BETTY
The hovel is too small.
It has always been small, just a single, round room of packed mud and wood, but now it is suffocating. It is filled with the scent of him. A heavy, animal musk, the sharp, coppery tang of old blood, and the sour, sickly-sweet smell of the infection I’m fighting.
My fire crackles, a small, brave sound in the thick silence. Its smoke stings my eyes, and I bite the inside of my cheek. It’s just smoke. It’s just warmth. But my lungs are tight, my skin prickling, waiting for the screams. Waiting for the roof to fall in.
My hand flutters to my hair, my fingers finding a strand, twisting it around and around until my scalp pulls.
This is madness.
He lies on the pallet of furs I dragged for him, his massive body taking up a quarter of my home. His breathing is a deep, slow bellows, the only sound other than the fire.
I dip my cloth into the steaming bowl of elmbark water. It’s the last of my antiseptic herbs.
My pulse is a frantic bird in my throat. Every instinct, every lesson my father taught me, screams to run. This is a monster.His uninjured hand, fisted in sleep, is bigger than my head. His tusks are yellowed, thick as my wrist. He could wake, snap his jaws, and break me in two before I could even draw breath.
But he is so very still.
I lean over him, the cloth dripping. The star-shaped wound in his chest is a nightmare. It’s puckered, an angry, weeping red, the flesh around it a sickly gray. He is burning with fever; I can feel the heat radiating from his skin.
He is dying.
My guilt is a heavier stone than my fear. I saw the mark. Dark Elf steel. They did this. The same people who burned my world. The same civilized monsters who left my family as ash.
This Urog... he's just another one of their victims.
"This is going to hurt," I whisper. The words are for me, not for him.
I press the scalding, clean cloth to the wound.
His reaction is instantaneous.
His entire body seizes. A roar, a sound of pure, volcanic agony, erupts from his chest. It’s not a sound of this world. It is a blast of primal pain that shakes the very mud of my walls. The small pots on my shelf rattle.
I fall back, landing hard on the packed-earth floor. My heart stops. This is it. This is how I die.
He rears up, his massive head thrashing. His feral red eyes snap open, blind with the red haze I saw in the woods. His claws, those black, terrible things, flex and dig into my furs, tearing them to shreds.
But he doesn’t strike.
He doesn't lunge for me.
His roar isn't a threat. It's a plea. It’s the sound of a creature in a trap, chewing its own leg off to get free. The sound of an agony he cannot understand.
He collapses back onto the pallet, his breathing a wet, ragged pant. His red eyes find me, and there is no malice in them. Just… confusion. Pain.
The terror in my chest doesn't vanish, but something else rises to meet it. A stubborn, aching pity.
He's just an animal. A wounded, broken animal. And I am the only one here.
"I won't run," I whisper, voice shaking. "I ran once. I won't... I won't run again."
I stand up on trembling legs. I dip the cloth again. I move back to his side.
He watches me. He groans, a low, warning rumble in his chest, but he doesn't move.
"I am helping you," I say, my voice soft, the same one I used for my little brother when he'd fallen. "You're safe. Just... stay still."
