by Lorna George
She wasn’t about to escape, not without Rayan and the things he would need to recover on their way, but she wondered just what in all hells they were playing at leaving it open like that. She almost called out to the other guards waiting at the foot of the stairs to let them know of the error, but a loud, thundering roar shook right through her body. It wasn’t a normal noise, even as it sliced through her mind she knew it came from somewhere inside herself. Bracing herself against the noise, she felt most of her magical defences being ripped apart and gasped as she fought for control.
Without a shadow of a doubt, she knew that Esta and the others had just found their way back to the Moss Tortoise, and Arun knew everything.
Chapter Twenty
‘What in all hells were you thinking?’ Arun’s voice thundered through her mind. ‘Hours… Hours, Naomi! Only hours after I give you back your freedom, and this is how you behave? I should cage you for your own protection!’
‘I should punch you in the mouth just for suggesting that!’ she snapped back, then recoiled as her words echoed loudly around the cell. She hadn’t quite got the hang of directing her speech through the Bond without vocalising yet, and knew this was about to cause a problem. The quick scuff of boots growing louder with each step as they came towards her cell meant she would have to think fast. If her captors knew she was in contact with Arun, there was serious risk to all involved. Who knew what they might do in order to get to him?
‘Is everything alright?’ asked the guard, frowning curiously between her and the unconscious Rayan.
‘Sorry,’ she sighed. ‘He said something inappropriate. He’s delirious.’
Naomi heard Arun’s derisive snort at that, but tried hard to ignore it. The guard nodded, but continued to watch her from the doorway as she struggled to remove Rayan’s shirt.
‘Lying comes so easily to you, doesn’t it?’ Arun chimed in snidely.
‘I’m not-!’ she stopped, realising she was shouting again as the guard took an uncertain step back. Checking herself, she tried to cover her mistake. ‘I’m not feeling particularly charitable right now, especially after seeing the condition this man has been left in. I’ll thank you to leave me alone so I can work.’
Instead of appearing offended, the young guard instead looked shamefully down to his feet. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘You’re a bit late,’ she replied tersely.
‘I understand, My Lady,’ he mumbled. ‘Christophe will be back with what you need soon, but I think he’s trying to find a healer.’
‘No, thank you,’ Naomi said curtly, wincing as the worst of Rayan’s wounds were finally revealed to her eyes. She felt her stomach lurch and a disgusted scowl curled her lips. ‘You’ve all done quite enough damage, don’t you think? I don’t trust any of you. No one is attending to Lord Rayan but me.’
The guard made no reply to that, as she’d hoped he wouldn’t, but walked quietly away, again leaving the cell door open. Naomi, having very carefully moved Rayan onto his back, no small feat considering their size difference, began to more closely inspect his wounds.
‘How does it look?’ Arun asked, the anger gone from his voice to be replaced by concern and sharp fear for his cousin.
‘It’s bad,’ she muttered, probing the terrible, festering wound on his right arm. ‘Worse than anything I’ve ever seen.’
There was another gash on his right shoulder, and despite the pus and scabbed mush that filled them both, she recognised them both as talon-shaped. Rayan’s airborne journey had obviously been substantially less pleasant than her own, and she grimaced as she realised the shoulder was actually dislocated as well. The skin around the wounds had gone a very strange colour and smelled putrid. His sword arm, she noted, sick at heart.
There were a few other injuries, but these were by far the worst. He had severe bruising on his ribs that made her think it was likely there were a few breaks, and hoped that there was no internal bleeding. There was a long, but relatively shallow lesion down his left leg, which wasn’t clean by any stretch of the imagination, but not nearly as bad as his arm. Of course, being trained as a soldier and serving in battle more than once, she had done some very basic surgery before now, but nothing like this. Land magic often lent itself to healing, which had been a big help back then, but now she only had Arun’s borrowed fire magic and after last night she was dubious about trying to utilise it.
