"It'snotnothing," she slipped under his shoulder, like she was strong enough to take his weight. It made him want to laugh. "Come on, back to the kitchen, and I'll fix you up."
"Not...necessary," he grumbled.
"Come willingly, or I will hit you with the poker and drag your huge ass into the kitchen myself," Delphi snapped back.
It must have been the blood loss that had Tenebrys smiling at her. That was all. It definitely wasn't the way she thought she could boss him about, or how she had no fear of him.
Tenebrys didn't want a sore head on top of stab wounds, so he summoned what was left of his energy and let the pushy little female turn him toward the kitchens.
12
Tenebrys was a complete mess. How he had managed to stay upright and still moving, Delphi couldn't fathom.
She didn't waste any time boiling water the conventional way. She placed wood in the fire to help with light and heated a basin of clean water with her magic. She got the bundle of yarrow she had picked in the gardens and put it in a second basin of hot water to steep.
The rags she had found earlier that day were clean if a little dusty. It would have to be enough.
Tenebrys sat on the slate tile in front of the fire, watching her with golden eyes.
"Okay, Highness, I'm going to wash you down with clean, salted water, and then I will use some healing herbs as a poultice to stop the bleeding and keep your wounds from getting infected," Delphi said, soaking her first cloth.
"What kind of healing herbs?" Tenebrys asked suspiciously.
"Achillea millefolium," Delphi said, and when he kept staring at her, she added, "Yarrow? Warriors herb?"
"I know what you are talking about. I'm not an idiot," he replied.
"No? Then why are you staring at me like you think I'm going to try and poison you?" she asked, moving the basin closer to him.
"Maybe because last time someone from your family tried to tend my wounds, they cursed me," Tenebrys grumbled, and he looked back to the fire. "Or maybe I just like to look at you."
Delphi ignored the heat that flushed over her chest. "If I wanted to hurt you, I would let your wounds fester and rot. I wouldn't bother cleaning them."
Tenebrys didn't try to stop her, so she moved around his enormous bulk, careful not to step on his tail.
She started to clean the worst knife wounds on his back first. He didn't flinch or hiss, but it must have hurt like hell. As she worked, Delphi noticed other scars on his back. This must have happened to him many times before.
"You want to tell me how you got these?" she asked, when the silence became too much for her.
"Fae came through a gateway. They were raiders. Felix, Syn, and I stopped them," Tenebrys grumbled in his deep voice.
"Raiders? What is in the woods worth raiding?" she asked.
Tenebrys grunted. "Don't know for sure. Usually, they don't try to come through unless it's the full moon. These had help from a high lord."
Delphi moved to the wounds on his shoulders. She tried hard to focus on cleaning them and not on how soft the fur was on his corded muscles.
"A high lord. That doesn't sound good. Why would they bother sending their people through if they know you are still watching the gateways?" she asked.
To the humans of Chantelun, the fae were mythological monsters used to scare children with. To Tenebrys, they were a monthly occurrence.
"According to the one I caught, they think I am weak and that if they throw enough foot soldiers at us, some are bound to get past us," he replied. He was still staring straight at the fire, his hands balled into tight fists.
"And there's no one else who can help? What about the shifter clans from Runefjell that you told me about?"
Tenebrys shook his head. "They won't come. They still think that this plague could infect them."
"Could it?" Delphi asked.
