and found his longbow too, along with his supply sack, and she had splinted one of her legs with the wood from their longbows, tying them with the bowstrings. The length of wood was much too long for her leg, and she had drawn crazy patterns in the sand as she worked back to his side.
The kind of passion and determination that took made the back of his eyes smart. He had no words for what he saw.
No words, except: “I think you might be both my suicide and my salvation.” And he needed her for both. “I love you like a heart attack, woman.”
She didn’t reply. She was out cold. He turned onto his uninjured side and curled around her, blood, filth, sand and all, and then somebody must have shot out his headlights inside because darkness slammed down on him again.
The sun woke him. He didn’t want it to. He covered his head with one arm and drifted for a while, but then it got too fierce. Finally he sat up to look around.
The fucked-up, perforated bitch’s body still lay sprawled on the sand where Aryal had left it. Several feet away her head bobbed at the edge of the shoreline. A single bark of laughter burst out of him at the gruesome sight. It hurt so much that he stopped. It wasn’t funny anyway.
He bent over Aryal, gently pushing her bloody hair back from her face. Her pulse had slowed to a less alarming pace, and it still beat steadily. The sun had already started to turn her pale skin pink.
It was his turn now to deal with things. He managed to get up on his knees, then to his feet. Part of him was wild to get out of his own armor, but as he looked down at the half-melted mess at his chest, he knew that was going to hurt like a son of a bitch. So first things first.
His supply sack lay beside her, along with all the scattered, empty bottles that had held the healing potion. Okay, there was food in that sack, and hopefully the brandy bottle hadn’t broken. Day was looking up. He limped to the last boat on the pier to retrieve the wineskin of water. Now for shelter. He looked in the boats until he found a folded canvas sail. Then he walked back to Aryal, dragging the sail behind him.
Jamming their swords tip first into the sand on either side of her, he took one end of the sail and draped it across the hilts so that the top half of Aryal’s body lay in shade.
“I am a goddamn genius,” he told her. The cry of seagulls answered him.
After he took two swallows of water, he knelt and lifted her head to moisten her lips with a small trickle. Then he stopped the wineskin and sprawled beside her, half in the shade. He would work off the armor after a little rest. Just needed to close his eyes for a few minutes.
He found one of her hands and laced his fingers through hers.
This time when the darkness sucked him down, it was mingled with peace.
This time he dreamed he was in a sauna. Galya’s severed head sat on the bench and sneered at him. She tried to convince him that he wanted to become her shadow panther, and he kicked her into a corner, which was against sauna rules, and somebody started tapping on the door in reprimand, and that pissed him off so much he woke with a start.
Overhead, the edge of the sail flapped rhythmically in a steady breeze that blew off the water. The sun had begun its descent in the sky. They had slept the day away.
Alarmed, he sat quickly, ignoring the twinge of protest in his sore muscles and in the giant scabs at his chest, shoulder, neck and face. He hadn’t meant to rest that long.
His injured eye had gummed up, but when he eased it open with a thumb and forefinger, he was profoundly relieved to discover that his sight had almost returned to normal. Hopefully the rest of that damage would heal over the next couple of days.
Turning, he bent over Aryal’s still form. Was she sleeping—or unconscious? It was past time that she got more healing herself. Gently he felt down her body. Broken leg, cracked ribs, severely sprained wrist that was now so swollen he couldn’t wrap his fingers around it. He lifted up the bottom of her tunic and was horrified to discover that the blackened contusion at her shoulder continued down the entire length of her torso. From the size of it at the edge of her trousers, it probably went down the length of her leg as well.
What the hell happened to her? Was that all from her fall from the bluff? And there were her wings to consider as well. She had taken damage on top of damage.
He rubbed the back of his head. The one-trick pony could only do so much, and he didn’t know enough about the healing arts to know if he would hurt her even more by healing whatever had happened to her unseen wings. Caerreth had been right. When an injury was severe enough, as in her crushed carpal joint, sometimes a simple healing spell just fused the damage together.
But he had to start somewhere. He just had to keep it localized. First he worked on her leg, pouring the healing spell over the femur to ensure the break had fused. Then he worked on her wrist. As his Power reduced the swollen flesh, he ripped a length off the edge of the sail so that he could wrap it. That joint was going to need some support as it finished healing.
Next he turned his attention to her cracked ribs, placing a hand along the curve of her torso. He had barely begun when she took his wrist. “Stop,” she croaked.
Blood had dried all over her, so that she was almost unrecognizable. He scowled. “No.”
“It’s too much. You can’t spare the strength.”
“I can spare it. Just a little more.”
“Everything always has to be a fight with you,” she grumbled.
He cocked an eyebrow incredulously at her but didn’t bother to dignify that with a reply. Instead, sensing how her stressed, injured flesh soaked up the healing like a sponge, he eked out a little more Power before he had to concede that he was tapped, and he had to stop.
She struggled to sit up, and he slipped his good arm underneath her shoulders to help. Her arms slipped around his waist, and they ended up simply leaning against each other. He tucked her head into the crook of his neck and held her carefully.
After a while she reached for the wineskin of water, and when she drank her fill, he did the same. The skin was nearly empty when he had finished. He stoppered and shook it. “Gonna have to deal with that issue soon.”
“There’ll be fresh water at the top of the bluff.” She eyed the path tiredly. “We just have to get up there.”
“One step at a time.” He dug in the sack and pulled out wayfarer bread. The apple brandy bottle hadn’t broken. Fuck yeah. They ate slowly and took sips of the brandy as they watched the sunset. He said, “If I don’t see another wafer of wayfarer bread for a hundred years or so, I’ll be okay with that.”
She nodded as she looked around, and he did too. The current had washed Galya’s head onto the beach beside the nearest pier. A few minutes later, she said as she chewed, “I like to see her rotting.”
She sounded so peaceful. He snorted, which didn’t hurt quite as badly as it had before. He told her about his dream, and she gave him a dark look that was almost laughter. Of course, that also meant he had to tell her what the shadow wolf had told him, and she paled underneath the coat of her grime.
She whispered, “They were Wyr after all.”
“Yeah. Hopefully they’re at peace now. Have you ever heard of this Phoenix Cauldron that the wolf mentioned?”
She shook her head and shrugged. “I wonder if it’s one of the seven God Machines. Except all the stories say that Numenlaur had only one.”
He pushed the mystery aside, finished his wafer and said, “Paragliding is not stupid.”
She looked at him blankly.
“The shit fit you threw earlier,” he said. “You said—screamed—that paragliding is stupid, and it’s not.
She ducked her head and muttered so low he almost couldn’t hear her, “It is if you’re not there to do it with me.”
His throat tightened. “That’s not ever going to happen.”
She turned to look at him, and everything was right there in her eyes. Fear, vulnerability, and a startled, fierce love. Uncertainty.
