“Don’t apologize.” Jessa pressed kisses to her sister’s hair. “Don’t ever apologize for needing us.”
He held them both, his heart aching with a fierce, protective love that threatened to overwhelm him. His confession would have to wait. Tonight, there were more important things than the past.
Tonight, his family needed him.
CHAPTER 20
The coughing started just before midnight.
Jessa woke to the sound—that familiar, terrible rattling that had haunted her dreams for months. She was moving before her eyes fully opened, throwing off the furs and crossing to Dani’s small room.
Dani was curled on her side, her thin body shaking with each spasm. Even in the dim light from the banked fire, Jessa could see the flush of fever on her sister’s cheeks, the shadows under her eyes, the way her lips had taken on a greyish tinge.
“Dani.” She gathered her sister into her arms, feeling the heat radiating from her small frame. “I’m here. I’m here, sweet girl.”
The coughing continued, harsh and wet. Between spasms, Dani managed to gasp: “Hurts. Jessa, it hurts.”
“I know. I know, darling.” She looked up to find Tarek in the doorway, his green eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. “She’s burning up.”
He crossed to them in two strides, pressing the back of his hand to Dani’s forehead. His expression tightened.
“The medicine,” he said. “Where is it?”
“By my loom. The small bottle.”
He returned with it in seconds. She tipped the bottle, letting a few precious drops fall onto Dani’s tongue. The remaining liquid barely coated the bottom of the bottle.
“That’s the last of it,” she whispered.
He said nothing, but she saw the muscle jump in his jaw.
They worked through the night, the way Tarek had when Jessa herself had been recovering from the snakebite. Cool cloths on Dani’s forehead. Herbal tea brewed from Tarek’s dwindling supplies. The special breathing exercises he’d taught them both, designed to ease the tightness in her chest.
Nothing helped.
By the time dawn began to lighten the sky outside the den’s entrance, Dani had fallen into a fitful sleep, but her breathing was still labored, her fever still high. The flush in her cheeks had deepened to an alarming red.
She sat beside her sister’s bed, Dani’s small hand limp in her own, and faced the truth she’d been avoiding.
The medicine from the trader had been working. For weeks, Dani had been improving, growing stronger, the color in her cheeks healthy rather than feverish. She had foolishly assumed that the change was permanent. But now the illness was returning with a vengeance.
And there was no more medicine.
“I have to go back.”
Tarek looked up from where he was grinding herbs at the kitchen table. “What?”
“I have to go back to the village.” Her voice came out steady, even though her heart was racing. “The cloth I’ve woven is good, better than the first sample, even. If I can trade it to a traveling merchant, I can buy more medicine.”
“The village where your uncle tried to force you into an impossible contract?” He set down the mortar and pestle. “The village you fled from in the middle of a storm?”
“There’s no other choice.”
“There’s always another choice.”
“Not this time.” She looked at her sleeping sister, at the shallow rise and fall of her chest. “Dani needs that medicine. Without it—” Her voice cracked. “Without it, she’ll die. I can’t let that happen.”
“And if your uncle tries to restrain you again? If he refuses to let you leave?”
