Rowan
settle on the floor beside Kai, angling my body to let the maximum light
from the torch illuminate the wound. The shaft is broken and there isn’t
much of a tail left to grab onto. I pull the fabric away from the incision
to get a better look at what we are dealing with—only to yank my hands
away when Kai chokes on a pained howl.
Shit. I’d already suspected something on the arrow head, and his
reaction proves me right. This isn’t just a puncture injury, it’s something
else all together.
Kai gulps for breath, his face ashen, his jaw clenched so tight I fear his
teeth might shatter. Sweat beads on his forehead despite the wet and cold
cellar around us.
“Kai…” I hesitate, my hands hovering over the wound. I don’t know
what to do. But I know that I don’t want to hurt him like that again. And I’d
hardly done anything.
His ice-blue eyes flash with something. Pain, obviously. Stubbornness,
always. But also… fear? No, that can’t be right. Kai doesn’t do fear.
Reaching down, he grabs the pant leg and tears the fabric himself until
the whole calf is exposed. The flesh around the embedded arrowhead is an
angry, inflamed red, but it’s the thin black spidery lines that radiate from
that puncture wound that make my stomach turn. The skin between the lines
is sickly and grayish, as if the arrow is leeching the life from the flesh it
punctures.
I use a wet corner of my cloak to wipe away the blood. And he gasps
again.
Maybe he is right. Maybe manipulating the wound will do more harm
than good. “Do you want me to stop?” I ask.
Kai shakes his head, and for a second I see that glimmer of fear in his
gaze again. “No,” he whispers. “Get it out. Please. Get it out of me.”
“All right.” I touch his good leg. “I will.”
Kai blinks and his walls return, his eyes all strength and determination
again. “You’ll need something to pull it out with. There. That should do.”
I look to where he is pointing to find a small, rusted pair of pliers beside
the wall. I realize they’ve been left behind by accident, not recently
brought in on purpose.
Kai braces his hands against the floor in anticipation.
I leave the pliers on the floor. Digging about with them would be
madness—crude madness—and rub my hands together instead.
“What are you doing?” He sounds annoyed, but I know better now. I can
hear the hidden edge of anxiety in his voice.
“I’m trying to not be stupid. Don’t bother me.” Closing my eyes, I place
my hands firmly on either side of the wound and focus on the one thing I
know well: alchemy.
I don’t usually work with metal through flesh, and the heat of Kai’s skin
coupled with the sticky wetness of his blood is distracting. Pushing past
that, past the way his entire body spasms beneath my hands, I let my magic
seek out the metal and the auric alloy I know so well. There, beneath the
surface, I feel it. The harsh shape of the arrowhead, its edges jagged and
cruel and pliable. But more importantly, I sense the unique signature of
auric steel. My auric steel. I made the alloy that went into the arrow. I know
it. And it knows me.
I begin to work, my fingers moving in small, precise motions as I
manipulate the very structure of the metal. The steel obeys well enough—
the greatest danger is to avoid corroding Kai’s flesh along with the
projectile—but the auric alloy itself is another story.
“The alloy is reacting to something in your blood,” I murmur, trying to
pull back the molecules that keep escaping my control. It’s like the metal is
alive, hungry, and latching onto Kai’s essence with a viciousness I can’t
fully counter. “I don’t understand it.”
“Just get it out,” Kai says through gritted teeth.
Right. I focus on coaxing the alloy toward me, the molecules resisting
the eviction from Kai’s body. I’ve never felt them react like this before but I
work through it, pouring my concentration and magic into the metal. Into
Kai’s flesh. Slowly, the metal begins to change at its core, shifting its shape
from inside out until the arrow head takes an oval-like form, its edges
smoothed and loose speckles of reactive auric alloy clinging to it under
protest.
I don’t warn Kai before pulling the metal free, but I don’t breathe either
until it comes out with a sickening pop.
Kai slumps forward slightly, catching his weight by bracing his hand on
his good leg. “Thank you,” he pants, closing his eyes. “Thank you. Rowan.”
Rowan. Not Ainsley.
I let out a shuddering breath and let my head drop to my chest. I’m
exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Staring down at my hands,
still slick with Kai’s blood, I discover them trembling. I stick them into my
armpits, both to still them and to find warmth. Because I’m cold again. That
anger that was keeping heat rolling through me?—it’s gone. Spent. And I
can’t get it back.
