He pressed his hand against the wound and turned back toward the boulders.
Delia was exactly where he'd left her, pressed against the stone, her face pale. When she saw him emerge from the treeline, she tried to stand.
"Stay," he said. "Your ankle."
"You're hurt."
"A scratch."
"Ralvar." Her voice was sharp. Commanding. Not the voice of a frightened woman, but of someone who had just watched a man carve through her enemies."You're bleeding. I can see it from here."
He looked down at his hand. It was red. The blood had soaked through his tunic and was dripping onto the rocks at his feet.
Perhaps... more than a scratch, then.
Chapter 16
The wound was worse than he'd admitted.
Delia could see that now, with his tunic stripped away and his side exposed in the pale morning light. The bolt had carved a deep gash across his ribs, and blood still seeped sluggishly from the torn flesh, painting his green skin in dark streaks.
"This needs stitching," she said, surprised by how steady her voice came out.
She was already moving toward his pack. Her fingers found the familiar red cord, the worn bone needle, the supplies she'd used to repair his vest.
"You've done this before?" His voice was rough.
"Leather." She knelt beside him, laying out the needle and thread. "Never skin."
"Same principle." His voice was tight with pain he was trying to hide. "Just softer."
Her hands were trembling, she noticed distantly. Not from the cold.
She looked up. "This will hurt," she said.
"I know."
She began.
He didn't make a sound as she pushed the needle through his torn flesh, drawing the edges together with careful stitches. His jaw was clenched, the muscles in his neck standing out like cords, but he never looked away..
"You watched," he said quietly, somewhere around the fourth stitch.
She tied off a stitch, started another. "I needed to know."
"Know what?"
"If it would change how I saw you." The needle pierced his skin. He didn't flinch. "If watching you kill would make you into the monster I was taught to expect."
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the whisper of sinew through flesh.
"And?" His voice was careful, but she could hear the thread of fear beneath it—fear of her answer.
"You were terrifying," she admitted. "I've never seen anything move like that. Never seen—" She swallowed.
He caught her wrist, pausing her work. "Delia—"
"Let me finish." She didn't pull away, but she didn't continue stitching either. "You were terrifying. But nottome. Those men would have taken me back. They would have—" Her voice cracked. "You killed them because they were trying to take me back to a place where I would have died slowly. And all I felt, watching you, was..."
