He must have noticed how her muscles tensed at his touch.
“Log or grass?” he asked, indicating the available areas for her to sit.
Not wanting to be perched on top of anything else, Aizel removed one hand from his shoulder and pointed to the ground.
“Grass it is.” He gently lowered her to a soft patch of the same fluffy grass she had slept on the previous night.
Aizel stretched out on the firm ground, rearranging the blanket she still had on her shoulders. The grass tickled her sensitive, swollen ankle, but it felt cooling at the same time.
She picked a single strand of the strange grass, twirling it in her fingers and watching the three round leaves flutter through the air. If only she had something to press it with, she could preserve the pretty leaves to show Celesta.
She slipped it into her sack regardless. Sometimes, things dried more interestingly than she expected, and the little piece of grass made her happy.
Erich approached her a few moments later. He was wringing the excess water out of a length of sopping wet cloth. “This might help.” He dropped to one knee and lightly wrapped it around her lower leg.
It did help. The cold water instantly soothed the burning ache.
Aizel was confused. He kept calling her horrible things, but his actions were—for the most part—thoughtful and even a little kind.
“Why are you helping me?”she wanted to ask.“You clearly hate me.”
Speaking to Celesta with her hands was so familiar Aizel was already imagining how she could ask those same questions without her voice.
Slumping her shoulders, she held back. If it was Celesta, the conversation would have been seamless. Her sister was so easy to talk to. But Aizel was now realizing how vulnerable it made her feel to speak with her hands and her actions. Doing so required asking for the full attention of the listener.
To be vulnerable with this prince was to put herself at his mercy. And she was already at his mercy in every other way.
After they ate another meal of the same dried meat that everyone on this continent seemed to live on, Aizel gratefully relaxed onto her side. There was no comfortable way to sit on the ground with her hurting foot.
She missed the familiar food of Istroya. It may have been scarce, but it was always fresh—especially the fish and the fruit.
Getting up from the fire, the prince reached into his bag and pulled out the length of rope. As he rounded the fire toward her, she leaned away, shaking her head.
His eyebrows drew together over his heartless eyes.
She pointed to her ankle. Certainly, he didn’t think she was going to get up and run away when she was so badly injured.
“It’s still too risky.”
She rolled her eyes. As he reached down toward her, she grabbed his wrist and placed it over her own.
He looked at her with no comprehension on his face. This boy was an idiot.
She grabbed the rope from his hand and wrapped it around their wrists.
“You want me to tie our wrists together for the night?”
She nodded.
“What difference does that make?”
She pointed to her foot, then back at him.
He didn’t understand.
She placed her head in her hand to indicate sleeping, then she shook her head with her eyes still closed to indicate having a nightmare. Then, she pointed from him to her ankle.
“It’s your fault this happened to me.” The words were burning in her throat, but she couldn’t release them.
