“Well, I’m letting you off easy by allowing you to leave.” The words don’t sound threatening in the slightest. I’m swaying on my feet now, head spinning.
I can’t do this for much longer.
I can feel the hot blood running down my stomach from my torn wound, and black dots are swimming in front of my eyes, threatening to swallow me whole.
I’m going to pass out. What if I don’t wake up? What if die because I wasn’t strong enough? Because I’m a weak Ordinary—
“Gray…？”
Between my drooping eyelids, I can see Kai take a hesitant step towards me, all amusement wiped from his face. And I must truly be hallucinating because I think I see worry flickering in his gaze.
“Gray, what happened?” He’s stepping slowly towards me, but I can’t keep my hold on the bow any longer. For a reason I can’t explain, I aim at the ground instead of him, releasing my grip on the string and letting the arrow fly into the dirt at his feet before the bow slips from my sweaty hand.
I can barely hear Kai’s shout through the ringing in my ears. “Gray!”
I don’t remember hitting the ground.
My face connects with the packed earth, but I barely feel it. My whole body is on fire, hardly breathing as I burn from the inside out.
“Paedyn! Hey, Pae, look at me.”
Rough hands are gripping the sides of my face, forcing my eyes to flutter open. They feel cold against my fevered skin, now slick with sweat, and concern is written all over the beautiful face hovering over me. I’ve never seen him so worried, so full of emotion. His cool mask has cracked, shattered, splintered into a million pieces as he lifts my head off the ground, pulling me towards him to search my face with wide, gray eyes.
And then he’s gone. Darkness.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Calloused hands are pushing the damp hair off my forehead while words are muttered close to my face. “Pae, stay with me.” His voice is stern despite the panic lacing each word.
Slowly, I force my eyes to crack open while I croak out quiet words through cracked lips, words that suddenly seem so important. “You’ve never called me that before.”
I’ve only ever heard him say my real name once when he had me pinned against an alley wall while he tested the word out for the first time. But I haven’t heard my name slip past his lips since. Haven’t heard the way the two syllables sound rolling of his tongue.
And I’ve certainly never heard him call me Pae.
I’m smiling up at him now, grinning like an idiot. I can’t stop. Delusional. I’m completely and undeniably delusional.
But in this moment, I don’t want to die—if only so I could hear him say my name one more time.
Delirious. I’m so very delirious.
He’s suddenly still. His eyes roam over my face, lips slightly parted as he takes me in. Then he blinks. Once. Twice. His dark lashes flutter, gray eyes flicking between mine as he says, “Remind me to make you smile like that again, when you aren’t dying, and I have all the time in the world to memorize it.”
Now it’s my turn to blink at him. Once. Twice.
That comment was all it took to wake me up because now my eyes don’t seem to want to stray from his. I must have heard him wrong. I’m so delirious that my mind is playing tricks on me, playing with my emotions, my feelings.
But I’m certainly not imagining the hands that are running up my body. I nearly choke on my ragged breath when his fingers brush my ankles, slowly running up each of my legs.
He’s trying to find the wound. I open my mouth to tell him where it is, but my head is spinning and I’m on the verge of passing out from the pain. I breathe heavily, trying to calm my pounding head and heart.
His fingers pass over my legs, gently poking and prodding as he searches for the wound. Once he’s satisfied that my legs are functioning just fine, his hands slide up to my hips, lifting me slightly off the ground to run a hand over my lower back. His brows are knit in concentration as his fingers feel over my lower stomach, his movements swift, steady, sure. This isn’t the first time he’s done this.
His hands slide up my abdomen, around my waist—
Pain like I’ve never experienced before erupts from the wound when his fingers dance over it, followed by a strangled sob tearing from my throat. The pain is so blinding that I think I’m about to blackout. And I find myself wanting too, if only so I don’t have to feel like this anymore.
I watch through blurry vision as he lifts the hem of the tattered shirt to reveal the silky one beneath soaked with blood. He sighs through his nose before lifting the hem of the tank, exposing my fevered skin to the cool night. There’s a flash of something small and sharp in his hands as he begins to carefully cut the bloodied cloth from around my middle.
His jaw tightens at the sight of the jagged wound stretching below my ribcage, a muscle ticking in his cheek. His eyes, full of an emotion I’ve never seen from him before, trace the bloody mess on my stomach.
And then my own eyes slam shut, sealing the image of him out. Leaving him in the world that is beginning to fade.
“Paedyn.” Kai’s voice is so far away, so distant from where I’m slipping into oblivion. “Paedyn, open your eyes.” It’s an order, strong and stern. And I ignore it. How very typical of me. Even in death my body refuses to listen to the commands of the future Enforcer. “Open your eyes, dammit!”
Tired. I’m so very tired.
Far, far away, I hear a male voice muttering panicked words.
“If you die, I’m going to kill you.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kai
She’s too stubborn to die, and I’m too stubborn to let her. I brush a hand over her forehead, her fevered skin hot to the touch, her breaths coming in shallow pants. She’s dehydrated, delusional, dying of hunger…
Just dying.
My eyes flick back to the bloody gash slicing under her rib, inflamed and no doubt infected. I pull out the remains of my crumpled shirt and begin dabbing at the wound, trying to sop up some of the blood so I can see exactly what I’m dealing with. The skin is torn, jagged, and likely looks much worse when it’s not concealed by shadows.
But what’s even more concerning, is that I have no idea how to help her. I have no supplies and no healing ability around me to draw from, making me utterly useless.
I’m holding her life in my useless, unequipped hands.
I stand to my feet, searching for my canteens in the dim light.
She needs water.
That’s what she came here for after all, why she risked walking straight into someone’s camp. She needed water. Needed it to drink, to wash out her wound. But that won’t save her.
I can’t save her.
I sigh in frustration, threatening to lose my temper as I run my hands through my hair, still searching for those damn canteens. But my mind won’t stop replaying the scene, won’t stop reeling over what just happened.
I knew something was wrong when I saw her arm trembling. Saw it shake with the strain of keeping the bow aimed at me, ready to make good on her threat to shoot. Then I saw her knees shake, saw the fire extinguish from her burning blue eyes. But above all, she wasn’t playing with me, wasn’t teasing me or twisting her mouth into that sly smile of hers that I enjoy so much. And that’s what worried me the most.