“S’long as you’re s-safe,” he murmured, voice slurring. “All that … m-matters.”
“Nikator!” Biyu held onto him tightly. Panic and terror flared within her like a wildfire. “You’re not dying here.”
His eyelids fluttered. “Dying … in your arms—doesn’t—doesn’t seem like a b-bad way to go.”
“Nikator, stop?—”
“I love you.”
Her heart stuttered to a stop and she sucked in a breath sharply. Tears welled in her eyes and she couldn’t breathe for a moment. “You’re just saying that because you think—you think this is the end. It’s not. Pull yourself together, Nik.Please.”
“I will always—always love you.” His eyes flew open and he met her gaze levelly. “Always.”
“Nik—”
And then his eyes shut and he lost consciousness.
36
The next fewhours passed in a blur. Biyu dragged Nikator’s unconscious—and very heavy—body to the nearest home she could find. He was too heavy for her to pull onto a bed, so she took the bedding from the bedroom and gathered it in the living room, and yanked him onto it. She then got to work finding medicine—it wasn’t actually that difficult to find. She raided each of the houses and found an array of bottles with strange liquids, potent-smelling ointments, and tools to stitch wounds together. The hard part was figuring out how to do it.
She had no real time experience in mending wounds. The only knowledge she had was from reading books a few years prior when she’d been bored with nothing to do. She hadn’t retained much of that information, so she did what she could remember. She cleaned the wound, staunched the bleeding, stitched with trembling hands, and applied some ointment that she prayed was for wounds.
Biyu sat on the floor of the living room, the hearth flickering with the fire she had created with magic. An orange glow blanketed the room. Nikator laid in the center beneath a pile of blankets, his head propped up with a pillow, and his chest bare. She had bandaged him up to the best of her ability, but it hadbeen hard to wrap the bindings underneath his back and around his chest.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she hugged her knees to her chest. She didn’t want him to die. The thought of losing him rendered a deep fear within her that was soul-crushing.
“You have to keep fighting,” she said between sniffles. “I don’t want to lose you, Nikator.”
He was deathly still, his skin pallid and his hair appearing like blood. She inched closer to him and rested her hand above his mouth. He was breathing, but barely.
“Nikator, I love you,” she whispered.
And yet, he didn’t stir.
She wiped her tears with her blood-stiffened sleeve. She sat there watching him breathe until the sun began peeking out on the horizon, and even then he hadn’t moved. More tears streamed down her cheeks and her eyes burned. If he died, then so would she, according to the bond. But what if that wasn’t the case? The spell was written poetically, so there could have been other meanings. Not that Biyu cared—she would rather die with him if it came down to it. She wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt that she had ruined everythingandcaused his death by forcing him on this mission to track her down.
Biyu intertwined her fingers in his and gave them a gentle squeeze.
“Please, you have to survive this,” she murmured. “I can’t—I can’t live without you.”
His hand was cold to the touch.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, Nikator. You have to fight.”
The days passed agonizingly slow.Nikator still hadn’t woken up. Occasionally, he would twitch and moan in pain, but that was it. Biyu spent her days sluggishly. She changed his bandages, checked for infections, applied ointment, and sat by his side. She scavenged for food in the village that wasn’t rotting and managed to make a stew by tossing everything together in a pot of water—it usually resulted in a horrible amalgamation of different flavors, but it was the best she could do, since she had never cooked in her life.
Nikator’s horse had returned the next day and she was able to take all the supplies from it—the bedrolls, the feed, and Nikator’s pack—and kept them inside the house in case the animal decided to bolt again. She kept the horse in one of the stables across the street and visited it twice a day. She, truthfully, didn’t know what she was doing, but she fed it and refilled its water pail daily.
Biyu passed a hand over her greasy and unkempt hair; she hadn’t been bothered to find a river to bathe in, since she didn’t want to leave his side, so she had managed with quick sponge bathes that lasted minutes. Not that she cared. Her lack of hygiene was the least of her concern right now.
“Nikator, I got you this necklace.” She pulled out the jade pendant she had bought at the market. She held it up as if he could see it. “I got it because it reminded me of you. I … I don’t know if you even like jewelry, but I figured you might be able to appreciate it.”
Silence stretched between them.
Biyu placed the pendant beside him. “You know, it’s strange, isn’t it? We spent so much time together and we never reallytalked about our childhoods, or anything about ourselves, really.”
She sidled closer to him and traced the burn scars over his chest and shoulder. Her heart wrenched at the sight of them; she didn’t think she could ever look at his scars and not feel guilty. She vaguely remembered the sea of violet that had taken over when she panicked and thought he would kill her all those years ago. For a brief moment, she wondered what he had thought when he laid his eyes on her for the first time.
