Her slender fingers grabbed one of the bottles and unscrewed the cork slowly, as though it carried something beyond precious. The tribe lady grabbed a vial and poured some of the contents into it, allowing me to see the liquid inside and making me gasp at the sight of it.
It looked like a ray of sunshine dropped into that glass vial, illuminating the entire tent with its shine. I had never seen such a thing in my entire life, nor had I heard of magical potions actually existing. Because there was no doubt in my mind of the unnatural origin of whatever that liquid was.
“Is that…” I stopped, realising my vocabulary didn't own a word to describe what I was seeing.
“Firelight,” Karisha answered for me, earning herself a warning from her mate.
“What?” she snapped back at him as she moved closer to Dahr, whose head Markos had already lifted to prepare his mouth. “She was with him the entire night, she has a right to know,” the tribe lady admonished her partner. In a normal situation, I would have displayed a beat of pride, but I was too fascinated to witness what was happening in front of me to pay attention to anything else.
Karisha placed the vial to Dahr’s mouth and poured its contents down his throat, after which she massaged along his trachea until an audible gulp told us that he had swallowed the liquid.
“Will he be alright?” I inched closer on the bed, my full attention pinned to Dahr’s skin. Which started losing its crimson burn and returned to the golden-kissed colour I was so used to seeing. All in the span of a few seconds.
Karisha didn’t have time to answer, because Dahr’s grunt announced his awakening. His long lashes fanned on his cheeks, and he grunted low, the sound of a beast in pain.
“Where does it hurt, cousin?” Markos jumped into action and started patting the area around his right thigh, where I had struggled to reach.
“It’s Kleram’s dagger. It ripped into my thigh,” Dahr’s low murmur announced, and both Karisha and I looked in awe to see Markos ripping at the leather trousers to find a blade embedded deep within Dahr’s muscle.
How did he even walk with that?
He must have been in so much pain.
I mentally cursed myself for not making a harder effort to stretch and check his leg. I could have maybe saved him hours of pain.
What came next was a thing of nightmares, but also the scope of dreams. Both Karisha and I grimaced when Markos started pulling the blade out of Dahr’s thigh to leave a long trail of blood and puss as he did so. We shrieked at the sight of such gore and my captor groaned from the bed, his body shaking once again with new pain.
Instinctively, my hand moved to grab his in an attempt to settle him, but I quickly realised what I had done and let him go. Just in time, because his body started glowing, just like the potion had a minute before. It looked as if a ray of light travelled through his body and moved through his muscles, slithering down his torso, alongside his hip and through his leg, until it found the source of the injury.
When the light got to the bleeding thigh, a deep spark moved through his tissue, suturing the wound with its shine. I struggled to keep my eyes within their sockets, the wonder of what I was witnessing too great to even react. That could have been a fatal injury. And they healed it in a minute.
Everything started spinning around me and I had to grab the mattress with both hands to hold myself. It felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room and I needed… I needed…
“He will be alright,” Karisha’s hand wrapped over my own, squeezing me tightly to bring me back to reality.
“Cousin, what were you thinking?” Markos leaned over and admonished Dahr, who had just opened his eyes with a heavy blink.
“I can’t do it anymore…” Dahr’s heavy voice sounded like a crumbling mountain, all his strength and determination depleted. “Not with this one…”
Markos’ eyes snapped to me for a moment, before he turned his attention to Karisha and ordered her to take me away.
“She is tied to the bed,” his mate observed and pointed to the leather binding and my swollen wrist.
“Not with this one…” Dahr continued. “I wanted to stop myself…”
“Get her the fuck away!” Markos shouted, sending chills down my spine and forcing his mate into an upright position. Then, he circled the bed and moved over to my side.
I was still shaking when he pulled a knife from his waistband and started hacking at my binding to get me free, but even though I was terrified of his reaction, I couldn’t keep my attention away from Dahr.
“I like her too damn much, cousin. More than all the others.”
“There,” Markos lifted the ripped leather rope and my wrist along with it. “Take her to our tent and wait there for me,” he ordered.
Even though I wanted to stay, Karisha started dragging me away, her hand wrapped with mine in a slow and kind invitation, so different from her mate’s.
“Come, Nora. Please, come with me. Let’s get out of here.”
Having no other choice, I followed Karisha out of the tent, not without sparing a final glance towards Dahr, who was still lying in bed, struggling to awaken from his feverish state.
