They were quiet for a moment. She licked the taste of fresh water off her lips and forced herself to take several deep breaths before she spoke again. “I don’t know what to do now.”
“The only thing you need to think about is rest. I know it’s a new concept for you, but I trust you’ll be able to manage it,” he replied, a note of his usual sardonic drawl coming back into his hoarse voice.
Petra lifted a shaking hand to scrub at her face. “You’re being weirdly nurturing. Stop it.”
“Fuck you. I can be nurturing if I want.” There was no heat in his voice but an unnerving intensity in the kiss he dropped on her shoulder. “You can’t stop me.”
Although it was disconcerting, Petra didn’t actually want him to stop. Even if it was all an illusion that could be dispelled at any time, she clung to the reassurance this new side of Silas offered.
Pressing on her eyes to relieve some of the sting, she asked, “Where are we?”
“I brought you home.”
Petra dropped her hand. Eyes popping open, she managed to lift her head just enough to give him an incredulous look. “Youwhat?”
“I brought you home,” he repeated, like that was a normal thing to say and that she’d have any idea what that actually meant. “You needed a healer, so I brought you to my clan.”
His clan?
He’d mentioned something about his father, but she’d barely registered the strangeness of it in the moment. Now, though,Petra went into a different kind of shock. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Small town in the Smoky Mountains.” He rubbed his lips over her shoulder, back and forth through the warm water that poured over them both. His curls hung in dark tendrils around the blunt points of his ears and coiled against the pale skin at the nape of his neck, tempting her to trace their strange, alien shapes with the tips of her fingers.
“This is my house. Well, one of them. I own houses all over the world, but this ishome.No one can touch you here.”
Her heart thundered. For a moment, Petra really couldn’t tell if she was going to be sick again. It wasn’t fear that turned her stomach this time, but some other intense feeling too multi-layered for her to put her finger on. Her voice was barely a whisper under the patter of the water when she asked, “Why’d you bring me here, Silas?”
He lifted his head to give her a fierce scowl. “What’d you meanwhy?You were shot. You needed healing.”
Her memories were disjointed and stretched into unrecognizable shapes by pain and shock, but Petra thought she recalled an argument between Silas and Rasmus about that very subject.
“You could have taken me to any healer,” she protested, not entirely sure why she needed to get clarity on the subject other than the fact that itfeltimportant. “I remember hearing Rasmus’s voice. He knows healers. He could have called Healer M?—”
“No.” Silas’s expression darkened into something thunderous. Those luminous, sinister eyes peered at her, but she wasn’t entirely certain it was the man who looked out from within them. “I’ll say this once and only once, little goddess: when it comes to your life, I don’t trust anyone but clan.”
Petra didn’t have the courage to ask him why. She didn’t want to argue, either, even knowing that the smarter and more convenient choice probably would have been to involve Margot or Healer Mason, her second-in-command and former mentor.
Except then they would know you’re a murderer.
That gave her pause. It was a new and uncomfortable thing to realize she had a new title, let alone one of such profound emotional and societal weight. But the more she rolled it around in her head, the less she cared about the title itself and more the avalanche of consequence it came with.
There was no guilt for Antonin’s death, only the floating feeling of grief for the new sort of life she would now have to live.
Silas was probably right to not let anyone in San Francisco or even the greater Elvish Protectorate heal her. Unless they were fully under the table and therefore untrustworthy, there was every chance they could report her injuries to Patrol. Even if by some miracle she wasn’t recognized, she could still be reported simply for the anomaly of being shot in a territory that boasted its safety every chance it got.
In that light, going to Margot, who was not only a healer but theco-ruler of said territory,was an absolutely asinine thing to do.
There was no way she’d simply patch Petra up and send her on her merry way, no questions asked. And if Petra had to start answering those inevitable questions, then everything else would unravel.
A headache began to throb in the back of her skull. Exhausted by the sheer scale of her problems, she let out a shaky breath. “Thank you.”
Silas held very still for a moment. She got the impression that she’d shocked him. She’d shocked herself, too. Not by being grateful, per se, but by how much she trusted him to have made the right choice when she couldn’t.
“C’mon,” Silas growled, slowly helping her stand.
Her legs felt like jelly and she slumped against him as he peeled her out of her nightgown. His hands were gentle but firm as he helped her wash. When he discovered that his black claws scraping her scalp as he worked shampoo into her hair made her melt, he drew the task out as she leaned her whole weight against him.
While he worked, she skimmed her fingers over the new, tender skin of her side. He’d been careful there, too, using a washcloth to cleanse the area so cautiously, it was like he actually feared the wound would split open if he pressed just a bit too hard.