She knew that she would have to clean the wounds thoroughly and likely have to cut away some of the more poisonous-looking flesh. She was actually a pretty dab hand with sutures, but on this scale? He could bleed to death before she was done.
She was so far out of her depth right now, despite her initial reaction she wasn’t sure she had the luxury of refusing a healer if one was offered. What if the arm had to be amputated? Heavens forbid it should, but what if that was the only way to save him? Could she do that? The implications of such a thing were monstrous.
Sighing shakily, Naomi touched his good hand. ‘I promise I’ll do my best for you. I promise.’
Looking back to the still open cell door almost involuntarily, she twitched and forced herself to focus back on Rayan. Taking off her own, far cleaner tunic, she folded it and placed it as a makeshift cushion under his head. She tried to keep her breathing steady, rolling up her shirt sleeves with a precision that was unlike her, and forced herself not to think about the inevitable time when the door would be shut and locked.
‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you.’ Arun’s voice reappearing in her mind made her jump. She gasped in shock and grabbed the front of her shirt where her heart had all but imploded.
‘Cuss it all, Arun!’ she hissed. ‘Stop doing that!’
‘I was trying to apologise!’
Naomi rolled her eyes. ‘Not top of my priorities right now, to be completely honest.’
‘Oh, very well! Be that way.’ She could practically hear him huff in agitation, then there was a strange tingling through the Bond. It made her want to scratch like mad. ‘You called me Arun.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.’ His pleasure seemed to bubble up between them. ‘Right after you swore at me for startling you.’
Naomi frowned, then felt her face heat unpleasantly as she realised he was right. ‘So what? It’s your name, isn’t it?’
‘So what.’ he repeated, a smile lilting his voice. Naomi frowned and drummed her fingers impatiently against her knees, wondering why such a stupid thing would make him so ridiculously pleased with himself. The Bond was nothing but trouble as far as she was concerned, and while this insight to him was interesting, the fact that he felt somehow triumphant, as though he’d won some kind of small battle, irked her horribly.
There was a sudden hesitance about him, as well. It was as though there was something pressing down on him, something unspoken.
‘What is it?’ she asked irritably.
If he had something to say, he should damn well say it instead of projecting his uncertainty at her. She had enough worries of her own without adding his.
The hesitance was stronger now, prickled with discomfort at being caught out by her. Naomi sighed. ‘You might as well tell me. I already know far more than I’d ordinarily like to.’
Humour. Only light, permeated with more uncertainty, then a sense of resolve. ‘You don’t seem very confident about being able to heal Rayan easily.’
Ah. Now his unwillingness to speak made sense. His wariness of her response to this nudged at her. Well, there was no point in trying to cushion the blow, was there? Best he heard the truth, even if it hurt.
‘I’m not a healer,’ she admitted. ‘This is really beyond me, but I can’t trust that whomever is brought here to help wouldn’t just make things worse. I can’t even trust that their skills are better than mine at this point. At least if I do it and get out of my depth, I’ll do what I can and stop. We can’t be sure someone else would, or wouldn’t mutilate him further.’
‘
I’d rather it was you that treated him,’ he replied, that odd warmth filtering through their Bond uncomfortably. This really was an awkward way to hold a conversation. She didn’t want to know anyone as well as this.
‘You’ve never explained…’ he began again, then paused as he searched for the best way to continue. ‘I mean, but I know you had magic of your own at one point, and even though things didn’t end as well as they could have last night, you have a good base skill for it.’
‘What’s your point?’
Dread began to fill her up, already knowing what his point was, but hoping to be proved wrong. He wanted her to borrow his magic again to try and heal his cousin. She would do it at the drop of a hat if she could be sure of keeping control. Memories of the burnt forest and charred remains of the soldiers floated through her mind, poking sharply at older memories that she couldn’t help but associate with the smell of burnt flesh. She shuddered deep in her bones, but Arun, apparently sensing her unease, ploughed ahead with his explanation.
