“Of course you don’t want me to touch you—what am I even thinking?”
Celeste tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip on her wrist. “No, I do.” The admittance cracked in his throat as he kept her from slipping away. “I do want, um, for you to…please help?”
When he released her, Celeste hesitated. “You can’t heal yourself?”
He shook his head. “That’s the part of the priest exam I was worst at, actually.”
She picked up a new linen, eyes flicking from his face to her clean basin of water, and then returned to tending to the cut along his forearm. She focused on the delicacy of her work and did no harsh rubbing, nor forced him to stay still as she told him he deserved the pain. She only washed the wound with abject tenderness as her other hand put a reassuring pressure on his flying pulse.By Valcord, make it slow or she’ll pull away.
Celeste didn’t pull away.
Reeve had grown up under the watchful eye of many priests and priestesses. A few, like Father Theodore, he had known his entire life, but most were transient, coming and going from temple to temple as they were needed. He was always surrounded, be it by other orphaned children or the Valcordian clergy, and when he was older, he served whichever holy knight needed a squire until he became a knight himself. It was difficult, learning so many different mannerisms and staying out of the way while remaining helpful, and he had never really learned to do either. But Reeve had never gone without because there was alwayssomeonethere—usually a short-tempered but well-meaning someone whose expectations were high and patience was thin—but the temple provided.
Yet it felt often like there was no one.
And that wasnota fair feeling to have, he knew, because even on the rare occasion he did find himself alone, there was always Valcord.
But Valcord had never spoken to him with words, had never said his service was needed, and the god had certainly never pressed a warm cloth to the wounds Reeve earned in his name.
Reeve had not been a child for many years, and he was sufficient at taking care of himself now—he was still alive, after all. He watched the backs of his fellow knights, and in return, enjoyed their protection. But their commitments to one another had limits—Flint had been sent to Eirengaard that winter, Gable to Elderpass the year prior, Rory to…well, and now Reeve was the one sent far from his brothers. What might life be like if there were someone constant? Someone who did not see him as only a necessary stop on their rotation, someone who did not plan to move on and leave him behind, someone who perhaps even preferred his company.
Sort of like how Celeste seemed to, smiling when she stepped out of the temple to greet him each morning.
Her fingers grazed over his skin again, and instead of pain, a shiver ran up his arm. And then he remembered the noxscura.
“That was an infernal boar, wasn’t it?”
“Hmm?” The tenderness blinked away from her face. “Oh, yes, I think so. You were right—I should have believed you when you first said.”
“No, I don’t mean to—” The oil stung his skin as she applied it, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Oh, sorry, sorry, just a little more, and then I’ll be done with it,” she whispered. Despite that it hurt, he didn’t want her to be done with it. She could stab him for all he cared at the moment, as long as she was touching him.
He cleared his throat and pulled back his shoulders. “Won’t the dark arcana leach out of the infernal boar’s meat when they go to eat it?”
She was wrapping a new bandage around his arm. “There’s no noxscura left in that thing.”
Her tone was level enough for him to no longer worry about the villagers being infected, but what about her? His gaze slid to her locket. It looked so normal, nestled against the soft, pink linen of her dress, and he reached out for it with his unwounded arm. When he took it up, there was only a tingle in his skin that told him magic was near, not that evil simmered under the surface of the metal. “You gathered it all in here?”
She nodded, lip caught between her teeth.
“And it didn’t hurt?”
“No. Not this time.” Her hands had stopped moving over his arm, but she was still touching him, the bandage cruelly between the warmth of her fingertips and his skin. “I didn’t, um…” Celeste swallowed, eyes darting away. “All of it’s in the locket. It’s not inme.”
He wrapped his hand around the locket, holding it and feeling it pulse. “I know.”
“I just don’t want you to think that I’m…like that.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, stepping back and tugging the locket from his grasp. “Well, we were invited to town, weren’t we? It would be rude not to go, but we ought to get all this blood off first.”
“Oh, right.” Reeve stood from the edge of the tub and started to pull off his tunic, but it got caught in his baldric.
Celeste squeaked. “Uh, I didn’t mean here. Not together.”
Eyes wide, he rushed to tug his tunic back down.
“Unless, um…it hurts too much to move?” She eased on an awkward grin. “Do you need help taking a bath?”
Reeve’s body stiffened, every inch of it, and she couldnotsee that. He barely shook his head before backing toward the door, stuttering out something that sounded like an apology and a plea, ran into the wall, and then scurried down the hall as if being pursued by a whole pack of infernal boar.
