“No,” he huffed. “I won’t. I mean…yes, I will bleed—but I will not die. I cannot die.”
Her face twisted in clear confusion. He knew she wouldn’t understand. But he didn’t have the strength to say everything now. “Believe me,” he mustered a smile. “I’ve tried.”
“What?” Caramyn did not seem amused by his efforts to reassure her.
“A curse. A terrible curse…that keeps me alive—not by blood…” he sputtered. “…but by a heart replaced with Shadow. Just please…remove the spears. Then I can try to walk.”
He could see her hesitation and her horror all at once. None of this was supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to be explained this way.
But she did it. She carefully pulled out each spear—three of them, to be exact. He gritted his teeth as each one tore throughhis skin once more as she freed the sharp tips from his flesh. They didn’t have hooks, at least, thankfully, and slid out with relative ease. But the arrow…it didn’t seem as promising.
“I’m not taking that one out here,” Caramyn grumbled. “I don’t care what you say, it’s embedded far too deep. I’ll wait until we can get somewhere safe to treat your wounds.” She paused and her gaze caught his. “And you can explain this all to me.”
Asterious rose to his feet, pulling the cloak around himself as tightly as possible to fight off the bitter cold against his bare skin. Each step through the snow made his feet grow increasingly numb, as he left a trail of red blots behind him. Caramyn did her best to support him, but it wasn’t enough. They couldn’t continue this way, with him slowing her down like this. She’d freeze to death.
“I didn’t come all this way so you could die on my behalf,” Asterious muttered. “Put the cloak back on. You’re freezing.”
Just as she opened her mouth, presumably to argue, a horse snorted in the distance. Caramyn glanced up, grabbing her bow and nocking an arrow without skipping a beat. The raven fluttered around her in sweeping patterns, as if in a desperate attempt to guard the two of them. And then her protective stance softened, and she breathed out. “I didn’t think it’d work,” she said, almost laughing.
“What worked?” He asked faintly, squinting to make out the faint outline of a figure walking across the snow towards them beside a hefty mammoth of a horse. He thought perhaps he was hallucinating from the blood trickling down his back. But Caramyn assured him it was very real, even as his vision darkened the closer the figure came.
“I called someone…on the wind,” Caramyn said, her voice sounding miles away. “A friend.”
He didn’t remember closing his eyes, but when he opened them, he was warm and staring up at dark smoke puffing up to the night sky through a hole in the roof of a large tent. His first thought was Caramyn. He shot up, the cloak falling off him and exposing his bare chest and abdomen. Her voice startled him.
“Welcome back.” There was an icy edge in her voice colder than anything he’d faced in these mountains. She sat beside him, ringing out a bloody wet rag into a bucket of red water. “Lie back down so I can finish cleaning these.” She touched her palm to his bare chest, pushing him back down to the cot on which he rested.
“Where am I?” he breathed.
“Zera’s tent. She’s helped me in many ways since I’ve been here.” She turned and addressed a young girl who’d just entered the tent. “Narahbi, can you please bring morearrjhu?”
The girl left. Asterious raised an eyebrow. Caramyn noticed. “It means water,” she said flatly, with no further explanation. Then she gave no warning before dousing his wounds with liquid from a flask. The overpowering smell of licorice permeated the air as Asterious grimaced in pain, gritting his teeth to keep from yelping at the burning sensation. When he focused again, Caramyn was holding a blade to the flame of a burning candle, her face stoic. “I’m going to remove the arrow now. It’s going to hurt.”
She dug the blade into flesh, carefully working the arrow tip loose to keep the hooks from ripping him open further when she pulled it out. Asterious fixated on a talisman hanging from the tent wall, his mind going to places that were now second nature.
Train the body not to react and neither will the mind…or the heart.
“I never thought someone could be so emotionless while having an arrow removed. But then again, I’ve only ever removed them from dead men.” Caramyn grumbled.
“I have plenty of experience with pain.”
She tossed the arrow aside. “Is that another one of your cryptic clues or can I expect an explanation this time?”
“I will tell you everything…I promise…” Asterious hardly knew where to begin.
She said nothing as she wiped away the last of the blood and then stood to rummage through a basket, pulling out a hook needle and line, each movement swift, purposeful, and defensive.
Asterious shifted in his cot. “But first tell me, please. Have…have you been safe?” he asked, his jaw tightening at the thought. “Has anyone here touched you? Tell me, and I’ll scatter their pieces throughout these mountains. And don’t try to lie to me.”
“I am unharmed and untouched. And I survived. Self-sufficient, remember?” She sat down beside him again, voice unwavering. She didn’t even look at him. It burned like salt in a wound, but she had every right to be withdrawn. She had every right to hate him, and she should have left him on the snow, bleeding and naked.
“I know you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself—”
“Then why did you come here? After everything you said. After telling me you never wanted to see me again?”
“Because…” he turned his body at her urging, where she began stitching the first wound on his back. “I had to make sure youwere safe. And fearing that you weren’t was a torture I had yet to experience.”
She continued working quietly, with no reaction. No response.
