Her fingers ached with pride and gratification. Maybe once she’d reached the end of the Wood Path, Semras could pursue the Flesh one.
Searching for more wounds she might have missed, the witch parted Estevan’s shirt further.
Beneath, she found a battlefield.
On his ribs, a burn mark unfolded upward half his chest. Small, puckered indents left by bolts and arrows marred his left shoulder. A gnarly gash had badly healed on his stomach, but it looked fine compared to the ravaged skin an acidic agent had mangled on his left hip. Higher up, starting beneath his underarm, feathery patterns echoed the strike of a vicious bolt of lightning.
The more she looked, the more she found. With growing horror and empathy, Semras beheld Estevan’s collection of scars and ancient wounds. Blades, bites, claws, electric bolts, acid splashes, and burns; magic and metal vied against each other for a place on his skin.
This man fought a war against her sisters and bore the marks of their struggle, desperation, and fury on his skin. Maybe some had been guilty of walking the Bleak; maybe some had let rancour push them over the edge.
But these were not the scars that terrified her the most. The missing ones, from the innocent witches whohadn’tfought back, did. The Inquisition had killed so many of them thirty years ago. More had followed, out of prejudice or judicial error.
A sobering guilt rattled her to the core. Fleeing the dread settling into her stomach, Semras stood.
A hand caught her waist, and she lost her footing. Before she could yelp in surprise, arms encircled her, dragging her into the inquisitor’s embrace.
“Stay,” Estevan muttered in his sleep. “Safer.”
Semras cursed him out, and he rolled on his side—onto her. Half-pinned between him and the bedroll, she cursed quietly this time, afraid more sounds would prompt him to fully crush her beneath him.
‘I don’t touch them. They sleep in their beds alone,’ he had said the night prior. Right. What a liar he was.
They’d been dancing around one another for too long, gauging each other’s willpower, testing their respective limits, battling for the upper hand. She lost more often than she wanted to admit, and part of her relished the idea of being able to rub his own words into his face come morning.
And she’d profit from a warmer night in the damp woods for staying in his arms.
Just to share warmth.
Semras groaned in frustration. Who was she trying to convince? She tried to will her mind into silence or her muscles into action. Neither obeyed.
Choose, dammit, she admonished herself. Struggle or accept.
The right choice was obvious, and she hated how she still hesitated to take it. But she had to, for Nimue’s sake. For their baby’s, too.
Slowly, Semras rolled onto her back, carefully avoiding Estevan’s wounds lest she injure him further. She nearly made it before arms dragged her back against him. Grunting lowly, Estevan shivered against her.
It was her turn to groan. When she had dragged him to his bedroll, Semras had laid him on top of it and left the fold open to close later. With his shirt undone and at the mercy of the cold, his sleeping body was seeking more warmth.
And, clad in velvet, she was now warmer than him.
What had possessed her to choose velvet of all things? Oh, yes, vanity did—not practicality as she’d convinced herself of. The burgundy velvet hugged her shape in ways that boosted her confidence. She had yearned for it after the glade.
And now she was paying for it.
Mumbling something unintelligible, Estevan curled up around Semras, and she sighed. The witch glanced at the bedroll’s open fold, then gripped its threads and, slowly, inch by inch, dragged the flap over them both.
That should settle the warmth issue and make him let go of her. Any second now, she’d be free to find some damp, cold bedroll around a dying campfire to rest in. Lucky her.
Once the sleepy inquisitor had sufficiently warmed up, he’d roll away from her, and then she’d—oh, the bed felt so comfortable after the day she had.
But she’d still leave it once …
Like a lullaby, Estevan’s steady heartbeat lulled her tired mind. But she couldn’t stay. She …
Her eyelids felt heavy.
… She had to …
