Not Ariel. She hadn’t given a single thought to the birth station of anyone she treated.
He’d listened intently to the soft cadence of her voice while she offered comfort and assurances to those who were aching, regardless. She’d eased the men and their loved ones the same effortless way she soothed the pain lurking in the blackness of his own heart, and that mystified him.
How did she always know what words to say?
Conversation had never come easy for him. Words of comfort were even more difficult.
Yet she had no problem speaking to any and everyone. As if they were old friends.
She respected everyone. Never had he met her equal.
And that made him respect her. More than anyone, including his brother.
Until her, nothing had ever lightened his sour mood. And why should it? Life was miserable. Everything about it. From cradle to grave, it was an unending test of who could screw whom the hardest and fastest and get away with it. There was never anyone who could be trusted.
Friend became foe, and foe became lethal.
She’ll turn on you, too. Just as everyone else has.
Aye, that was a pathetic fact of life that he mustn’t let himself forget.
Clenching his teeth against the burning ache that spread through his gut, Valteri started sewing the wound of the unconscious man. He didn’t need the softness of a woman. He was a warrior, fierce and hard, raised by the back of an angry fist. No one had ever comforted him and he had no wish to change his life.
Liar.
Valteri paused at the voice in his head, so crisp and loud it seemed to come from another source than his own mind.
But it wasn’t a lie. He could never allow himself to fall victim to anyone. Not for any reason. He’d been there and done that, and had no desire to repeat it. His days of being made a fool or being preyed upon were over. There was nothing worth the risk of it.
In this world, there was only one person who wouldn’t betray him.
One person who would never put a knife in his back.
Himself.
People were heartless and they were cold. To protect themselves, mothers would betray their own children. Fathers would cut the throats of their own sons.
He’d seen it too many times.
His own parents had done it to him.
Under no circumstances could he ever allow himself to forget that.
She would sell him out in a heartbeat.
I’m nothing to her.
With three quick stitches, he finished the wound and knotted the thread, then cut it with his dagger.
Needing a break himself, he left the area with the wounded. He scanned the landscape around him, stopping when he saw Ariel sitting on a piece of fallen stone not far away, her expression pensive and pained.
The sight of her beauty there hit him like a fist to the gullet. Worse, it made him harder than hell and sent an image to his mind that the priests would damn him for.
Not that he wasn’t already damned. Besides, his mind usually ran on inappropriate thoughts. And the gods knew that Ariel put the most inappropriate thoughts of all time in his mind.
Damn it. Why did he covet her so much when he knew better? His past and his deformity would never allow him the comfort of a wife. Nor could he ever risk passing his deformity on to any child or the stigma he carried to a spouse. Last thing anyone needed was to be called a godless monster because they were in his proximity.
Wounds of the flesh healed. He barely recalled what they’d done to him physically.
