Healer

Chapter 34

     He chuckled which led him to cough and she watched nervously, but nothing came up. "I never intended to leave you, Talia." He was so happy he thought light might be coming from where the bond tightened in his chest, but he was weak and tired and couldn't find a way to show it. He would have liked to roll her over and fuck her on the dirt floor. Claim her like she finally allowed him to, but he couldn't do that either. "I love you." He took her hand. "I love you so much."

She eyed him, also unsure how to react to the new intensity of the flame in her chest. His flame. She fingered the blue stone at her neck. "I love you, too." She smiled slightly. Warily. "Do you really not remember what happened?"

"I remember the fight, I remember being shot, but I don't know how we got here."

"Oh." She looked down and inspected her hands. "I winnowed us here."

She could feel his eyes. "Both of us?"

"Yes. And I know they could track us, but we needed cover."

"I was unconscious?"

"No, but the poison was really potent and you were awake but you weren't well, Az, you weren't well at all."

"Talia..." He closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his forehead. "They could have come back."

"You made it clear you wanted me to leave you if that happened. Very, very clear." She swallowed. "And I refused."

"I was afraid...." He paused, his hand still over his face. "I remember being afraid that you—you were hurt. I thought you were hurt."

"I took your poison. That's why you were afraid." She took his hand. "Neither of us knew what would happen." He let his hand slide from his face and opened his eyes. "But I had to. You were dying. You were coughing up black bile and dying."

He frowned and she studied it. She loved it in a twisted way. It looked so natural on him, she thought, and it wasn't angry or menacing, it was thoughtful and serious. "I remember that. You said you'd wait until I passed out."

Tears ran down her cheeks, startling her. She'd been crying for twenty-four hours, it shouldn't have startled her. "I think we should go home."

He watched her, his face pained. "Don't cry."

She choked a laugh. "I thought you were gone. The last thing I said to you was that I would wait for you to pass out so that I could do what you wished I wouldn't." She blinked tears from her eyes. "I think we should go home." She repeated. "It isn't safe to stay here."

"The book..."

"No." She shook her head. "Forget the book, Az. Fuck the book. I don't care. Not now." He opened his mouth to argue but the sharpness in her glare shut him up. "I didn't think sitting next to you and watching each breath to see if it would be your last was something I was going to have to do twice in my life." She paused to steady herself. "Eris tracked us in a day. That gives us very little time at all. I was weakened from the poison, but maybe now..." She looked for his reaction but when she met his eyes, she couldn't get past how aware of him she was. She couldn't read his expression past the rise and fall of his chest, the blink of his thick lashes, the sound of his heartbeat, the curve of his lips as they parted to speak. The longer she looked at him, the longer she felt she had never seen him before. She shifted again, feeling that if she looked away, she might never see him again. She felt that out of the corner of her eye she might see a physical tie from her chest to his. Her heart felt like it was swelling between her ribs.

"...Talia?" She started and looked back at his eyes. She had forgotten that he might speak. That she had said something he might answer. "Are you okay?" The question sounded strange coming from the one of them lying on the ground in bandages.