“But we are not the same anymore.”
“Yes, we are.”
He searched her face, cataloging the ropey scars that distorted one eye and half her nose and all of her cheek. He suspected the damage continued below the robing because the side of her throat was marked as well.
“Nadya…”
Rising up, he sat beside her on the sofa, put his arm around her, and eased her against him. Though her body remained stiff, she did tilt in—yet he had the sense that, though they were close to each other, they were miles apart.
“I’m going to keep us safe.” As the words came out of him, he looked over to a lineup of weapons in a glass-fronted cabinet mounted on the wall. “Don’t worry about that.”
And that was when it hit him.
“We’re out of the camp.” His voice was rough as he tried out the syllables, letting his ears test them for truth. “We’re not in there anymore—”
As he turned his head to look around some more—marveling, really, about the liberation—he caught his reflection in that gun cabinet’s glass.
What stared back at him was at once a stranger… and someone hecould recall seeing all of his life—well, at least before he went into the prison camp. After that date, there had been no mirrors anywhere.
“Kane?” she whispered.
He had some vague notion that his body was getting off the couch and moving across to the cabinet, but he wasn’t tracking his own movements. He was too busy looking at himself, and as he came up close to the glass, he touched his own face, feeling nothing but smooth, healthy skin as he let his fingertips drift down his cheek to his jaw. Then he stepped back and stared at his torso. As he extended his legs, they worked perfectly, the muscles strong and coordinated, the knees flexing without pain, the bones underneath willing and able to support the load of his upper half should he need them to.
And underneath his skin? A humming of power that should not have been foreign, but felt like a revelation.
Turning away from himself, he felt helpless. Which made no sense. He should be jumping up and down and celebrating.
But none of this made sense. All he knew was that Apex and the others had gotten him out of the camp, and then someone had interceded on his behalf, and then…
“Yes,” Nadya said softly. “That’s what you look like now.”
“I find this… impossible to believe.”
He shook his head and walked around the cramped space. As he went up and back, he thought of the manor house he’d been given by his intended’s bloodline. There had been that horse path that had skirted the back meadow, the one he had taken his trotters on. He could have used its length and calming vista right now.
Except then he found himself in front of a stove and refrigerator. Though they were modern appliances, he recognized what they were from when he had worked in the prison camp’s kitchen, and he knew how to use them.
He would also benefit from a different focus right now.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Kane smiled a little. “I feel the same way. I’m willing to bet that the wolven has something to eat here—”
“Kane.”
“Yes?” When she didn’t answer, he turned to face her. “Tell me. Whatever it is.”
“I want to know what happened to you.” She held up her hands. “I’m not formally trained in medicine by human standards, but I have apprenticed for years. And the healing that you have gone through, in a matter of hours, defies reasoning. Where did you go and what was done unto you.”
Nadya was so used to being covered that the absence of her hood made her feel too light, as if she would float away if she didn’t hold on to the cushion beneath her. She was also shocked she could face Kane at all.
But she had other things that were foremost on her mind. And given the way Kane had looked at himself in that glass? He was as shocked as she was.
“I expected to you to die,” she said softly. “Every night when I would first check on you, I would brace myself to find you unresponsive. And now you’re strong and whole, and perfectly healthy.”
Kane opened his mouth. Closed it. “Are you hungry? I am.”