I step back, but his hand remains firmly against my hip as I look down. My bare stomach is crossed with cuts just as bad as Ozias’s, and on my thigh, a dark red stain blossoms across my linen pants. With trembling fingers I touch the edge of the stain. The pain is so acute that my head hurls back as I bellow out a grunt.
Breathing in through my teeth, I hiss, “Guess we can consider it even, then.”
Ozias squeezes my hip. “If you like. I still feel like I let you down,” he says, his frown deepening.
Lowering my head, I find his eyes. “You kept me out of their reach.”
His mouth draws into a thin line. “You were only in danger because I’m asking something great of you.”
“Not exactly.” I shrug my shoulder until it kisses my ear. “I’m in danger because I want the world to change.”
A slow, sensual smile curls his lips. “I can relate to that.” Hand still braced on my hip, he stands with such fluidity and grace, I feel unsteady simply watching him.
“Let’s go take care of that wound.” His hand that was on my waist snakes around my back to support me, and I hook my arm around his shoulders to brace myself, then he’s moving us into the thicket of trees.
Rustling comes from ahead of us and a moment later Atlanta appears, followed by four others. Her eyes fly across our bodies, hovering on the arm Ozias has wrappedaround my middle and the one that he’s now missing.
When she looks up, her voice is low and dangerous. “What happened?”
“It seems Dyeus has a nice addition to their team.” Ozias kicks his head back behind us. “Get on the wall and see what’s happening. We’re headed for the infirmary.”
At first, Atlanta doesn’t move, even when everyone who came with her does. “Ozias…”
“We need your eyes on this,” he tells her.
After another moment, Atlanta gives a stiff nod and brushes past us. I can’t quite make out the significance of their exchanges. They’re close, yet somehow distant. It reminds me of how Kalixta and I behaved with one another after she was chosen and I was not. When mother wanted nothing to do with me, but would bend to the wind to give Kalixta the world. Back then, I resented my sister. Now I understand that Kalixta resented me, too—for abandoning her. For getting the choice to do as I pleased, when I pleased.
Ozias steers us towards a nearby hut, small but clean. Inside, the walls are lined with jars, neatly folded gauzes and linens tucked into baskets. Two long, narrow beds line the center of the room with clean, white linens draped across each. Like his private office, the only windows are small ovals spread out across the upper walls near the ceiling. It’s free of people and blissfully quiet.
Without a word, Ozias hikes me up against his side and swings me onto the first table. He passes me a wad of gauze, which I take and apply with pressure to my wound. Then he goes to work, walking over to a sink to pump fresh water into a basin. Even with the one arm, he tackles the tasks with ease. He quickly cleans his wound, unflinching when he applies ointments and dresses it. Then he’s rinsing the basin, sanitizing it, and filling it once more.
When he turns to me, washbowl in hand, I nod to his missing arm. “Has this happened before?”
Ozias looks up from the basin, then notices I’m looking at his bandaged appendage. “Once, but on the other side.” He grimaces as he sets the bowl down on a table near thebed. “It’s more of an annoyance than a pain to grow back.”
I suck in my lips and bite them, thinking of how that might look, bones and sinew coming to mind before forming the skin. “I expect that’s something you might want to do in privacy.”
Towel in hand, Ozias dunks it into the water. He waits for me to move the gauze and then squeezes the towel directly over my pants where the blood stain is. “It’s not gruesome. It will steadily reform in segments, each section appearing as it’s finished regenerating. Keeps it from getting damaged during the reformation process.”
That sounds less horrific than I imagined. He douses my leg again, and the cool water sends a shiver through me. “To get the linen unstuck,” he explains.
“I know. I can do this myself.”
Ozias looks at me from under his brow. “I know.” A pause, then, “Pants off.”
My breath hitches, his words a heady reminder of what we did before the night began. I steady myself and breathe. I don’t need to make this awkward, or anything other than what it is. So I lie back on the bed, hook my thumbs into the waist of my pants, and arch up as I draw them down over my hips and backside to the top of my thighs. Ozias watches every moment, pupils dilating at the sight of me curving my body against the bed. I sit up and try to ignore the rising flush of my skin, the rush of desire between my legs. My undergarment is damp from the water he doused me with. I shimmy the waist of my pants down farther, carefully peeling it from my wound, a hiss leaving me, until I free my injured leg entirely.
Ozias’s eyes follow the curve of my hips to the wound at the top of my thigh, the length of it twisting around to the inside. He takes his finger and hovers it over the wound, running along the length of it to the inner part of my thigh, then stills. “There’s a superficial nick to an important artery. If this cut had gone any further, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
The heat of his hand radiates against my chilled leg, pebbles of flesh rising. “It’s a good thing you didn’t, then.”
“Mm,” he muses, then slips his fingers between my thighs and nudges them farther apart.
I exhale sharply and open for him. He stares at the space between my legs for a beat, before blinking and turning away, the rise of his chest telling me he’s taking a deep, deep breath. He hands me a fresh pad of gauze. “Press this against the wound.” He gathers a few more supplies, gauze and ointments, and to my dismay, needle and thread.
My throat closes up. “No.”
His jaw works for a second. “I don’t want to, but it’s deep, Kaisa. I can’t leave it like that and we don’t have time for anything else. When you learn to shift willingly, something like this can heal on its own, but you’re still too mortal.”
