I lean back in my chair and sigh. For the first time in days, I feel safe.
Chapter Fifty-One
Briony
“I know I can’t heal your wounds for you,” I tell Fox, when we’re all done eating, “but at least let me clean and bandage them for you.”
He looks at me from across the table and nods his head and I make Dray take us to a back room with a sink and a medicine cabinet. The shifter lingers in the room, fidgeting, while I examine medicine bottles and search for bandages and finally I shoo him away.
When I find all I need, I turn to Fox and he begins to unbutton the remains of his tattered shirt.
“Let me.” I step towards him and bat away his hands.
Slowly, I thread each of the buttons through its hole until the front of his shirt hangs open.
Then carefully, I take hold of the collar and unhook it over his shoulders. The next bit is tricky. The fabric is caught in the wounds that slice across his back. I tell him to turn around, and gently I pull the shirt from his back, taking my time to fish the pieces of material from the congealed blood and skin. Severaltimes he winces, and I feel his body stiffen, but he doesn’t complain and he doesn’t tell me to stop. Eventually, I remove the tatty item from his body.
I gasp. The wounds are worse than I realized.
“Oh Fox,” I mutter.
I turn back to the sink, mixing a little sterilizing solution with water and dip a cloth into the concoction until it’s soaked through.
When I turn back to the professor a second time, he’s standing with one hand pressed against the wall. He’s leaning against it, his head bowed, and he looks so broken that tears start rolling down my cheeks.
“Fox,” I mutter, and he jolts like he’d forgotten I was there. I wonder if that’s because of what that place did to him, or because he was so lost in his thoughts.
He turns, and there’s a forced smile on his face.
“Fox, what’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s just what you said earlier about the others not believing I was on your side – thinking that I’d betrayed you. Briony, maybe I have.”
I frown at him. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you, Briony.”
I walk toward him, closing the space between us. The cloth is cold in my hands, and dangles from my fingers. My heart practically stops in my chest.
“What haven’t you been honest about, Fox?”
Does he mean us? His feelings for me? Because I’ve been so sure all along – even in the face of everybody telling me I was wrong – that Fox Tudor loves me. I can’t believe he could fake that. I can’t believe he was lying all this time.
“My conditions for employment at the academy,” he says simply.
I frown even harder, because what the hell does that have to do with anything?
“Turn around, Fox,” I tell him, and without argument he does. I survey the damage to his back, my hand hovering close to his skin. The smell of the cloth is acidic and sharp in the air, and it tickles my nose.
“The reason they hired me, Briony.”
I never even considered that before. Why would I? Fox Tudor has always seemed incredible to me. Why would the academy not choose to have an incredible man like him teaching there – especially since his abilities as a shadow weaver are immense?
“When she first changed me, Briony, I was out of control. My need to feed was extreme. Veronica said she’d never seen anything like it before. I rampaged, I plundered, I murdered. My thirst for blood, for magic, was insatiable. They were going to end me, or lock me up for eternity, one or the other. Veronica pleaded my case. She saved me.”
I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. “She didn’t save you – she plunged you into that hell in the first place.”
“Maybe so, but I was trapped. And it was the case that she pleaded for my life. She promised them that she would help, that with time my need would diminish. And she was right. As my powers grew, so did my control, to the point that – well, as you know – I’ve been living on fucking deer’s blood for stars know how long.”
