Never.
“I’m fine,” Aderyn whispered back, hardly louder than a breath.
I shook my head. He wasn’t fine; he was simply too used to being hurt.
I wasn’t going to add a single ounce more pain to all he’d already endured.
I also wasn’t going to tell him how ridiculous it was that he’d try and assure me of anything when we’d all but crashed to earth.
“You can put your head in my lap,” I said, and even that much felt like an imposition that made me blush.
I simply wanted him close, wanted to offer him comfort, but I couldn’t even meet his eye.
He didn’t hesitate for a second, and I took a slow, deep breath and let it out heavily.
“We’ll rest here tonight,” I said, letting my fingertip trace around the shell of his ear. “See about finding someone to help us in the morning.”
“Mmhmm,” Aderyn hummed. He shut his eyes.
We needed to talk, but I was too exhausted and lost to make any sense or say a single thing of value. I could only imagine he was even more spent.
Still, he was close, and that was more than I’d have hoped. Even if he left me here come dawn to stagger back to Atheldinas on my own, he was here tonight, and I meant to enjoy every second with him.
The ground beneath me was steadying, and never in my life had I felt something so satisfying as the weight of Aderyn’s head in my lap, the silkiness of his hair as I combed it between my fingers.
We were stuck, and I should’ve been horrified, but this was?—
Something about this felt right, that we ought to be out here on our own, just the two of us against the world. So long as I had him, I didn’t need the rest of it.
At least for a while, I could ignore the world.
He twitched, and I didn’t know if he was asleep and it was a nightmare that plagued him or the pains he’d endured in my rescue, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” I whispered as I stroked his flaxen hair.
No matter what I had to do or what I had to give up, I’d make the world all right for him. Whatever it took.
22
ADERYN
Iwoke with a gasp, convinced someone was shooting at us.
Again.
Convinced that someone was shooting at us again.
I’d been so worried in the moment that they would somehow miss the giant target that was me, and hit tiny, vulnerable Roland on my back, that I hadn’t even registered the pain when they had, in fact, hit me.
It hadn’t been the worst injury I’d ever gotten to a wing, by a long shot. I had once been flying too low, and broken a wingtip hitting it against the forest canopy beneath me. It had swelled up and I hadn’t been able to fly for weeks.
This had been a single arrow in the fleshy, thin part of my wing. It made sense—when I had them open, it was one of the biggest targets available to archers. It would have been almost nothing, except... I hadn’t been able to land immediately, and get help with it.
There was no Bowen there to dress my wound and smile paternally and tell me to be more careful next time, but sometimes injury was simply how we learned.
None of that. I’d had to fly for hours with the arrow hole in my wing. Bleeding a little at first, then more. Eventually, it had slowed, even with the extra blood flowing through the appendage as I flew, the wound scabbing over slightly because of the constant push of air over it.
It had been good timing, because I’d been starting to worry I was going to pass out from blood loss, and we’d been far from the sight of any shore. Maybe Roland could have used my body to float back to land, but that would have been rather more traumatic an escape than I’d planned for him.
