“So many you’ve lost count.”
Creases deepened at the corners of his eyes.
He reached for my hand, but I pulled it away. “Get out, Kaden. I may be your prisoner, but I’m not your whore.”
My words left a deeper wound than the ones on his neck. Anger flashed through his eyes and shattered his calm. He spun and left, slamming the door behind him.
All I wanted was to collapse into a ball on the floor, but just seconds later, I heard a soft tap on the door, and it eased open. It was Dihara. She entered carrying a small pail of scented water with leaves floating on top. “For your hands. Fingers fester quickly.”
I bit my lip and nodded. She sat me down in the lone chair in the carvachi and pulled a short stool up for herself. She dipped my hands in the water and wiped them gently with a soft cloth.
“I’m sorry if I frightened the children,” I said.
“You’ve lost someone close to you.”
“Two people,” I whispered, because I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the Walther I knew back again. Out here I couldn’t do anything for him. For anyone. How little the worth of my own fleeting happiness seemed now. Even the barbarians would have had the goo
d sense to back down from the combined force of two armies. The prospect had frightened them enough to want to dispose of me. Was that how Kaden had planned to eliminate me, an arrow through my throat like Greta’s? Was that what he had regretted so deeply that night we danced? The prospect of killing me? His words, we can’t dwell on the maybes, came back to me, bitter and biting.
Dihara pulled away a piece of hanging nail, and I winced. She placed my hands back in the pail, washing away the blood. “The broken fingers will need bandaging too,” she said. “But they’ll heal quickly. Soon enough for you to do whatever you need to do.”
I watched the herbs floating in the water. “I don’t know what that is anymore.”
“You will.”
She took my hands from the pail and carefully wiped them dry, then applied a thick sticky balm to the raw skin of the ripped nails. It immediately eased the pain with numbing coolness. She wrapped the three fingertips in strips of cloth.
“Take a deep breath,” she said and pulled on the two blue fingers, making me cry out. “You’ll want them to heal straight.” She wound them together with more cloth until they were stiff and unbendable. I looked at them, trying to imagine saddling a horse or holding reins now.
“How long will it take?” I asked.
“Nature is dependable in such things. Usually a few weeks. But sometimes the magic will come, greater than nature itself.”
Kaden had warned me to be wary of her, and now I wondered if any of what she told me was true—or had I simply been grasping at false hope when I had nothing else to hold?
“Yes, there’s always magic,” I said, cynicism heavy on my tongue.
She placed my bandaged hands back in my lap. “All ways belong to the world. What is magic but what we don’t yet understand? Like the sign of the vine and lion you carry?”
“You know about that?”
“Natiya told me.”
I sighed and shook my head. “That wasn’t magic. Only the work of careless artisans, dyes that were too strong, and my endless bad fortune.”
Her old face wrinkled with a grin. “Maybe.” She picked up her pail of medicinal water and stood. “But remember, child, we may all have our own story and destiny, and sometimes our seemingly bad fortune, but we’re all part of a greater story too. One that transcends the soil, the wind, time … even our own tears.” She reached down and wiped under my eye with her thumb. “Greater stories will have their way.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
I was up early, hoping I’d beat Malich to a hot cup of chicory before he stirred from his tent. I hadn’t slept well, which was no surprise. I startled awake several times during the night after seeing the wide-eyed stare of a bloody-jointed puppet and then, as I hovered over it, the face would transform to Greta’s.
Those dreams were replaced with ones I’d had of Rafe when we first met, partial glimpses of his face dissolving like a specter in ruins, forest, fire, and water. And then I heard the voice again, the same one I’d heard back in Terravin that I had thought was only a remembrance. In the farthest corner, I will find you. Except this time, I knew the voice was Rafe’s. But worst were the dreams of Eben walking toward me, his face spattered with blood, an ax in his chest. I screamed, waking myself, sucking in air with the word innocents still on my tongue. Get used to it. I would never get used to it. Was Kaden feeding me more lies? Deception seemed to be all he knew. When I woke in the morning, I felt as if I had tussled all night with demons.
The birds of the forest were just beginning to call in the predawn light when I stepped out from the carvachi, so I was surprised to see that my depraved Vendan companions all sat around the fire already. I refrained from gasping when I saw them, but they all looked like they had wrestled with a lion. The scratches had darkened overnight and were now angry bloody welts striping their flesh. Malich was the worst, his face mauled and the skin under his left eye shining blue and red where I had punched him, but even Griz had a slash across his nose, and one of Finch’s arms was riddled with lines. Malich glared as I approached, and Kaden leaned forward, ready to intervene if necessary.
No one spoke, but I was well aware that they were watching me as I fumbled with bandaged hands to hold a cup and pour from the pot of chicory. I was going to take it to the large tent to avoid their company, but when I turned and met Malich’s glare, I thought the better of it. If I backed down now, he’d think I was afraid of him, and that would only fuel him. Besides, I had steaming hot chicory I could throw in his mauled face if he stepped toward me.
“I trust you all slept well,” I said, deliberately keeping my tone light. I returned Malich’s glare with a tight-lipped grin.