“Resting,” Alaryk told me. “In his mountain hold. Whatever you did, itdidhelp him. He was out today, patrolling the territory.”
A small sense of relief at least. “Good. I’m glad. But…”
“He’s not healed,” he finished for me. Once again my stomach rumbled in hunger, and once again I ignored it.
“Do you know what’s wrong with him?” I asked, thinkingthat if I knew the root of the disease, it might make it easier to help him.
Alaryk regarded me. Then he stood, snagging my water goblet to refill it. He pulled a wooden tray from a cabinet. From another, he gathered a plethora of cured meats, fruit, and a small loaf of dense brown seeded bread. He brought it all over to me. And if I was surprised that I’d be served a meal by aKarath, I tried not to show it.
“It was a curse,” he finally told me, settling back into his seat, though farther from me to make room for the tray of food between us. I didn’t touch it, however, listening, rapt. “By a Hartan witch.”
My belly sank, churning. “A witch? Like a…sorceress?”
He inclined his head.
A sorceress was a powerful thing. And a Hartan, no less? I knew they were an enemy nation to the Karag, though there was an uneasy peace for now. How much malice and hatred had been imbedded into a curse like that?
“Why?” I asked.
“Thewhydoesn’t matter,” he told me firmly. “Only thewhat. She placed it upon Samryn nearly a decade ago. It was meant to be a slow death. She said it would ‘rot his heart,’ like mine had been.”
He let out a humorless dark scoff.
“A decade,” I said softly. “So it’s taken root. And for a long time.”
“I’ve used my own magic over the years to help slow it,” he admitted. “But even my own power has proven to not be enough. I don’t have the ability to heal. Only to…change. And twist.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I wouldn’t ask right now.
“But you took his pain for him. I tried to take some too,” he continued. “That night. Yet it hurt you.”
I swallowed. The pain had become so much that it hadeventually turned me numb, until I couldn’t feel my limbs or feel the cool wind against my cheek. It was like I’d been suspended in it.
I nearly shuddered, remembering it. “Yes,” I replied. “That’s always been the nature of it. I can heal, but it requires me to siphon away the sickness and pain. It takes a toll. It doesn’t usually knock me out for a couple days though.”
“What do you want?” he asked, face suddenly serious. “What do you want for trying to heal him?”
The nausea was rising, but I took a hasty sip of water. The cowardly part wanted me to lie, to tell him that I didn’t think I could help Samryn, if only to spare myself the suffering.
“Can I think about it?” I asked instead. There was a flash of wildness on Alaryk’s face, one I didn’t want to try to decipher, but it had me adding, “Not about helping Samryn. About what I want for it.”
There was a hesitant relief in his gaze. “Very well.”
“It might take a lot of time,” I warned. “And I’m not certain I can save him at all.”
Alaryk wiped a large palm over his face. “We aren’t in the position to turn away a thread of hope.”
He meant Samryn and himself, I knew.
He stood swiftly, rising silently, towering over me in the small lounge space. “I know it’s unwise to show you all my fears. It gives you power. But truthfully, I don’t care what it takes, what you want. I would give anything. And you should know that…because I felt an inkling of what you would take for him. I would be forever in your debt merely because youtried.”
My lips parted in shock, hearing a gruff vulnerability in his voice I hadn’t expected. He loved Samryn. Deeply. Even I could sense that plainly. And it made me soften toward this arrogant, high-handed male.
“Think about your price,” he continued, “once you’ve recovered fully.”
He walked from the lounge area, going to a built-in wall ofdrawers near the bed. Steel, polished drawers came out smoothly from the wall. I watched as he unknotted the drying cloth, let it fall to the floor.
My breath hitched, spying the firm, rounded, strong backside and the telltale scar just below his spine where his tail had once been. I’d heard that the Karag riders cut them off after they completed their training, a final commitment.
