A large calloused hand took her own. “Female... Are you hiding something from me?”
She stared down at Vedikus’s fingers curling around her palm, overly warm, and slightly damp from the bowl. Another tremor coursed through her but this one wasn’t from disgust. She turned her hand in his and trailed her thumb over his cracked knuckles, waiting for her revulsion, but it never came. He had gone still beneath her fingertips and another tendril of relief flowed through her.
Aldora grasped his wrist, unable to wrap her fingers fully around it, and squeezed. A thick tendon protruded from his skin and rose up his bare underarm. She spread her fingers upon his other hand and moved them from his blunt nails and over his rough pads, to the curve of his thumb and the tough skin where he held his weapons, further still to meet her other hand holding his wrist.
The more she touched him, the more she relaxed. Heat from the fire filled the space between them and warmed the stones she sat upon. Aldora pressed her palm against his and the tops of his fingers curled down over her outstretched ones.
“I’m not hiding anything,” she whispered.
“Then remove your clothes.”
The spell was broken. Aldora snatched her hand back and rubbed the feel of him off her. His hand hovered in the air between them for another moment before dropping to the forgotten bowl.
“I don’t want to,” she said. Even with the heat from the fire now keeping her warm, she didn’t want to, not even knowing she had a chance to wash the blood and mud from her body and clothes made her want to take them off.
They were her last—maybe her only—physical barrier against him. The dagger that lay hard against her ankle wasn’t enough to make her feel completely safe. She rubbed her palms into her clothes again but couldn’t get the feel of him off of her. That singular roughness remained.
Vedikus removed a root from a bag and twirled it in the flames. “You don’t have a choice.”
Her nostrils flared and she slid her hand toward her boot. He pulled the singed herb from the flame and crushed it into the water. The powder vanished within the mixture.
“I have a choice.” She slipped the weapon out, raising it to strike, staring at his exposed back and shoulder. He made no move as she poised the crude tip against his skin, her arms shaking. He swirled the bowl, mixing the contents. Her palms dampened.
And she lowered the dagger. “I can’t,” Aldora breathed.
He looked at her then, and she braced for violence, but only received the damning intensity of his gaze. There was little space between them, no more than a foot, and she drew back as the darkness in them grew. Their pits swirled and burst with each quick rise of the fire, deepening them with each passing second. Her lips parted to be wetted. Her tongue was not up for the job.
“Even if you had stabbed me...” he trailed off, his voice as deep as his eyes.
Vedikus knocked the dagger aside and placed the bowl beside her, but she her attention was on his wet fingers grasping her legs and pulling them out from under her.
“You would not have won,” he finished.
“I wasn’t trying to win.” His large hands slowly moved down her thighs, across her knees, and along her shins, trailing heat with them over her clothes. “I wanted to see if I could do it.”
“You couldn’t.” He pulled off her boots.
A part of her wanted to reach out and touch him again, to see if he would let her explore more but stopped herself.I just tried to stab him, maim him, maybe even kill him. I’ve given him trust.To her chagrin, there was trust, and she couldn’t believe in it.Keeping me alive has nothing to do with trust.And yet, she trusted him in that.
“I don’t know my way out of here without you,” she argued. Vedikus stuffed his hands into her boots and felt around before lifting them to his nose. “Why are you doing that?” Her brow furrowed.
He placed them next to her dagger. “I can discern a lot by smell. Your sweat is laced with many things, your blood more, and your boots reek of both. You are keeping something from me.”
Aldora didn’t want to answer him. She sniffed the air instead, already knowing she couldn’t smell a thing. The only smell that lingered was his. “And the mist sickness?”
“Is worsening, female, far quicker than it should. What are you keeping from me? I will not ask again and I grow tired of prying.” He seized her feet and moved them into his lap.
She placed her palms on the floor and scraped her nails over them, unsure of what to tell him. He wanted something from her but all she had were her thoughts and feelings, and they werehersecrets to keep.
“I don’t like that I trust you, even a little,” she said at last. A warm, moist cloth, moved across her soles, followed by his hands. She curled her toes and swallowed. “I see my nightmares every time I look at you. I see everything that has scared me all the years I’ve been alive. I see every reason why I made all the choices I had growing up.” Hypathia sitting stiffly on Nithers leg, his hand pulling down the girl’s tunic rose in her head. How Aldora was forced to do the same with other men in town. “Humans are raised to fear everything that has to do with the labyrinth.”
He grunted and kneaded the aches in her arches.
Aldora remained frozen. “I made a lot of hard choices growing up because of it, every girl does. And it made no difference.”
“Because it didn’t save you,” he agreed.
“No. They didn’t save me.”
