Page 12 of Blood Slumberm
He stumbled out of bed and followed her pain along the corridor and down a flight of stairs. His heart hammered with her fear. Her misery burrowed under his skin, turning into the burn of humiliation. He couldn’t bear this.
He didn’t bother opening her door. He simply took one Hesperine step through the solid wall, disappearing from the hall and reappearing inside the bedchamber she had claimed as her own. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, revealing her tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets. Shudders rolled through her body. Her haven now stank of panic and blood.
The scent didn’t stoke his appetite. Laced with the odor of suffering, it turned his stomach.
“Celandine.” She whimpered her own name to herself. “Celandine…Celandine…”
“Celandine,” he echoed softly.
She jerked awake with a gasp, fumbling for her distaff. Before she reached it, she cried out in pain. Clutching her thigh, she fell back, and the sound of her blood changed. She was on the verge of fainting.
Troi pulled the bedclothes away from her leg and pushed up her tunica. Her thigh was bound in a tight cloth with blood soaking through it in patches. He peeled back the bandage, and his stomach flipped again. He had seen far worse in the Hesperine Healing Sanctuary…and caused far worse on the battlefield. But the sight of the wounds on her body sickened him in a way none other ever had.
A ring of deep puncture marks ran all the way around her thigh. Judging by the yellow bruises around them, this had happened to her several days before she had come here, but the wounds showed no signs of beginning to heal.
Troi fumbled for the magic that had never rested easily inside him. His healing power jolted awake in his veins. For the first time in his immortal life, he was glad he possessed it and that the Hesperines had made sure he knew how to use it properly.
He blanketed Celandine in a spell to ease her pain. His magic flowed into her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She stirred, returning to her senses.
Her gaze darted from his face to her exposed wound. She started to scramble away, yanking at the blankets to cover herself.
He caught her shoulders. “If you move too much, you’ll only bleed more. Please hold still and allow me to heal you.”
There. He had asked nicely for permission to heal her, as a proper Hesperine should. His mentors would approve.
“Go to Hypnos,” Celandine snarled, twisting away from him.
Well, it would be necessary to do this the improper way, then.
Troi wrestled her down to the bed. She flailed under him, putting up quite a fight without her pain holding her back. But five nights of her blood had reminded him just how strong he was as an immortal.
He pinned her beneath him easily, wrapped his hand around her thigh, and sent a surge of healing magic into her wound.
Her eyes widened, and she went still under him, panting. As the holes in her flesh sealed and new skin began to form, Troi rubbed her thigh, massaging waves of his power into her. Another tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
When she was whole and no more pain screamed through her nerves, satisfaction settled deep into him. What didn’t fade was his unreasonable anger at whomever had left those marks on her skin.
He should let her go now. But he found himself running his hand along her thigh again. To make sure his work was finished, of course. Her gaze dropped to where he held her leg.
His gums began to ache. Hespera’s Mercy, what was wrong with him? Terrible as he was at being a Hesperine, he had some standards. In this moment, she was his patient, not a meal.
Troi let her go and stood a few paces away while she straightened her tunica and pulled the blankets up around herself.
She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “You’re a warrior. How can you be a healer?”
The question he had asked himself ever since he had received the Gift of immortality and all his other unwanted gifts with it. “Sometimes those who weren’t mages in their mortal lives manifest magical abilities as Hesperines.”
“Hespera must have had a good laugh when she made you a healer. Poetic justice, perhaps, after all the men you slaughtered on the battlefield.”
She didn’t know how true that flippant insult was. “You’ve never set foot on a battlefield. How did you sustain a wound like that?”
She pushed her tangled hair away from her face. “In the temple, of course.”
A nerve pulsed in Troi’s temple. “The mages of Chera did this to you?”
“There’s some myth or other that claims wrapping spiked chains around our thighs makes us holier. The most devout sisters do it willingly. Irreverent bitches like me get them strapped to us whether we like it or not.”
No wonder she had nightmares. He could guess why her name had been her rallying cry. She must have fought with everything she had not to lose her identity in that place.