“Are you alright?” Kai asks. He’s torn the hem of his shirt off and is
now wrapping the material around the wound with a great deal less
discomfort than he’d had earlier.
“I’m fine.” My head throbs and my vision blurs at the edges. The dank
air of the cellar is suffocating, thick with the coppery scent of blood that
seems to bother me more than Kai now. How had things shifted so quickly?
“I’ve never felt metal behave so malevolently before,” I say. “It was
actively fighting against my control, as if it had a malicious will of its own.
It doesn’t make sense.”
“You concoct an alloy in a workshop. It’s not exactly real life over
there.”
I raise my face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kai pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “Nothing.”
It’s not nothing. I try to summon my anger again, but I just have nothing
left. “Fine.”
“I just meant that things are always different in real battle,” he says
more gently. “It’s always harder. Unpredictable. It’s normal to be
surprised.”
I know he means well, but all I hear is that it’s normal for me to be a
mess out in the field. Which isn’t news to me, but it still stings. “Give me
your shackles.”
“Why?” He asks but moves his legs toward me obediently.
“Metal,” I place my hand on the chain. “I can’t melt it or break it like
another enchanter might, but maybe I can manipulate it on a molecular
level. Weaken it.” Or maybe I can’t. I don’t know. But it’s better than sitting
here being cold and useless.
After a few minutes of intense focus, I feel Kai’s gentle touch on my
shoulder. “Aisnely, stop.”
I shake my head stubbornly. “I can do this.”
He pulls my hands away from the shackles. “You are exhausted.”
“And you aren’t?” I try to shake him off. “Kyrian isn’t? Logan?
Wherever the bloody hell he is now. Whoever else they are holding hostage
in this inn? Everyone is exhausted, Grayson. And, unlike me, they didn’t
take a little nap in the middle of a battle, causing their team to get shot and
captured.”
“No. Ainsley. Rowan.” Kai kneels over me, his attention and warmth
wrapping about my shoulders. “This isn’t on you. Not any of it.”
“Don’t lie to me.” The words come through clenched teeth. I wish I
could drown in his murmurs, take them as the kindness they are offered as,
but I can’t. “Please. Just don’t lie to me. That’s all I ask. No lies.”
“Alright,” he agrees with obvious reluctance. His hand moves to cup my
face, tilting it up so I’m forced to meet his intense gaze. Even in the dim
light of the cellar, his eyes are piercing, filled with a mixture of
determination and something softer that I can’t quite name, but instinctively
know is rare. “No lies. This isn’t your fault.”
“You wouldn’t be out there if not for me,” I say.
“That’s the job I signed up for.”
“I… swooned. What kind of soldier swoons?”
“The kind who has a unique skill set in alchemy. Or did you think
everyone wants you for your size and brawn?”
“I made the arrow,” I confess. “The auric alloy the steel was treated
with. I made it. I could feel the composition.”
“And had that arrow been the work of another alchemist, the metal may
not have obeyed you. You saved my leg.” His thumb brushes away a tear I
didn’t realize had already made it to the bottom of my jaw. Another tear.
What is happening with me? Why am I suddenly falling apart when Kai
looks utterly put together.
Taking one of my hands, he presses it against his chest, right over his
steadily beating heart. “I’m alright now,” he says. “See? You made me
alright. You did that.”
I smile weakly and he nods, his touch sending a shiver through me and
making me suddenly and acutely aware of every inch of him—the way his
muscular thighs press against my own, the bend of his shoulders as his lean
body hovers protectively over mine, the spicy masculine scent of his skin.
His hand moves from my face to the nape of my neck, fingers tangling
in my rain-dampened hair. I can feel his heartbeat quicken, matching the
frantic pace of my own. We’re balanced on a knife’s edge, and I’m not sure
if I want to pull back or lean in. The only heat in the whole place is the
furnace of his body so close to mine.
Kai’s lips part slightly, and something in my subconscious finds the
movement familiar. As if I’d felt his mouth on mine recently, an anchor
amidst the pouring rain, wind, and fear. Did I imagine feeling him kiss me?
Or is the phantom image new, a desire turned into a taunting memory? Does
it matter?
I want to taste him. I want him to taste me.
“What do you want?” Kai whispers against my ear. “No lies, Rowan.
Tell me what you want.”
“I want to not be here,” I say. “At least for a while. I don’t want to be
here.”
“I think I can do that,” Kai replies, and suddenly the feel of his lips on
mine is anything but an illusion.
Except hadn’t Logan once promised me something similar?
