As I washed his left foot, he flinched and let out a small laugh—ticklish, I supposed.
“Stop it, Mareth,” he said.
He sounded almost like a little boy in this moment, and I wondered if in his delirium he’d reverted to childhood when he might have had tickle-fights with his siblings.
It was then that I spotted something unusual. At first I’d thought it was a bit of dirt there in the arch, but when it didn’t wash off, I looked closer.
It was a small symbol. A tattoo.
I leaned down, inspecting it more closely and realized it was the same image that covered his chest and torso, that strange, hooked whirlwind symbol.
Lifting my head, I looked at his sleeping face. What did it mean?
And why did he have two of them, one so much larger than the other?
It wasn’t something I could ask him now. He didn’t even know where he was or whom he was with, poor man. Perhaps Pharis would tell me when we resumed our journey, whenever that might be.
I gathered up the cloths and was preparing to leave him for a few minutes to go clean them in the stream, when he spoke again.
“I love you.”
Freezing in place, I stared down at him. His eyes were still closed, and the words had been mumbled, though I’d understood them clearly.
Who did Pharis think he was speaking to in his fever dream? His sister? His mother, who might be alive and well in the reality he was currently experiencing?
Perhaps it was a woman he’d been involved with, though he’d claimed never to have been that close to any of them—emotionally anyway.
Completely unjustified jealousy bubbled up inside me.
And then he said something else.
Whispered it actually.
“Raewyn.” He smiled. “Little wildcat.”
Chapter17
Greatest Fear
Raewyn
It was only another day before Pharis was fully lucid again.
He sat on his spread cloak now in the sunshine as my sisters skipped around him, offering bites of food and sips of yarrow tea and clearly thrilled to have their oversized playmate back.
“I saved your life,” Tindra informed him.
“No I did,” Turi argued.
“I found the yarrow,” Tindra said, full of pride.
Turi pouted. “But I smooshed the leaves on his face.”
“I smooshed them, too.”
“You both saved my life,” Pharis said, settling the argument. “And you are both my heroes.”
The girls blushed and grinned ear to ear, looking completely smitten. I could hardly blame them. I had to confess to being somewhat smited myself.
