“Are you okay?” I finally asked, my voice still a whisper. My eyes strayed shut, and the sudden desire to sleep overtook everything else.
Kye didn’t answer. He plucked a rock the size of my fist from the weeds, kneeling at my side. “I need to take the knife out,” he murmured, and I felt my body recoil at the thought. “I don't want you to go into shock.”
I nodded. My body had given way to shaking, whether from nerves or loss of blood, I wasn’t sure. The air had thinned, my skin somehow sweaty and cold, and an icy hue had entered the skin under my nails.
He lifted the satin aside for a full view of my hip, then hissed through his teeth. My head nodded forward, eyelids closing as my temple grazed his shoulder. The motion seemed to chase whatever hesitance he fought against. Wrapping the shirt around my pelvis, Kye glared at the knife. “Ready?”
I didn’t have the words to answer him. In a sudden yank, he extracted the knife from my body, smooth and fast.
I hardly even felt it.
But something in my body did. My eyes rolled, the world turning upside down momentarily before righting itself.
Through the haze, Kye fit a scrap of cloth over the wound, pressed the rock over it, and tied it tight enough the surrounding skin flared white.
I watched, numb to the worry that I couldn’t feel a thing. Kye leaned me against his chest, studying the flayed skin at my back. Mouth dry and sticky, I managed to slur the only thing I cared about. “Are you okay?”
He sighed. “I think the easiest way to cover it would be to tie another shirt around your chest.” The words thick like syrup in my ears, I tilted to look up at him. He met my gaze with molten eyes, as though forbidding me to ask whether he was alright.
“Okay,” I said, locked in the grip of his stare.
“I have to take your dress off.”
“You just want to see me naked,” I said, lifting my trembling hands over my head and angling myself so he could help. I’d hoped he’d crack a smile. Make a joke. Respond with his own brand of dry humor. He didn’t.
Though his hands were primed with speed, Kye took care to hike the ruined satin out from under my weight and over my head, his fingers warm and soft where they brushed my skin. He replaced the flap of skin, then wrapped his shirt around my back, bringing the sleeves together and knotting it between my breasts. My eyelids shuttered as I looked down at myself, my attire made up of knotted scraps of clothing, and I was suddenly too tired to think of what to do next.
“Stay with me,” he softly demanded. My eyes snapped open, but my head only bobbed again, exhaustion beckoning.
Kye swore under his breath. “Can you walk?” he asked. I realized his teeth were bright red.
“Canyou?” I countered.
He ignored me, looking over me intently, tilting my chin and feeling under the layers of my hair. His hand stopped at the clot of bloodied hair at the back of my head, and I flinched under the brush of his fingers. A fresh flash of hot metal lit the air. “He hit you from behind?”
“I fell on a rock when he pulled me off Sero.” I wondered where the gray horse had gone.
Jaw tight, Kye nodded, shifting my back against the trunk of the tree. A split in his chin shined, pink and bloody, stark against the white chalk. I ignored the strange numbness in my back. The tightness of every twitch. The canyon had dropped into silence, and I tried not to think about the two bodies on the other side of the tree.
“Burian ran down the hill.”
“Don’t worry about Burian. He’s a dead man.” Kye staggered to his feet, his hands on his knees, staring at the grass. He swallowed thickly, took a step, and vomited. “I’m fine,” he quickly said, holding a hand upright before I could say a word.
Doubt gnawed into my belly. I could barely sit upright. Kye could hardly stand.
Behind us, Kolibri nickered, staring down the ravine. A moment later, a bulky gray head appeared, mane bouncing as he nodded at the black mare. Kye stopped to wipe his mouth with the back of his arm.
“Don’t sleep,” he panted softly. I frowned, turning my cheek to escape the bright light. The fading sun behind him cast him in shadow, a fiery halo shining through his hair and around his head, stabbing at my eyes and drawing an ache into my skull. My jaw slackened, my shoulders slumped, and I heard Kye swear again. “Leihani,” he snapped softly. I reluctantly slid my gaze back to his. “Don’t sleep.”
“We can’t leave them here,” I argued.
Kye reached for his fallen sword, shoving it into the baldric at his back. “You have a sudden fondness for pirates? Going to recite Theia’s prayer and give them a proper burial?”
“What if someone finds them and follows us?”
He rocked back on his heels, thinking. Then shoved to his feet. “Fine.”
I opened my mouth to ask what that meant, but he’d already turned and left, disappearing behind the opposite side of my tree. Thumps and rustling met my ears, the sounds of a man rearranging dead bodies. I swallowed down the nauseous thought until Kye whistled finally at the horses.
