Page 55 of The Turncoat King

If being scolded by her eased the taut stretch of tension between him and his lover, he would accept it.

Revek lay on a couple of pallets, with pillows packed around him for comfort.

He looked flushed, and Luc could see the sweat on his forehead and his bare chest.

The arrow wound was high, right in the crease of his collarbone and his arm.

“You want your lady to sew me?” Revek asked, and there was rasp to his voice.

“I didn’t want her to, no. I don’t trust you around her. But Dorea thinks she’s the best person to do it, so if you promise not to attack or insult her, I’ll allow it.”

Revek blinked in shock. “You’re worried about what I’d do to her?”

“What do you think she’d do to you?” Dorea scoffed. “Hold you off for ten minutes again while you tried to kill her?”

Luc hadn’t realized Dorea knew what had happened, and neither, by his slack expression, did Revek.

“She’s enspelled him.” Revek said to the healer, pointing at Luc. “She’s made him . . .” He trailed off.

“Made me faster? Made me stronger? Made me more accurate?” Luc kept his words quiet.

“What can be given, can also be taken away, or corrupted.” He spoke the words as if he were repeating something he’d heard, not something he believed himself.

“So you do share pillows with Haslia.”

Luc turned to find Ava standing at the foot of the bed.

“She told a similar tale while she was in the woods today. Her unit commander seemed to think she’d started the rumor herself, and the others agreed with him. Although one of the group thought maybe you’d started it, and she was merely repeating what she’d heard while her head lay on your pillow.”

Revek was looking at her in shock. “She made it up?”

“According to Rafe. She’s certainly the only one repeating it, keeping it alive. Other than you. Either you heard about me from Luc and decided to make my life as difficult as possible when I made it to the Rising Wave, or Haslia is in touch with the Kassian who captured Luc in the first place. Because the Kassian soldiers at the northern fortress are the only other people who know what happened.”

Luc forced his gaze away from Ava, and turned to look at Revek. His friend looked . . . ill.

“I never told anyone. I . . .” Revek rubbed his forehead. “I never meant you harm and I didn’t try in advance to make your life difficult. No one pays any mind to that story, anyway. They like the one about the sword better.”

“Now that’s cleared up, Luc will help you stand up so we can take you out to the fire. Ava needs the light to work by.” Dorea patted Luc’s shoulder, and when he glanced up at her, he saw her lips suddenly form a thin line.

“Can I help you, Haslia?”

Luc turned, to see a soldier who he’d noticed sitting with Revek before, eating meals with him around the fire. She stood in the tent’s opening.

He didn’t know how he was sure, but the way she looked at them, he knew she’d been eavesdropping.

“I just came to see how Revek is doing.” She smiled, and Luc felt the buzz of sensation he’d experienced for a while now when meeting certain people. A warning bell that rang in his head. He associated it with a need to be cautious.

The last two assassination attempts, he’d felt its hard tug moments before the attacks.

Haslia might be smiling, but she was not happy. And she didn’t like them. Or, at least, she didn’t like him.

She walked boldly into the tent, and brushed past Ava to crouch down beside Revek.

Ava flinched back, drawing her cloak closer around her. “Thank you for taking my horse out of the woods this morning.” Ava’s gaze was fixed on the young woman. “Taira told me you led her out.”

Haslia arched a brow as she turned to look up. “Taira seems to have told you a lot of things.” She shrugged. “I was coming in to ask after Revek when I heard you talking about me.”

She patted Revek’s chest with a delicate hand, then cupped his cheek and ran her thumb across his cheekbone.

---