His voice breaks the silence, low and edged like a whisper dragged across stone.
“I didn’t ask if you could,” he says. “I asked if you needed help.”
The words slide under my skin, warm and unrelenting. They press against something inside my chest I’ve kept locked down since the library. Something cracks. Not enough to break, but enough to shift.
I look away, pressing the damp cloth against another bruise just above my ribs. My fingers falter. The motion is clumsy, betraying the truth my face tries to hide: I’m exhausted. Bone-deep and soul-heavy. .
His gaze sharpens when he sees the tremor in my hand. But it doesn’t harden. It softens, just slightly. Not with pity. Never with pity. But with something else. Like he’s holding himself back from stepping in. Like touching me would be too easy, too instinctive.
And still, he waits.
Not with impatience. Not with judgment. But like someone who knows the value of permission. Who’s willing to stand in the fire if it means I’ll let him.
The silence between us thickens, stretching and warming until it no longer feels empty. It pulses. It hums. It aches with everything we haven’t said. With the space between his hands and my skin.
I draw in a slow, shaking breath. The cloth slips from my fingers. I let it fall to the table beside me.
My body protests the movement, muscles screaming from overuse, from trauma, from everything I haven’t allowed myself to feel. But I keep my expression even. I force the ache to stay buried.
“You can help,” I say quietly. “If you want.”
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t try to fill the space with charm or deflection. There’s no pretense between us now. No illusion of casual. No pretending this isn’t something sharp and intimate unraveling in the open.
He just nods, and steps closer.
The shift in the air is immediate.
The heat of him touches my skin before his hands do. My breath catches, ribs tightening as his presence wraps around me like a slow burn building beneath the surface. Every movement is deliberate. Controlled. Not because he doesn’t want me, because he does, but because he’s giving me the space to feel it first.
His hands lift, stopping just shy of my waist. I can feel the hesitation in his fingers, the way his breath hitches like he’s holding something back.
And then, with the lightest pressure, his palms meet my body.
It’s not demanding. It’s not rushed. It’s reverent. He steadies me with one hand at my lower back, the other moving to ghost across my bruised side with a care that feels more dangerous than pain. His fingers don’t flinch when they find the worst of it. They linger. They learn. Like he’s memorizing the damage because he wasn’t there to stop it.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
He doesn’t speak. He just keeps touching, keeps grounding me with his warmth and presence, his silence louder than any apology he could offer. There’s something sacred in the way he handles me, something that feels too intimate, too much, for a body that’s supposed to be used to armor and blade.
He presses his palm flat over the deepest bruise. Not hard. Just enough to feel the shiver that rolls through me when he does.
“Hold still,” he murmurs, though he speaks the words more like a plea than a command.
I try. Gods, I try. But each brush of the cloth sends a new wave of awareness up my spine, and his nearness doesn’t help. He works slowly, painstakingly, dabbing away dried blood, lifting stray strands of hair off my shoulder when they fall into his path, adjusting his stance so he can reach another cut. His palm settles lightly on my hip for balance, and the warmth of it hums through my body with humiliating clarity.
He moves behind me, the floor creaking softly as he shifts. I feel his breath before I feel his touch, warm against the back of my shoulder where the serpent tattoo curves into shadow. The sensation steals something from my lungs. When he grazes the cloth over the ink, following the trail of scars it was meant to hide, I bite down on my lip to keep my composure.
“You shouldn’t have taken on that scouts alone,” he says quietly, though there’s no accusation in his tone. Only worry. Only that raw, unguarded fear he tries so hard to mask. His fingers brush the smallest scrape near my spine, and I tense, not from pain, but from the way he seems to be learning every inch of me without meaning to.
“You think I had a choice?” I manage, though my voice betrays how close he is. “He was going for Liam.”
“And you nearly burned the whole square to ash trying to stop him,” he replies, but softer now, like he’s afraid pushing too hard will make me retreat. His thumb steadies my ribcage as he reaches for another bruise, and my breath stutters. He notices. I know he does. But he doesn’t comment, doesn’t smirk, doesn’t turn it into a game.
He wipes the last of the dirt from my shoulder and lowers the cloth.
For a moment, he doesn’t move away.
His hands remain on me, one resting lightly on my hip, the other hovering near the small of my back, as if he’s waiting to see whether I’ll pull away or lean in. The warmth of his touch spreads through me like a slow ache, and I’m painfully aware of every inch of skin he’s close to but not yet touching.