‘It wouldn’t be like that, Firefly, I promise. I wouldn’t let that happen.’
‘And just how would you propose to stop it?’ she asked, unceremoniously shoving at the unwanted attempt at comfort. He backed off, but not before she felt the sting of his annoyance conflict with his smothering concern.
‘That’s the part you’re not going to like,’ he said, a frustrated sigh slipping through her mind. ‘I could guide you through the whole process, control the magic for you, but to do that you’d have to open yourself to the Bond fully. You would have to let me all the way in.’
‘Oh.’
Her thoughts seemed to fizzle out then. There were a few seconds of complete oblivion that felt like they could have lasted hours, even days, before she mentally kicked herself back to life again.
‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’ he repeated, incredulous.
‘Yes, okay. What do I do?’
‘Now, just hold on. Do you understand what I just said? I’ll be completely integrated into your mind. I’ll have a hold over my own form, but most of my subconscious will be squeezed in with yours. I’ll be practically inside your body!’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she snorted, and his shock at her dry joke bounced against her in a way that might have made her laugh under different circumstances. Glancing at Rayan’s fevered, twitching face, however, she sobered. ‘Look, if this is the best way to help your cousin with the least risk to his life, then there isn’t a discussion to be had as far as I’m concerned. You do what you have to do, then you get out. The end.’
The ensuing influx of gratitude was almost painful. ‘I won’t look at anything you don’t want me to, I swear. If you feel uncomfortable or it gets too much, just tell me to stop and I will. No questions asked, no judgement. I’ll be gone. It should only take a few moments if everything goes well, and I’ll pull back as soon as I can.’
‘You’re babbling,’ she chided half-heartedly, rubbing her temples to try and ease the barrage of his emotions pounding against her skull. ‘Can we just get on with it?’
This was going to be as rough as a badger’s behind, if she was any judge, but what else could she do? Life and limb were at stake, and Naomi wasn’t about to let this man die if she could do something to prevent it. She had long heard stories of Commander Bastiaan of Koren as the greatest swordsman now living. She couldn’t let him die like this.
All that aside, tales of greatness told to her by Master Gerrard and even her own father notwithstanding, Rayan had been kind to her. Esta could also die if he wasn’t saved, and would suffer brutally even if he wasn't. In the short time they had been acquainted, Naomi already knew she would feel the pain of it more keenly than she might like to admit. She also knew that Arun would be inconsolable, and that would hurt her, too.
‘You can’t save everyone,’ Master Gerrard had once told her, but she had been young and full of confidence back then. Now she knew the truth of it, having lost a great many people that she had tried to save. That she should have saved. It had been a hard, cruel lesson, one that still throbbed in her heart, but she knew even now she wanted to prove those words false. She would always try to save everyone, because that was just who she was. She would save Rayan. She would save them all if it just meant a short period of discomfort, even. She could hardly believe that Arun had expected her to refuse.
‘I’ve never given you the credit you deserve,’ he said, and again Naomi started in surprise. His voice sounded close now, as though they were somehow in the same room. ‘I’ve done what I can with the Bond, but you need to finish it. Just relax and lower your guard.’
Easier said than done. Some of her mental barriers had been in place for years, even without the use of her magic. It was ingrained in her to be on her guard.
‘Just trust me. You can do this.’
‘Not helping,’ she growled peevishly, and went back to what she should be concentrating on. It took some time, but at last she dismantled her defences enough for Arun to slip in. Immediately she felt strained, like too much flour forced into a sack half its size. Her body moved without her permission, shifting from her neat kneeling to crossed legs.
‘Sorry, I can’t sit like that,’ Arun said. At least she assumed it was Arun. It had been her voice, her mouth that formed the words, but not her head.
She tried to speak back, voice her horror at seeing her body do things without her consent, but nothing happened. Not even a squeak. It was as though she had been forced back to the subconscious of her own mind while he took over the running of her body. It was so invasive, she could barely think.
