Page 54 of Enchanted Warrior

“We should reach it by nightfall if we make good time.”

“You’re not going another step on that leg.”

“It’s only a flesh wound.” But even his brave words couldn’t cover the lie.

Tamsin helped him to the ground. He did no more than grunt a protest, which meant the injury had to be bad. Tamsin knelt and examined the wound, refusing to let her fingers tremble. The arrow had buried itself in the muscle of his thigh. She guessed a stubborn temper and buckets of adrenaline were all that had kept Gawain going that far.

“There is good news and bad news,” she ventured. “The good news is that the arrow didn’t sever any major blood vessels.”

“How do you know that?” He closed his eyes. A sheen of sweat covered his face.

“You’re not dead yet.” She swallowed. Her throat felt thick and swollen with panic. “The bad news is I don’t have my medicines here. I’ll have to improvise.”

His lids cracked open. “You improvised fine with those dead fae.”

A knot twisted in Tamsin’s gut. “I’ve never used my power that way before.”

She expected something from Gawain—either congratulations or revulsion, since he hated magic so completely—but he remained impassive. Whatever his thoughts, he meant to keep them to himself. After a long moment he asked, “Did Hector teach you to do that?”

“Yes.” She unfastened the knife from her belt. The first thing was to cut away the clothing from around the wound and get a better look. Nervous energy was fizzing inside her, but her mind was curiously blank. Probably the result of shock.

She began slicing at his clothes, wincing inside as he flinched. “I’m not sure if I should be proud or terrified of blowing them all up.”

“We lived.”

She nearly snapped at him. She wanted more than two words. Needed his response. But then Gawain clenched his fist, giving the ground a thump as she fully exposed the wound. Apparently, the moment of fight or flight was over and his pain receptors had caught up with events.

“I hate witch fire,” he finally said. “Gives me nightmares.”

“I’m sorry it bothered you,” Tamsin replied, keeping her voice neutral. She was being an idiot, thinking of her own needs at a moment like this.

Gawain’s mouth flattened to a line as she prodded the wound. “The walking dead bothered me more.”

She didn’t reply. Images replayed in her mind of the spell striking, exploding and tearing the enemy to pieces. She shuddered, revolted all over again. She hadn’t killed anyone—the fae had already been dead—but it felt as if she had. The experience had changed her—she knew that much—but she still wasn’t sure how.

She pushed that aside. Her problems were for later. “I’m going to have to get the arrow out, and then I’m going to have to use raw magic to heal you. The backpack got in the water and while the books are fine, my herbs and powders are spoiled. I’m sorry. I don’t have any other way. Even if you could walk, there’s too much chance of infection.”

She met his gaze, bracing for an argument, but his blue eyes were dull.

“Do what you must,” he said. “I trust you.”

ChapterTwenty-One

Tamsin caught her breath. She’d feared he would refuse her, just as he had when she’d bound his arm. This was a hard-won privilege. “Okay.”

Gawain gave a curt nod. Before she could react, he reached down, grabbed the arrow shaft and tore the point out of his flesh. His bellow of pain chilled Tamsin through, but she clamped her hands over the spurt of blood and pushed her healing energy into the wound. The flesh under her palms was hot and wet, a gaping tear sucking at his life. The last of her energy pounded into him with every beat of her pulse. Red rivulets of blood escaped through her fingers, soaking the ground where she knelt.

Tamsin’s shoulders ached as she pressed down, her muscles protesting the abuse they’d suffered that day, but she also was inside him, knitting together each nerve and fiber, putting him back together as methodically as a mason laying bricks. Time slowed and lost meaning as she worked, her mind diving deep until she experienced Gawain almost on a cellular level.

There, she found out so much more about him. Power coiled deep inside him, strong and wild from long neglect. Tamsin felt his magic stir as her energy brushed against it, but she resisted the impulse to explore. At the same moment, she saw the ruins where his boyhood trust had been shattered, and felt the healing energy of the deep friendships that had put him back together again. From those friendships came an unexpected, stubborn hope. Tamsin breathed on that flicker of light, coaxing it brighter. Hope was a healer’s greatest weapon.

When Tamsin withdrew, she did so slowly, letting go a tiny bit at a time until she was sure her repairs would hold. When she finally opened her eyes, she swayed with exhaustion. A puckered, pink scar on Gawain’s heavily muscled thigh showed where the arrow had been, but the muscle beneath it was sound.

Tamsin collapsed on the grass. With a last wisp of magic, she repaired his leggings. All that buff male was distracting.

Experimentally, Gawain rose, putting weight on his leg with a look of intense concentration. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

“It has no reason to,” Tamsin said.

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