“It’s a flesh wound.” Her tone is even, almost careless, but there’s an undercurrent of pain that isn’t just physical.
“Devilry.”
“Stop it.” She shoves my hand away. “Stop pretending you’re sorry.”
“But I am.”
“No.” She says it through gritted teeth. “You’re not. I’m not. This is the life we chose. These are the things we do. Stop complicating it.”
My gaze drops to her wrist. There’s a bruise from when I slammed her forearm against the doorframe.
“Don’t, Ravager,” she whispers. “Don’t look so… stricken. Shit, your arms—they’re all cut up. And your shoulder—it looks awful. Let me finish up here, and then we’ll take care of it.”
She’s done talking about the injury, resistant to discussing my remorse any further, so I retreat to my spot on the floor. When she’s done bathing and washing her own clothes, she joins me.
We cut up another tablecloth to use for bandages, and she brings out the stitching kit from her pack. I let her bandage my shoulder first. Then while she sits beside me in freshly-washed panties and nothing else, I stitch up the place where I stabbed her. The act feels like the most intimate kind of penitence.
Part of me—the cautious, beaten, ruined Ravager that slinks around in my soul like a betrayed, wounded animal—that part still wants to fight her again and kill her outright, so she doesn’t get the chance to sneer at what I’m feeling or to hurt me deeper. She wouldn’t make it easy, but she’s injured and unarmed. I could do it any number of ways.
Another part of me wants to fuck her first. But I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll be lost inside her forever. I won’t be able to get her out of my head. She’ll prowl through my thoughts every damn day until I go fucking insane.
“Ow,” she says tightly, and I realize that while wrapping a bandage around her chest, I accidentally pushed against the bruise on her sternum.
“Sorry.” I fasten the bandage and get to my feet. I keep hurting her, whether I want to or not. The two of us are connected by pain, and we can only ever be painful to each other. It’s best to maintain some distance.
“You come back down here and let me bandage your arms,” Devilry orders.
“No.”
“Coward.” Her voice is cool, incisive, a razor blade across my chest.
With an exasperated sigh, I sit back down, bunching the tablecloth between my thighs so she won’t be able to tell how achingly hard I am. I suffer the touch of her strong, slender fingers as she wraps my forearms with strips of cloth.
Then she traces the heavy bruising on my cheekbone and jaw. “No broken bones.”
“You almost sound disappointed.”
She shrugs, smirking.
“Do you enjoy breaking bones?”
A shadow flickers in her eyes, and she looks away. “Not particularly.”
“And the killing?” I shift my position, seeking her gaze again. “Is that a habit of yours?”
“No. But I’m not afraid to do what is necessary.” She gets up, rummages in the closet for her own tablecloth, and wraps it around herself. “Seems odd that they have these linens. In fact, this whole place is very odd. It’s outfitted like a fine manor on some country estate, and yet there are all these magical things, all these spells, both the destructive ones and the everyday magic.” She gestures to the orb lights floating in two clusters against the kitchen ceiling. “I suppose it makes a kind of sense. Maven says there has been more human influence in Faerie over the past few decades.”
“Why’s that?”
“The King of the Seelie married a human woman. A love match for the ages, apparently.” She swallows hard, her lips compressing tightly before she says, “We destroyed the mural that told their love story.”
I’m not sure why that grieves her, but I can tell she’s more upset about it than anything else we’ve done to this place.
“I’m sure they can create another one with magic,” I assure her.
“No, they can’t. Not like that one. It was painted by a human. I could tell.” Her voice is strained, her eyes bright and liquid. “No spellwork can ever replicate the emotion, the heart, or the imperfection of artistry like that. The person who painted those wallsknewthe couple, understood them,felttheir story on a painfully intimate level. It takes mortal brilliance to create something that fragile, that exquisite. The Fae could never. Magic couldnever.”
10