‘You need to focus on your words. I can barely understand anything except that you’re panicking,’ he tried to soothe, but his words in her mouth only made things worse and streams of furious abuse filled her mind. Then she tutted. Or possibly he did.
‘Firefly, I’ve never heard a woman say such a disgusting word.’
‘Maybe you should get out more!’ she snapped, then realised it really had been her to speak. Relief bubbled up inside her and she clung to that control for all she was worth. ‘Besides, I didn’t say it. I thought it.’
Arun’s response was to laugh, then abruptly stop. She felt her own eyebrows lift in surprise. There was a surge of something indefinable through their Bond and Naomi felt herself begin to lose the foothold she had fought for. There was suddenly too much of him, and she, whatever part of her still occupied the space, constricted painfully.
Her body jerked, and without warning, she rolled away from the prone Rayan and lurched across the cell to vomit in the corner. It was short and violent, an almost primitive attempt to expel the foreign presence inside her, but even as she gasped and spat through the aftermath, her hands fluttered at her cheeks and swept through her hair tenderly. She was only partly glad he was still there.
‘I’m so sorry, Firefly. That was careless of me,’ he rasped through her stinging throat. ‘Is it too much? Just say if it’s too much and I’ll, no!’
If she hadn’t been so twisted up by this unnatural invasion, she might have noted how odd it would sound to anyone listening to hear her interrupt herself like that. ‘Please. Just… Just get on with it!’
He didn’t wait, didn’t even take a breath, and Naomi watched almost from the background as her body was pulled back up again, and moved across the cell back to Rayan’s side. She could feel her energy undulating strangely, but despite wanting to simply give in and allow Arun the freedom to take over, she still pushed back enough to try and kneel while he attempted to cross her legs. This small act of rebellion caused her to end up in a bit of a heap on the floor, and as Arun rolled her eyes, she pushed her hair back out of her face and wiped the film of sweat that had spread across her brow.
‘It’s going to be alright,’ Arun said as he reached down to check Rayan’s pulse, and she thought he had been talking to his unconscious cousin until he continued. ‘I know this is hard, but I really need you to stop pushing ba
ck. I need all of my concentration to heal him as quickly as possible, then I’ll be out of your way, but I can’t do that as long as you’re trying to fight me.’
It was like he was asking her to stop breathing. Then again, she supposed that if she did he would simply carry on for her. This level of control was truly disturbing, but she wasn’t really trying to push him back out. She wanted to help Rayan. It was just so hard to give this kind of power over herself to anyone, let alone someone who had only very recently begun to treat her as some kind of equal. Certainly, she supposed a lot of that was finding out she was Royalty, but even a little before that he had tried to learn from his mistakes.
She didn’t like him particularly, and that wasn’t helping, but his attempts to better himself around her had softened her dislike a little. He wasn’t so bad, and he wasn’t intentionally vindictive, just a little single-minded. Naomi supposed she was very much the same way when it came to her own responsibilities to her country. It hadn’t worked out so well for her to be on the opposing side of what he considered his duty, but she couldn’t truly fault him for that.
‘Alright,’ she sighed. ‘I’m trusting you, Arun.’
It had sounded slightly threatening, laden with unspoken warning of what he could expect if he betrayed the trust she was showing, and she wasn’t sorry for that. He needed to understand that he hadn’t earned this from her, and she was only allowing it because she simply couldn’t stand by and watch an innocent man, and maybe his even more innocent wife, die. She let go, and as she felt herself slipping backwards into the recesses of her mind, she was still ready to reclaim her hold at a moment’s notice.
Chapter Twenty-One
Carefully retaining his hold on his own body, Arun channelled his magic through Naomi and into his cousin. The healing was going smoothly, and he was relieved that it wouldn’t take too long before Rayan was back on his feet, alive and well. All he needed now was for the two of them to be safe again, and well out of the prison they were currently occupying.