He blinked a few times and…
An angel came into focus.
Oh.He wasdead. That made sense.
Except, no. No, it didn’t. Because if he was looking at an angel, then he’d gone to heaven. And he was not a man who was destined for heaven.
He blinked a few more times and the angel frowned. She reached up a hand to tuck a strand of golden hair behind her ear.
“Yecanhear me, right?” she demanded. Then, she closed one gleaming green eye like she was considering something, then extended a slow finger and?—
Poked him in the cheek.
“Oi,” he said.
She leaned back in satisfaction.
“Apologies,” she said. “But I think that might be the only place you haven’t got any bruises. And ye werenae answering me.”
He cleared his throat. That also hurt.
“I was… trying to decide if I was dead,” he admitted.
He assumed this turn toward honesty was also a result of being battered within an inch of his life, but it was one thing he needed to get under control before he got himself in even more trouble. Focusing made even hisbrainhurt, though.
Fortunately, the girl who wasn’t an angel seemed understanding. Her delicate features dropped into a sympathetic frown, and she nodded.
“Aye, I thought ye might die, too,” she said. “For hours and hours. But then ye got a bit of your color back, and I convincedye to drink some water—though ye were mighty stubborn about that, I have to say. Ye tookforeverto wake, though.”
She looked at him as though she was enormously put out by his tardiness. But her disappointment in his extended unconsciousness would have to wait. Because if he’d been here for a long time…
“Wait,” he said, the words feeling like rocks in his throat. However much water she’d convinced him to drink, it wasn’t enough. “How long have I been here?”
She glanced out the window, where warm sunlight was filtering into the room.
“A day?” She shrugged, as though thisvery, veryimportant information didn’t actually matter very much at all. “A bit less, I suppose.”
“A day,” he echoed. If he’d made it a full day without anyone coming after him to finish what they’d started, he was probably actually safe—at least for the time being.
“I’m… alive.”
“Aye, of course,” she said. “And if ye listen to me, do as I say, ye shall recover just fine.”
She tilted her head at him. She really was quite pretty, with her pert little nose and a faint smattering of freckles across the tops of her cheeks. Her hair was anutterwreck, and her frock was hopelessly wrinkled, which made Ciaran wonder if she had spent the entire night at his side.
The idea made him feel… Well, it was hard to detect anything beneath the consuming pain, but it definitely made him feelsomething.
“I do reckon that the healers will have some questions for ye,” she said. “Ye were rather dreadfully battered. Do ye recall what happened?”
The images came to him in flashes. Flying fists, blows that were meant to send a message rather than to kill. Then themoment where he’d felt them go a little too far, where he had started to believe that a hunger for violence would outweigh the attackers’ good sense, and they would kill him without meaning to.
It was more fractured after that. He recalled trying to pull himself up into a saddle and finding it so difficult that it bordered on the impossible. Then, clinging to the saddle with all of his might and hoping, praying, that he’d get to somewhere safe.
And he had. He’d gotten here, to this angel. Only where washere?
“Aye,” he said, his mind racing despite the effort it took. “I was attacked by bandits. I barely managed to make it back to my horse before they killed me. I got away. But where am I?”
The lass looked at him in an assessing manner before smiling again and patting him very gently on the back of his hand. It still hurt, despite her caution.
