Again, Adara drew back, giving him a moment to gather himself, to breathe through the pain. “Trust me, Nite, if I wanted to hear you scream, I’d do it in a more pleasurable way for both of us.” His cheeks flushed at the thought. He would have chuckled, made some equally lewd remark just to see her face turn red, but her blazing hand was already placed on another laceration. He groaned through the searing pain that blinded him. He sucked in deep gulps of air, steadying himself through the lingering pain. Although he wanted nothing more than sleep at the moment, he fought against the unconsciousness that threatened to sweep him into oblivion.
Then there were fingers grazing his spine, soft and soothing and warm. Not searing and painful like the flames of Helfarrow themselves, but gentle and comforting, tracing lines across his back.
But the comfort didn’t last long. It wasn’t Adara’s fault. He felt the tenderness in her touch, but he knew exactly what scars she ran her fingers over, and it brought him anything but comfort. Had this been how she’d felt when he questioned the ragged scars on her back?
No. She wasn’t a coward. Like an elegant ball gown that made her resemble royalty, Adara wore her scars proudly. She mightnot have been comfortable enough to tell him how she received them, but she was not ashamed. They proved how strong she’d been to endure such torment.
Dominic’s scars were a reminder of how weak he’d been.
“Stop,” he breathed. Instantly, her hand jolted away, as if he had burned her. It left him cold and empty.
“What happened?” she murmured softly.
He couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak through the roaring in his head, through his trembling lips, which he pressed together to hide the hurt. Hearing the crack of a whip echo in his mind, Dominic squeezed his eyes closed, nails digging into the wooden planks. It took everything in him not to lean forward, curl up into a ball, and sob like the broken little boy he was when he’d received those lashings. The scars on his back throbbed, an echo of the pain he’d endured so long ago.
“My father,” was his only response, unwilling to dredge up the past. There was a reason he left home, a reason he sailed to Andreilia to make a name for himself. Home was in the past. Home was a place he’d left and promised never to look back. Home was Andreilia now, where lost souls found consolation in one another.
Adara was the last person he’d share his most valued secrets with. With the war between them, he’d never be able to trust her entirely.
She didn’t pry. Instead, she scooted herself around him until she sat across from him, medical supplies in hand. Dominic sat up straighter as her gaze locked on his. “Do not be ashamed of your scars,” she said softly.
He bared his teeth. It was not shame for the scars that marred his body, but shame for his helplessness. Shame that the memories still haunted him. He knew she was anything but ashamed of her own scars, but just to spite her, he said, “Says theone that hides the scars on her hands beneath leather gloves and refuses to tell me about the ones on her back.”
Emotion flickered in her eyes. Hurt, perhaps? With her gloves removed to nimbly navigate his wounds, he looked at the mangled skin of her hands. Adara inspected them as well.
“I do not hide,” she said, turning her hands under her own gaze as if searching for something. “If you wish to see, then see.” She held her hands out for him to take a good look at. Definitely burn marks. “If people wish to see what I’ve been through and think it a weakness, then that shall be their downfall.”
He inspected her hands more as she held them out to him, bared to the world. He even went so far as to grasp them in his, the heat of magic beneath her skin warming him. Had she harmed herself with her own flames? It was the only thing he could imagine that would leave such maimed skin behind, twisted and gnarled.
Adara suddenly pulled her hands away, settling them in her lap over her crossed legs. She regarded him with such intensity that he felt she would light him on fire with only her gaze. “I collect scars to remind me that all the pain I’ve endured cannot be for nothing. I must keep going.” She glanced down at her mangled hands once more, and whispered, “Itryla al rone yi mon taka.”
“What does that mean?” Dominic asked, slowly registering the foreign language spilling from her lips. The saying was familiar, but he could not decipher it.
“Life is a risk I must take,” she answered.
Dominic didn’t want to know what horrors she had faced that had made her wish for death when they first fought.Kill me,she’d said the night of the duel when he’d had her pinned down with his sword against her throat. Yet here she still stood, still fighting every day for her life. She wasn’t fighting for herself. She was fighting for something bigger. Or someone.
“May I?” Adara nodded at his hand covering the wound on the back of his leg. Blood trickled between his fingertips, tiny droplets staining the deck.
“Why do you get to torture me while treating my wounds, but I don’t get to repay you?” Dominic said as he tore the cut on the back of his pant leg open to give her access to the injury.
“Because Asher already did that.” Without another word, she threaded a needle, propped his leg up on her knees, and began stitching the wound.
Golden light caught on the red streaks of her hair as Adara angled her head down to see as she worked. He wondered if the color was another marking, like the tattoos, since it never showed any sign of fading.
Once she finished the sutures, she opened a tin of salve, dipped her fingers in the ointment, and reached out to him. Dominic tried to take the tin from her, too slow as she ripped it away from his grasp.
“I can do this on my own,” he said, exasperated, holding out his hand. He didn’t want her fingers grazing his skin. He didn’t want her touching him, too afraid that he’d never want her to stop.
Dominic swore in his head. He had to stop thinking like that. Those thoughts, he knew, came from a time when he’d known Adara before. He was still trying to piece together the images of her the Whisperer had shown him, but his head throbbed. He was too fatigued to try to untangle that mess right now.
Adara swatted his hand away. “This may be the only time you get help from me. Appreciate it while I’m healing your wounds and not causing them.”
He let out a huff, dropped his hands to his side, and let her apply the salve. Chills ran through him at the first stroke of the cool ointment against his skin, soon warmed by Adara’s touch as her fingers grazed him. He leaned back on his hands, head tiltedup, gazing skyward past the sails filled with a gentle breeze. Fluffy clouds, gilded in the dying sunlight, floated by in the darkening sky. It was all he could do to keep his attention from drifting back to the girl in front of him. The girl who—despite her hatred toward him and his twisted morals—trusted him blindly and even saved his life.
She should have left him for dead. Should have let the Whisperer speak his name, killed it, took its eye, and set out to find the rest of the relics on her own. Yet Adara let him live.
What could she possibly need his key so desperately for? From what he gathered, she had no one to fight for, no place to return to, no family or friends who cared. And even if she did, why fight for them? Clearly, no one had their hearts set on finding her, bringing her home—wherever the Hel that was.
