Healer

Chapter 43

     Stripped bare together, what was between them was completely exposed and the cool air stung. It stung in a way that told them they were alive. And if they were alive, then the healing would still come.

Azriel had found it difficult to disconnect his body from hers long enough even to pull himself from the now cool water. But he did, and he took her arm to help her out after. She didn't fight him as he ran a towel over her body and wrung the water from her hair. He watched her pull a comb through it as he dressed himself. The long piece of blonde around her face was a reminder of the weight she bore, what she had suffered. He reminded himself again that they had both been broken. But she was here, and so they could both be repaired.

Something reminded him of the necklace he had slipped in his pocket and she turned to watch him fish it out, squeezing it for a second before laying it gently around her neck as he had the first time. Tears lined her eyes. He had kept it, held it close. His last piece of her.

His touch was impossibly light as he clasped it, watching her face in the mirror. She was more beautiful than he could have recalled, the memory he tried to collect by staring at her as she lay still seemed a grotesque substitute. He wondered if sleep would find him, if he would be able to look away from her, the only time it had in days being when he was drunk. A pang of shame hit him. What had he missed in his stupor? She had gotten up and walked out from under him and he hadn't noticed. He shuddered thinking what else he could have missed. That sleep though, and the dream. It came back to him in a wave.

"I think I knew about the Hex." He said, running a towel back over his own hair.

She paused. "You did?"

"I had a dream. I was standing, looking at you in my bed. You were sick, I thought you were dead, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. You suddenly sat up and I could see it in your eyes then...." He frowned. "It was strange. Like I had seen it before."

She laid down the comb and turned. "That's what I saw, you know. When I came here. You under the Hex, laying in your bed like a statue."

"Right." He straightened. "You told me that." His eyes wandered as he thought.

She nodded. "And apparently that Hex connected us for all that time. That's why our dreams were the same sometimes."

He crossed his arms, leaning on the doorframe as she slipped into one of his shirts, pushing up the sleeves. "It stayed in you? You didn't know?" He asked.

"It still needed you to live, but there was a piece of you in me. The bond. I never felt it because it never did anything. It was waiting for my death to move, which was apparently how he had designed it from the beginning. The whole thing was a long, elaborate plan to.....well, we don't know. Because I never got around to doing my part." She quieted for a moment. "You were a part of the prophecy, you know." His eyes quizzed her. "Bound in ink and shadow."

"Shadow." He stated. Of course.

"I should have known." She smiled slightly, sending his heart racing again.

He pushed off and walked to her, taking her face with gentle hands. "Your power. It's different now, isn't it?"

She blinked and nodded. "Yes, I think so."

"I can feel it." He whispered.

He sounded awed and not afraid, and she realized that if anyone could accept everything she was, broken, scarred, unsteady, powerful, it was him and his infinite calm and clarity. Even in his uncertainty and his pain he held her up. Even when he wavered, he held her steady. And she could feel it, too, she just didn't know what it meant. Part of her was afraid to find out. Afraid of change.