Page 90 of Wings of Lies
“Turn around.”
I bit into my cheeks and turned.
His fingers grazed around my wound, sending tingles into my skin and masking the painful throbbing. The sensation was—was—I couldn’t focus on it without feeling a different throb in a different area. I was lucky Aspen couldn’t see the flush in my cheeks or the way I bit my lip.
“Here I go,” he said, voice sounding shaky.
I tensed. The same odd warmth mingled with the tingles as he held my thigh and then stabbed.
The warmth and buzz pulsated into my body, distracting me from half the pain. Each insertion made me cringe, but I couldn’t imagine what it’d feel like without his help. When he moved onto my next thigh, his hands shifted higher—an inch from my butt. I could not go through another tingly, slightly painful thigh stitching in silence.
“Whose Nalini?” I blurted out. Not the question I originally planned, but my habit of refusing to face the things I feared wasn’t about to go away because of my pretty mental speech from before.
He jerked back, and I winced as he poked me.
“I heard Hana mention her name when you two talked over me.” I didn’t want to mention the gruesome dream-walk I witnessed.
Silence.
I turned. “Aspen?”
Agony tore into his face, bleeding in his eyes and my mind before disappearing right as a red glow flashed and haloed his chin.
“No one,” he said, resolved as if she meant nothing.
I would’ve believed him if I had not seen and felt his pain or remembered how he brushed her hair back and bellowed to the sky.
He returned his hand to my skin, resuming the stitching, and the red light faded into his mark.
I should’ve let it go. But I had a sinking feeling I knew one reason why he might’ve changed.
Back aching, I turned to face the tree again. “I want to understand. One thing. Tell me one thing.”
His hands froze, and utter silence greeted me.Did that mean he remembered my words? Remembered that day?
“Just a sliver,” I whispered.
“Not the whole moon,” he whispered back in a broken voice.
An ache built in my chest from our combined pain, bringing tears to my eyes. He remembered. I almost wished he didn’t. I wished I didn’t, because it changed nothing. A heavy weight filled the quiet as he sewed the last few stitches, resting his hands on my leg.
“Nalini was the first person I ever loved.” His voice grew hushed. “Then she was murdered.”
A crushing weight enveloped my chest. I could taste his sorrow as it bled off my eyelashes and hit the corner of my lips. My hands twitched, wanting to push off the ground and comfort him. But he was my captor.
“All done,” he said.
Nervous, I flipped over and met his face. “Who did it?”
He stood. “Who did what?”
I furrowed my brows. I couldn’t feel his pain, and his chin glowed. “Who murdered Nalini?”
The red mark darkened from crimson red to red the color of dried blood.
“Nalini died because of crimes against my queen,” he growled.
I narrowed my eyes at his chin. “But she was murdered.”
