Before she could question anything, Sikras cleared his throat. He held her gaze despite signs of discomfort, almost as if he fought the urge to run toward the shelter of avoidance. “Hels, I know pulling you out of the battle wasn’t part of the plan. I know you wanted to be the next great hero of Nyllmas. But, just for now, until you’re ready to hew foes again, I hope it’s enough to know that you’re a hero to me.”
Her organic eye misted over. Those quiet words, so fragile yet sincere, soothed the sting of current worries. She slid her hand over toward his, the fierceness of her grasp a testament to her gratitude, as she whispered, “Thank you.”
He froze, fixated on her hand for what seemed like an eternity. He slowly slid his thumb from underneath her palm and grazed a feather-light touch across her skin. “I should be thanking you. You didn’t just save one of my lives out there. You very likely saved Benjamin’s. I like to think I could fight Dionus in Enos, but that’s just the delusion speaking.”
Merciful fate, the affectionate brush of his finger made her stomach flip. “I owed Ben that much and more. I could’ve very well sent him to his demise with that fake scroll.” The stillness gave her confusion enough time to overpower the moment’s intimacy. Helspira scrunched her brows together and looked away.
The gentle squeeze from Sikras’s hand came suddenly. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“On the subject of life and death, I—I shouldn’t be alive. Demons can heal quickly, yes, but mostly superficial wounds and the rare puncture. That halberd gutted me. I don’t understand it.”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
Helspira only knew one person with that kind of luck. Even if his luck had run out on the battlefield when that arrow pierced his—
Realization struck like lightning. The arrow. His broken arm. “Gods, your arm,” she gasped. “Are you okay?”
“The cleric healed the fracture before his energy gave out. Everything’s a bit sore, but at least I can move my fingers again. Funny. All the power of Enos at my fingertips, and yet, I’m entirely useless when I can’t use my ... well, my fingertips.” The two lingered in affectionate eye contact until Sikras bowed his head. “Enough about me. Can I get you anything? Water?”
Much to her abdomen’s protest, Helspira sat upright. Whatever the cleric had done certainly had prevented her death, but like Sikras, her body remained sore. She couldn’t blame the healer. He likely needed to spare whatever energy he could to heal as many as his god and body allowed. “Water sounds amazing.”
The wool blanket covering her fell into her lap as she sat upright. Sikras’s expression shifted to indecipherable stillness. Stripped of her armor, wrapped only in thin bandages that covered her wound and her breasts, Helspira glimpsed her exposed torso, peppered with countless older scars. Raking claw marks across her ribs. Bite wounds on her hips. Burns.
Embarrassment rippled through her, and she pulled up the blanket in a poor attempt to cover what he had already seen. “Don’t worry about those. Standard childhood in Chthonia,” she murmured, trying to downplay the severity with a weak laugh.
Mouth parted, he started and stopped what must’ve been a dozen sentences. Stunned silence looked strange on Sikras—a man for whom every thought was spoken aloud regardless of suitability. It almost looked as if he was about to reach out, to touch her, but his hand only hovered in the air, before he curled his fingers into his palm. “I’ll, uh ... I’ll be back with your water.”
Helspira watched him vanish into the chaos of surviving Red Sentinels who had gathered around a fire. How long had she been unconscious? Long enough for them to retreat into the forest and set up camp again it seemed. Tired eyelids closed, but Helspira forced them open when her eardrums pulsed at the sound of crunching frost under approaching feet.
“Hey,” came Ben’s voice as he swooped into a seated position beside her. “There she is, awake and alert. How’re you feeling?”
Her heart thundered at his approach. Had Sikras told him she had planned to betray him with a fake scroll? He seemed to embody the same warm, friendly Ben. It diffused her fear by a small margin. “Better than someone who took a halberd to the stomach should feel. Mostly confused as to how I’m still alive.”
An echoing laugh emanated from Ben’s skull. “He didn’t tell you? Classic Sikras.”
Suspicious, Helspira inclined her chin. She should’ve known a man who dealt with souls and the dead had a hand in her unexpected liveliness. “Gods, Ben, what did he do? I’m not undead, am I? Because I swear—”
“No, no.” Ben’s laughter grew as he held up his hands. “You’realivealive, I promise. You held on long enough for Sikras to do his thing, and the cleric handled the rest. By Dionus’s mercy, I saw Imri heal a hundred and one injuries in my lifetime, and it never gets old. Divine intervention is wild stuff.”
Okay, she wasn’t a walking corpse. Good. “If I’m not undead, what exactly did Sikras do?”
“Bribed Death to delay your soul from entering Enos in exchange for her scythe.”
Death? Helspira squinted as she called forth the hazy ghost of a memory. Yes, she barely recalled a hooded figure, but it felt more like a dream that faded upon waking. She remembered the idea of it more than specific details.
But the scythe ... Sikras loved that thing. “I can’t believe he’d do that,” she whispered.
“Oh, he’d have done far more than that. If you ask me, he was damn lucky all she wanted was her scythe.”
How did she feel grateful and guilty at the same time? Helspira blew a stream of air through her lips and shook her head. “It’s a strange thing to know the worth of your soul is a scythe.”
“Not just any scythe. A really neat one.” Ben reached behind him, repositioning his strapped lute into his lap. “I’m just glad it worked. That Death is still willing to bargain with him at all is a shock. I thought he burned that bridge years ago.”
An iciness invaded Helspira’s veins, and she clenched her teeth. “Speaking of burned bridges ... Did Sikras tell you that I—”
“—planned to give me a fake scroll? Yeah, it came up.”
“I’m so sorry, Ben. I thought it was the right thing to do. The only thing we could do.”
