“Master Dain…” Her hand moved closer. “Dain, it’s just a dream.”
When she touched him, it was like that little palm was pressing against my skin. I could almost feel the weight of it. Dain did too, coming awake as he sat up abruptly. His blankets fell around his waist, and Fern was treated to the sight of his bare chest.
And all of his many scars.
“Oh…”
She drew back, her eyes everywhere at once, but when Dain realised who had disturbed his sleep, my body coiled. Anger flashed in his eyes and while I loved my brother, there was no way I’d allow him to hurt Fern.
“What the hell are you doing, woman?” Dain hissed. “Disturbing a man’s sleep like that.”
“But you… I heard…”
My hand closed over my scabbard as I went to roll up and onto my feet.
Make sure Argent knows why Fern woke him up, I said to Slate.
He knows and so does Dain,was his reply.Why else would he be so angry?
“I’m sorry,” Fern said, the pain evident in her voice, and I didn’t like that one bit. “You were having a terrible nightmare, and I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”
With that, she scurried away.
“You can come and visit my bedroll,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “I promise I won’t get mad.”
I sat up just in time to see her stricken expression change as she saw I was stripped to the waist as well. Her eyes slid down my chest, but when she met my gaze, all of the embarrassment was gone.
“Bold of you to assume I’d bother to wake you from a nightmare. I’d be too tempted to smother you in your sleep to chance it.”
That voice all husky from being awoken, it was like rough velvet rubbed across my skin and my body responded accordingly.My blankets were flipped back and her eyes went wide until she saw I was still wearing my pants.
“Come in here and we’ll find out all the ways you could smother me. Some of them, I hear, can be quite pleasurable.”
“As if I’d want to please you in any way,” she huffed.
“Pleasure for you, lass. Mine would come from making you scream.”
Take a step this way, I though furiously.Just one and I’ll make you see…
Of course, she turned on her heel and marched right back to her bedroll, which was a problem. Not for me. I never expected it to be that easy. My eyes closed, ready to fall back to sleep, when I heard a chattering sound. Glancing across the camp, I saw that Fern had burrowed down deep in her bedding and yet, she was shivering.
It was the middle of the night. The temperature had dropped and so had the fire. I lay back in my bed, heated more by my thoughts than my blankets, only to hear her move again. Rolling my head up, I watched her stalk over to the fire and poke at the embers. Sparks flew, but with little fuel, they couldn’t go far, so she had to go and grab one of the large boughs the lieutenant had dragged over. Fern didn’t have the man’s upper body strength, so with a grunt, she struggled under the weight of it.
Brother,Slate prompted.
I know.
With a sigh, I got to my feet and plucked the branch from her grip before settling it across the fire, then grabbed some smaller branches to poke closer to the coals.
“Can’t just drop a massive lump of wood on top of embers,” I said, waving my hand to try and fan the flames higher. “Too much fuel and not enough fire and you’ll smother the coals and they’ll go cold.”
For a moment, I stared at the fire, watching the flames start to crackle, but when I looked up, Fern was staring down at me.
“Is that supposed to be some sort of metaphor?”
I considered her words, snorted, and then turned back to the fire.
“It could be. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there for me to learn, but it remains true of fires, too.”
