“That wasn’t too—” she started to say.
Margot’s world exploded in pain as he pulled the shaft out of her flesh, her words turning to a scream. Her scream cut off abruptly as she passed out from the pain.
Margot woke hours later in the same spot. She looked around for Braxxos but there was no sign of him anywhere. She saw his shirt tossed aside and bloody. Her own body was covered in both of their blood, their life fluids mixing as they had been stuck together.
But her wound was no longer bleeding. In fact, it had been dressed, packed with plant matter and bound with a strip tornfrom his shirt, she realized. She looked around, in agony, dazed, and barely keeping it together.
“Braxxos?” she called out weakly.
Nothing.
“Braxxos!”
Still no reply. She turned her head and looked for any sign of him as he’d taught her. Previously she’d have never seen it, but now it was clear as day. Footprints. His footprints, leading away from her. And, judging by the spacing and length of the strides, he had been running.Fast.
She lay back, trying to assess the damage to her body. Everything hurt. It felt as though her very skin was on fire. She looked up through the tree canopy. It was dusk. Dusk and she was still out here, bloody and vulnerable at ground-level. This was not good.
A crackling in the brush not far away caught her attention. She was scared, obviously, but she found she couldn’t move. She was spent, and even her emergency tank was empty. There was simply no more adrenaline left in her body to fuel even the briefest of flights. She lay there aching, resigned to her fate.
I never thought I’d go out like this.
The sounds grew louder, but it wasn’t a wild animal. Braxxos stepped out of the bushes, shirtless, bloody, and filthy, his runes churning and a pained look in his eyes. He looked like hell, fighting the pain, but he was alive. Alive and with her.
Relief flooded through Margot, then she passed out cold, and so she would stay for quite some time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Margot woke with an eerie sense of foreboding as her senses made the slow climb to consciousness. She’d had the strangest dreams. Tumultuous, chaotic, and full of confusing imagery and sensations she couldn’t quite remember beyond how disturbing they had been. But this wasn’t a dream. This was reality. Yet something was definitely wrong.
Her eyes peeled open uncomfortably, her lids stuck firmly from many hours of sleep.
“What the—” she started to say as she attempted to sit up when a sharp pain in her side under her arm put an abrupt stop to that. “Fuck!” she blurted, the ache suddenly erupting into a fiery burn radiating through her chest and belly, spreading to her limbs like an electric shock.
She lay very still, breathing deep, forcing herself to remain calm. She could see she was in the treehouse. But what had happened? It all started coming back to her. The outing. The tripwire and the trap. Being pierced with an arrow. Not only her but?—
“Braxxos!” she blurted, her head swiveling as best she could manage, looking for her lover.
He was nowhere to be found, the treehouse empty but for her, and the door sealed up tight. She fought down the panic. He had somehow carried her back here and tended her wound despite his own injury. He had to be okay, didn’t he? But why had he left her there in this condition?
“He’s probably out gathering supplies,” she rationalized, cautiously rolling to her other side and very slowly pushing herself to a seated position.
She looked down at the bandaged area along her flank. He’d swapped the makeshift dressing for a proper one. Some sort of plant paste was stuck to her skin beneath it, likely acting as a natural antibiotic and protective barrier for her wound. Margot gently touched her side, feeling the pain but without the shock of before, assessing just how bad her injury was.
“Missed my lung,” she noted with relief.
If that had been pierced, there was no way she could have survived that sort of injury. Not out here without proper medical care. There was only so much you could do with medicinal plants no matter how skilled one might be with them.
She gingerly rose to her feet, a bit wobbly at first, but her legs quickly growing steady beneath her. She slowly walked to the door to call for her man. It was not only shut, but it was bolted solidly from the outside. A flare of panic hit her. She was locked in.
“It’s okay,” she told herself. “He’s just being extra cautious I don’t go falling down the ladder is all.”
It was a stretch, but it was the best she could rationalize. A moment later she realized what it was that felt so off right now. Aside from the whole injury thing.
“It’s quiet.Tooquiet.”
She went back to her cushions and sat down, drinking the container of water Braxxos had placed there for her as she slept. She sat, and she listened.
Nothing.
