Page 105 of A Dance With Fire
He tried not to let his eyes venture down too far. To the wounds that sliced open her skin and were no longer bleeding, or the blood drying on her thighs.
“Mairin,” he repeated her name like a mantra. There was magic in words sometimes; it was the oldest form of power, yet it didn’t work here. A choked sound came out of his throat as he willed his own magic forth and ran his hands over the wounds on her exposed abdomen. All his life, he’d healed things like cuts and burns. Every time he needed it, his magic was there to save everyone else.
Only this time, it wouldn’t save the one person he wanted to live the most.
Tears tracked down his unscarred cheeks and dripped down his chin. Of all the wounds he’d ever healed, these were the worst. Maybe he just wasn’t strong enough, but even as those treacherous thoughts crossed his mind, he knew they weren’t true.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t strong enough.
It was that Mairin was already dead.
Even then, his magic burst forth along with a scream from his lips. He ran them over her naked stomach and where his fingers touched, her body healed. He traveled higher, palming her face and the scar that bisected in jigsaw puzzle pieces across her skin. He pulled the pain she’d felt into himself, healing her wounds so Mairin was once again the beautiful woman she should be. He gladly took her scars.
But he still couldn’t give her life.
Her soul had already departed into Mana, leaving behind a broken shell of a body that he healed with no essence to occupy it. Every broken bone,fuck, even the pain between her thighs, he sucked into himself. As if that could make it any better. As if it could somehow reverse it. Even if she were alive, even if she wouldn’t feel the pain anymore, it had still happened.
And Ryker blamed himself.
When there was nothing left to heal. When he had absorbed every scar over his body and felt the difference settle over his face, his abs, his legs… He dropped to his knees before her and hugged her close.
The tears came, and they didn’t stop. He knew, unfathomably, that this moment? It would live with him for the rest of his life. And he vowed over her lifeless body that he would never let what happened to her happen to anyone else ever again.
Even if he had to give his own life to save others, he would do it.
Because no one,no one, deserved to suffer such a fate at the hands of the humans.
* * *
“Mairin! Mairin! No! Mairin!”
Shula jolted out of guarding the woods to Ryker’s distressed cries. She whirled, dagger in hand, heart beating against her chest, but there was no threat. Just Ryker thrashing against the ground. A sound came from his throat that was guttural and animalistic. A sound that weighed heavily on her heart, for it was a sound of immense heartbreak that no one deserved to bear.
She debated marching over and waking him up from his nightmare. Even if he was an asshole, he didn’t deserve to suffer. She knew what nightmares could do. How the phantom limbs of the past could flicker into waking moments meant for torture.
Truth was, the sound broke her heart.
No one else woke. Or if they did, they pretended they were still sleeping. Were they so used to this behavior that they didn’t bother waking him anymore? She’d been with them for weeks and hadn’t seen him fall into nightmares. Then again, she hardly ever saw him sleep…
She took a step towards Ryker’s body, but in a moment, he shot up from the ground, a primal growl roaring from his mouth. He breathed heavily and looked around, his eyes wild as he took a moment to gather his surroundings, to remember where he was. Who he was.
Then his eyes met Shula’s, and she wanted to stagger back from the intensity of it but kept her feet planted firmly in the earth.
His breath hitched, and he pushed himself to his feet, staggering away from the fire. Shula’s feet moved of their own volition, meeting him halfway. He tried to side-step her, obviously desperate to get away, but her palm pressed against his chest. He froze. His whole body felt too hot, too tense, primed and ready for a fight. She felt his muscles shaking beneath her touch, vibrating with the remnants of his nightmare.
“Ryker…” His nostrils flared at the sound of her voice.
She should have let him go. She knew that. But something about his distress, about the vestiges of the nightmare clinging to him physically hurt. Because Shula had been there before. She knew what it was like to wake up screaming, to wake up not knowing what was real and what was fake.
So often she dreamt of her parents and the day they were taken, what would have happened if their roles had been reversed. She dreamt that they’d shoved her in their iron ovens and fire consumed her from the inside out until she was reduced to ash.
“Ryker,” she repeated, softly, but no less firm. “It’s okay.”
His black eye flashed, and she could see the fury in the single, dark color. Like the darkness of storms, it threatened destruction.
His hand clamped down on hers, tightening around her fingers. Not hard enough to bruise or even to hurt, but his grip was adamant. “Shula…” His voice was a gravelly sound. It was the first time he’d ever said her name. “Don’t.” There was a begging quality to the word that made her determination falter. “Let me go.”
Shula knew he could easily break her hand and walk away. He could push her hand aside, shove past her shoulder, and rage away like he obviously wanted to do. But he didn’t. Why didn’t he?
