaning slightly against it. His clothes, though dry, were still bloodstained in places and ripped in others. They were drab and nondescript, tunic and trousers that could have belonged to a farmer or a soldier or to anyone, really.
“I don’t suppose I was wearing a cloak when you found me? Or anything else? ”
Gwyn hesitated, her mind returning unwillingly to the knife in her wooden chest. “Your boots are still outside. They’re probably dry, I just forgot about them. But no, you weren’t wearing a cloak. ”
“I don’t intend to hurt you. But I need to know if you have my knife. ”
Something about the words made her already aching stomach feel worse. He doesn’t promise not to hurt me, he just doesn’t intend to. Right now. For whatever that’s worth.
“I saved your life, you know,” she blurted out, a lump forming in her throat. “And you’re asking about your knife? Why does it matter? ”
“Never mind. You have it,” he told her. His certainty both disconcerted and agitated her. “That’s all I needed to know. ”
Gwyn felt cornered. There were only so many places the knife could be, and he was quicker than her...much quicker. She couldn’t stop him if he went looking for it. She couldn’t stop him if he decided to use it on her. He had no reason to do so and claimed he had no such intention, but how could she trust anything he said? Orywn help me, I don’t even know if he’s human, she thought helplessly. How do I know creatures like him aren’t habitual liars? He needs me alive while he’s weak, but when he’s ready to leave, then what?
She was terribly aware in that moment of how tall he was now that he was standing—even leaning as he was, he would tower over her if she stood next to him—and of how muscular. Perhaps he had not been thinking of choking her after all. Perhaps he’d been thinking of cutting her throat.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to forget the knife again, not for a moment. Not now that she knew he was thinking about it, not now that he knew she still had it. She wanted to kick herself for not taking it from the cottage while he’d been unconscious. Instead of sleeping that night, she should have thrown it in the woods, or buried it, or tossed it down the well out back.
She felt like a fool. Her throat ached and her eyes stung. She turned away from him, pressing her hands to her face, trying to compose herself and failing.
“You don’t believe me? Did you not just say yourself that I have no reason to hurt you? ” The words sounded flat, almost wooden.
Gwyn shook her head. “Stop. Just stop. ” Her voice came out sounding brittle, and it shook like her hands. “I’m not going to play this game with you. I’m not going to stand here while you tease me about whether or not you’re wanting to cut my throat. I don’t care what’s going on or who’s coming after you, I swear to the Lord of Pain that I will leave you here and I will not come back without guards. I’m sure you’re quicker than me, but you’ll have no choice but to run me down and kill me or let me go. I may be an idiot, but I’m not your plaything. ”
The more she spoke, the closer she felt to hysteria. She knew the uneasy, miserable hours and restless sleep must be catching up with her, but the knowledge changed nothing.
“You’ve misunderstood me. It’s likely futile to say this, as I know you have no reason to trust anything I say, but I’m not playing with you. I’ve never once thought of killing you. The knife means something to me. That’s why I asked about it, not because I’m looking to use it. ”
“Give me one reason why I should trust anything you say. You haven’t told me one damn thing about yourself since you got here. ” She lowered her hands, shooting an incredulous glance at him over her shoulder. “I’m supposed to take it on faith that what the knife means to you isn’t that it’s your favorite tool for killing women with, am I? ”
“I never thought I’d ever meet someone with as suspicious a mind as mine. I understand now why others find that so irritating,” he muttered, only just barely audible. Then he spoke up. “That knife is all I have of my father. I haven’t been parted with it except by choice since my mother died. ” He paused a moment, then added, as slowly as if the words were being dragged from him, “My name is Dominic. And I’ve never killed anyone who wasn’t either trying to kill me or who would have tried to if given the chance. ”
“Do you think I’m trying to kill you? Or that I would try to? ” she asked hesitantly. He seemed pretty convinced before that I had done something to him. Who knows what he’s thinking.
“No,” he said very quietly. “You could have done that by now if you wanted. You certainly haven’t wanted for opportunities. And at the risk of scaring you again, neither have I. ”
“You were almost killed just the night before last,” she reminded him. “And you only have the use of one arm right now. ”
“How many arms do you think it takes? Believe me, if I thought you were trying to kill me, you’d already be dead. You have nothing to fear from me. ” He paused. “And if I can stay awake through another meal, I think I’ll be able to leave. ”
Gwyn turned back to him, afraid to hope. “Really? ”
He nodded once. He hadn’t moved, still leaning against the bed, watching her.
She took a deep breath, already feeling a little steadier. “Well then. I’d better start on that then. ”
He raised an eyebrow slightly. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me your name now? ”
She shrugged, already hunting for the kettle. “Do you really want to know? I thought you just told me yours to stop me from running out on you. ”
“I think I really do. ” He sounded surprised, which made her look back at him, but his expression hadn’t changed at all.
“It’s Gwyn. ” She laughed a little, shaking her head. “Listen to us, we sound like people now. Next thing you know, we’ll be discussing the finer points of the weather. ”
“That would require a worse beating than what I received,” he informed her, so gravely that it startled another laugh from her as she found the kettle.
Though she still felt shaky, her stomach had finally calmed, and her pulse was nearly normal. He could have been lying to her, but she chose to believe him. She needed to believe him. Freedom is in sight! As badly beaten as he was...I never would have thought anyone could recover from that so quickly, but clearly he’s not anyone. Half an hour, an hour at the most, and off he goes, back to wherever he came from, and life can go back to normal. First thing I’m going to do is have a nap in my own bed.
Hot on the heels of her relief, the unpleasant thought began to nag at her that he could be returning directly to whatever situation had caused him to be left for dead in the first place, but she thought of the knife and told herself that surely he could take care of himself.
But if that’s entirely true, then how did he end up like that in the first place? a small, traitorous voice asked inside her head.
She tried to ignore it as she made their tea, but her initial relief had been tainted, and she found herself slowing down as she worked, all urgency inexplicably lost.
Just because he scares me and I want him to leave doesn’t mean I also want him dead. She bit her lip, glancing at him again only to find he hadn’t stopped watching her.
“What’s wrong? ” he asked her abruptly, a slight frown curving his lips.
“Nothing,” she answered, looking back at the kettle.
Everything, she thought.
