“Easy there.” Hands cupped my head and eased it up, helping the water I’d inhaled come back out.
I realized I was still in Hell because never had I choked on water. In Neverra and on Earth, the inside of my mouth and my scaly skin both acted like gills, separating the oxygen from the carbon dioxide before siphoning it inside my body.
“I wish I were dead,” I whispered between coughing fits. Coughing fits that made my body feel as though it had been cleaved in half.
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true.” The corners of my eyes released a few tears that bled right into my hairline. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, realizing how selfish I was being.
“You have nothing to be sorry about.”
After inhaling a long breath through my nose, I finally dared to open my eyes. Remo’s face was shadowed but pale, his eyes large and shiny. Water struck and gushed beside us. I turned my head, which he’d cocooned in his lap, and found he was sitting half-submerged in an iridescent pool.
“I was hoping the water would help heal you.” His voice was all at once tenuous and rough. “But I don’t know if it’s helping. Your wound hasn’t magically sealed up. Maybe it’s making it worse.”
I didn’t know if it had made it worse. I couldn’t feel an entire side of my body. Maybe Iwascleaved in half . . .
“I didn’t want to rip up your jumpsuit, and I didn’t think you’d want me undressing you, but I think you need to take it off, so I can see the extent of the damage. Make sure no other piece of metal went through you.”
“The lengths you’ll go to catch another glimpse of my breasts . . .”
He shot me a gentle smile. “You think you can sit up?”
I tried but my upper body felt chained to an anvil. “I . . . can’t.” I allowed myself a full minute to sulk. “Just unzip my suit. I’m past the point of caring whether anyone sees me naked.”
“Good thing there’s just me around.”
I sucked in a breath, my lids pulling up higher.
“What is it?”
“Before I passed out, I saw someone . . . in a tree.”
He frowned, but then his forehead smoothed out. “You lost a lot of blood.”
“I didn’t hallucinate it. I really did see someone.”
“I carried you through the entire jungle and then I’ve been sitting here for some time, and I’ve seen no one. I haven’t even seen an animal. Haven’t even heard any.”
Which could’ve been because the crashing waterfall camouflaged all other sounds. Or maybe it was because his ears were still ringing from the explosion. Mine certainly were.
He gripped the zipper nestled in the hollow of my collarbone and gently tugged on it. A groove appeared between his eyebrows as though undressing me required extreme concentration. I would’ve smiled had I not felt so pitiful. He drew it all the way down, but before peeling the compressive fabric open, he shifted me off his lap. Although he handled my body with great care, it still felt as though I were being whipped by a hundred scourges.
He took off his top, which made my pain take a backseat to my surprise. “If you’re trying to distract me from the pain . . . it’s working.”
A bigger smile brightened his face but faded when his eyes fell to the water lapping at my body. I followed his line of sight, noticing the red tint.
He raised my head, fitting it into his tunic, and then he pulled it all the way down to my navel before his hands slid under and climbed to my shoulders. He stretched the fabric down my arms, then lowered it delicately down my ribcage. Sweat salted my lips. I licked them, a pathetic whimper falling from my mouth when the compressive fabric brushed against my open wound.
Placing a firm palm on my spine, Remo jimmied my back off the wet sand and rolled me onto my side. And then he pushed the fabric of his tunic up, bunching it beneath my breasts. I kept my gaze on the golden stretch of skin connecting his shoulder to his neck. When it tensed, I surmised the damage was worse than anticipated. I neither asked whether I would live, nor begged to die. I just stared quietly at the frothing iridescence behind him.
If I hadn’t been injured, I’d be swimming. But how different it would feel to swim without being able to stay under. I focused on that instead of on the fingertips prodding the skin around the deep cut.
“It looks clean, Amara. No metal seems to have stayed inside.”
“My blood,” I murmured. “Be careful.”
A faint smile drew up his lips. “I know how your blood works.”
