“Ah, yes,” he murmured quietly, lifting his chin so I could get the worst of the dried blood. “Something to be grateful for, after all.” Rooke’s eyes never left me, something akin to curiosity sparking beneath the pain.
“Take the wins where you can, Kaden,” I said quietly, wiping off blood in long, even strokes, concentrating on the task at hand, not how close his parted lips were, nor the heat pouring off his body all of a sudden. Heat I felt all the way down to my center, like ripples from a stone dropped in water.
“I’m…sorry there’s not more I can do. And I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.”
Pitiful words for all this pent-up rage I was feeling right now, but what else could I say, really? Life was a shitstorm of bad luck and the caprices of fate and I was as much a victim of their whims as Rooke.
“No words of wisdom?” His lips curved into a pained smile. “No keep-your-chin-up speech from the feared Commander of the Dreadwatch?”
“No,” I murmured, twisting the cloth, wringing a steady stream of rusty red water back into the pitcher. “I’ve never been one for speeches. Words don’t…” I paused, rocking back on my heels, meeting his gaze. “Actions are the only thing that make a difference. Words just…muck everything up.”
“Oh, I’ll just bet you could make a pretty speech, if you wanted to.” Rooke’s eyes, clearer now than they’d been since before Gravelock, skimmed slowly down my body in seeming disinterest, but when they found my face again, I looked away from what was blazing in them.
Blatant, male lust. Gluttonous, almost.
Lust he took no effort to conceal.
That simmering heat inside me roared to life, welling up into crushing, honeyed need and my eyes found his again, a fragile, perilous bridge connecting us together, a bridge that had no business existing, not when we both sat in a pool of his still-warm blood.
In the aftermath of Gravelock’s cruelty.
If not enemies, little more than uneasy allies.
Certainly not friends.
“He would have killed you,” Rooke murmured gently, “if you’d jumped from that balcony. I hope you know that.”
“He could have tried,” I retorted, even though he was right.
“You really meant to take on Gravelock and fourteen of his soldiers? All by yourself?” He shook his head, and a fresh dribble of blood leaked out from the binding on his shoulder that I immediately dabbed away. “Nobody is that good. Or that arrogant.”
Ha. Someone who called himself the Dark Prince thought I was arrogant?
I rolled my stiff neck. “I’ve faced worse odds.” I dragged the cloth over his skin again, really, really trying not to notice how impossibly handsome Kaden Rooke was. How…sinfully attractive.
I definitely should have left more clothes on him.
“Not like this…you…haven’t,” he said flatly, that brilliant light dying out of his eyes, his body going limp, head tipping sideways.
“Hey.” I shook him until he sucked in a quick, panicked breath. “Stay with me, Kaden. I’m not losing the Dark Prince of the Shadowlands on my watch. Now keep your godsdamned eyes open and keep breathing until I tell you to stop, got it?”
“Yes, commander,” he slurred, the words barely a whisper.
Maybe this was for nothing, but I kept going until every wound was tied off, every minor injury cleaned, and everything was a blur of exhaustion and blood-soaked rags. At least the strips of fabric were black, so I was spared the gruesome sight of red against white, but the smell…
The pungent smell of Kaden’s blood would stay with me for a good, long time.
“That’s all I can do,” I apologized, rousing him from the semi-conscious state he’d fallen into. His eyes were half-lidded, not a speck of color in his face, and a chill slithered through my veins.
As many injuries—as many soldiers as I’d treated in my lifetime—I couldn’t look him in the eye right now and tell him he’d survive this. “Kaden, I’m…”
“Thank you, Lyrae.” I shivered when my name came out of his mouth in a husk of sound. “It’s been a long time since anyone…” Rooke’s long, elegant fingers shakily brushed my cheek, then his blue eyes drifted over my shoulder and a second later, Varian and Ryland burst through the door in a flurry of freezing cold air and muttered oaths.
Even worse, they’d dragged…somethinginside with them.
A throbbing, pulsing something that made the air contract, made my chest hurt.
I picked up my knife, bracing myself, half expecting Gravelock to be behind them with an army of those guards.
