Willing Sacrifice
Page 41

He’d managed to straighten his leg so it would heal right, but that was going to take more than just a few minutes. “I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, you will be, but how is the knee now?”
“It’s uncomfortable,” he admitted. “But at least I can feel it. That’s a blessing.”
She frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I was paralyzed once. Couldn’t feel anything below my neck. I was completely helpless. That hurt. This is just pain.”
Compassion welled up from her, as natural as breathing. She knelt at his side and put a hand on his shoulder. “What happened? How were you paralyzed?”
“I was attacked by a demon. Poisoned. It destroyed my spinal column.”
“But you heal so fast.”
“Not from that. No one could help. At least that’s what I thought.”
“But you’re better now, so you must have found some kind of cure.”
She was so beautiful—his eyes burned because he refused to blink and miss even a second of looking at her. This was his Grace, the woman he loved. That he would have yelled at her made shame seep into his soul.
“A woman saved me,” he told her. He ached to say that she was his savior, but his vow forced his silence.
“You loved her,” she whispered, the words part awe, part sadness. “I can see it in your eyes.”
He nodded. “Very much. She nearly died saving me. She’s the reason it makes me crazy every time you risk your life. I can’t lose… another woman.”
“Where is she now?”
He touched her cheek. Her smooth skin was a warm temptation. “She’s moved on. Lived her life.”
“Without you,” she guessed.
“Exactly.”
“Brenya shouldn’t have brought you here. She should have let you stay to fight for her.”
“If it weren’t for Brenya, she’d be dead. For that, I owe the woman everything.”
“But she brought you here, tore you away from the one you love.”
Torr ached to say that the woman he loved was right here, close enough to touch. Or at the very least, tell her that Brenya had saved his love’s life but taken her memories. Surely that would have been enough for Grace to figure out that she was the one he loved.
It was too close to the truth for him to say the words aloud. Even thinking about doing so made his throat clamp shut.
He swallowed to ease the tightness. “We should figure out our next move. I don’t want to send you back to the village alone, but I’m in no shape to protect you, and it’s only a matter of time before the Masons rebuild themselves again.”
“I’m not leaving you here, not when you’re too injured to fight. How long do you think it will take for you to be able to walk?”
“It’s hard to tell for sure, but at least a few hours. Could be tomorrow before I can hike over rough ground.”
Grace surveyed the area. He could see her mind spinning as she assessed their options. Torr waited for her to reach the same conclusion he had—that she needed to go on without him.
“I’ll mix up something to help ease the swelling. It will make you sleepy, but when you wake up, we’ll make some kind of splint and get you mobile.”
“You’re not serious. You can’t stay out here when I’m not even able to protect you. The moving water may or may not slow down the Mason’s healing process, but even if it does, the other one is still out there. It will heal and when it does, it could decide to come after us.”
She gave him the same look she might give an errant child. “I’ve been protecting myself in these woods since before you came along and I will keep doing so long after you’ve gone. What I won’t do is leave a helpless, wounded man out here as bait for who knows what kind of creatures that might come along.”
“Helpless?” He forced himself to one foot, refusing to let her think of him like that. The move made his damaged knee throb, but it also eased his pride. “I’m far from helpless.”
“Good,” she said, then picked up a sturdy branch from the ground and tossed it at him. “Then carve this into some kind of crutch you can use.”
Torr caught the branch and nearly fell over when his balance went askew.
“Sit down. Elevate your leg. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“You sound like Brenya.”
She beamed. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
She came to his side and grabbed his arm. “Then you should have chosen your words better. Now sit down.”
He wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed it, but he found himself on his ass, his leg elevated on the trunk of a fallen tree.
“I’ll be quick. Call out if you need me.”
He stared after her, trying to figure out what had just happened. His sweet, quiet Grace had just stepped up, completely taking over the situation. Just like he would have expected any female Theronai to do.
She’d always been insistent when she thought his safety was at stake, but there was something different about it this time. More confidence, more assertiveness. Her time here had changed her, and while it was going to make his life more difficult, he couldn’t help but enjoy it. Bossy or not, Grace had grown a stronger backbone. And it was sexy as hell.
She came back with her hands full of purple leaves, spindly roots and what looked like pale gray bark shavings. She shoved the ingredients into one of the water skins and gave it a good shake.
“Drink it all,” she ordered, handing it to him. “It’s going to taste like the bottom of a dirty foot, but you will drink it.”
With an order like that, what could he say but “Yes, ma’am.”
Torr drank. It tasted worse than she’d described, but he was blissfully distracted by the sight of Grace moving around the area, clearing space for a fire. The smooth efficiency of her efforts proved she’d done this before.
“Do you spend a lot of time in the woods?” he asked.
“I used to. Some of the women and I would go foraging for berries and herbs. It’s been too dangerous to do it lately.”
She pulled a small stone from a pouch and set it on a pile of dried grass, like an egg in a nest. With the end of a stick, she bashed the rock, and it exploded in a tiny ball of fire. After a few seconds, the fire grew to consume the smaller twigs she’d laid out. In no time, there was a tidy fire crackling away safely inside a ring of damp stones.