The realisation came slowly.
Her head bowed, her forehead pressed between his shoulder blades, exposed by the subtle spread of his wings. “I am sorry,” Penryn murmured, her tone suggesting the apology was genuine. “For all of this.”
It was a ridiculous statement, as not all of it was her responsibility. Even if she had known that rogue riders patrolled these woods, he was to have been on his guard since they had first stepped outside the sages’ keep. She did not control the rider’s arm and the strange weapon that had curved and doubled back in order to slice through Grimult’s wing so effectively.
So there must have been something more.
“For which aspect, exactly?” Grimult asked crossly. He would have normally been ashamed to use such a tone with her, but it was a testament to his disillusionment that he felt no such thing now. Regret was slow in coming, likely aided by the fact that he could not see her face to know how his words affected her.
She removed herself from leaning against his back, a sniff all he received as reply at first.
A tendril of remorse coursed through him. His anger was not productive, nor would he improve their situation by trying to make her feel as he did.
That would be cruel.
And that, he was not.
“Will you pass me the mixture, please?” Penryn asked, her voice dim but present. With some reluctance he did so, even surrendering the blade he had used to mix it.
“As thick as you can,” he instructed. “The flat of the blade is better than your fingers for application.” Cleaner, with less chance of the poultice sticking to her hand rather than where it was most needed.
She did not ask why.
He bit down hard when the first swipe met angry, open flesh, but he was determined not to make a sound. It was only pain, after all, and he could acknowledge its presence without succumbing to it.
Or so he hoped.
“I wish there was someone who could look at this properly,” Penryn observed behind him, her voice worried. “What if this is not enough for it? What if infection comes and you...”
She stopped, realising what she was about to say, and he did not urge her to finish, well acquainted with the direction of her thoughts.
What if he lost the wing?
His people were of heartier stock than that, but they also were not weeks away from the nearest healer who could properly tend to a gash such as he had experienced.
“Has the bleeding slowed?” he asked instead, his voice more curt than he had intended.
“Yes,” she answered back, and it seemed smaller each time she answered him.
“Then the poultice will suffice,” he assured her. “Amputation will hardly be necessary.”
She drew in a sharp breath at the word, and he wondered at her expression, hidden from him as she continued to carefully apply what he had given to her.
It was not a difficult task, and it was over quickly enough, although he thought she lingered more than was necessary, ensuring that it had dried along the edges, as secure in place as could be without a bandage to hold it on tightly.
“Come,” Grimult urged, certain she was avoiding him rather than doing anything of true purpose stationed behind him.
She sighed, but relented. She ignored his outstretched hand and made to rinse away the tools she had used, but winced as she leaned forward to do so. Her ribs likely ached fiercely, and he frowned, intervening before she could become even more damaged.
He swallowed, trying to tamp down his rising feeling of personal failure as well as the disgust he felt toward the sages and their many lies, for it would help nothing to allow both to leek into his interaction with Penryn.
He forced his voice to soften as he reached down and persuaded her fingers to release the plate and knife into his care. “You have done more than enough.”
Penryn did not react how he had expected.
He had meant the words as a sort of peace between them, but although she relinquished the dirty items, she sat back on her heels, a derisive snort coming from her as she watched him. “I have, have I?” He gave her a sceptical look, and she shook her head. She still clutched her arm to her chest, and he realised it was an effort to support her ribs as well as her wrist, the huddle looking most unnatural given her usual posture. “Made you hate me, is what I have accomplished.”
He swirled his hand across the plate submerged in the river. “I do not hate you,” he answered calmly, his voice steadier than the turmoil he experienced in his mind, and he was glad of it.
Penryn said nothing, yet one glance at her face made it perfectly clear that she did not believe him.
But it was true. Hate was strong, a loathing so great that nothing could break through it. There were many feelings that warred and twined when he looked at Penryn, but none of them bordered on hate.
Plate and knife carefully dried and put back into the pack, Grimult turned back at her. “Your ribs require wrapping,” he informed her, choosing to be direct with the problem rather than succumb to the dictates of modesty.
He felt strangely detached from it in any case, as if the embarrassment that might have been there even that morning was locked away behind the sense of betrayal that he had yet to reconcile.
Penryn blinked at him, uncomprehendingly.
Grimult managed to suppress his sigh, wondering what his mother would think of what he was about to request. “I will require access to your torso,” he explained stiffly, trying to remember how the healer had acted when Lira had taken sick and a rash had spread across her middle. Their whole family had been so worried for her, yet the healer had come, his manner brisk and almost soothing in its way. He was not frightened, did not shy away
