Page 43 of Ember and Eclipse
He winced as if she had struck him.
“I’ll go somewhere far away. You can say I ran, or you couldn’t catch my scent.”
He stared at her for a long time before he let go of her arms, his own dropping to his sides. “I cannot.”
“Why? Is it about the money?”
“It’s not about thefuckingmoney,” he snarled.
“Then what—”
He let out a frustrated growl of a breath.
Desperation was new and unsettling. “Kill me if you have to. Take back my head and my heart. Tell them I attacked you. But I can’t go back. It is a fate worse than death. And I don’t deserve that.” Though her voice was quiet and steady, a revolution thrummed through her.
He pulled out of her clutches, a battlefield of conflicting emotions warring across his face.“I’ll be back,” he said evenly, and he was gone before she could even register what happened.
The thought of running crossed her mind, only to be discarded just as quickly.
He was carrying a dead rabbit when he appeared no more than thirty minutes later. The complete disregard for her plea felt like a slap in the face, yet she knew she shouldn’t be surprised.
“I thought you said we couldn’t make a fire?”
“We shouldn’t. I’ll cook this and then put it out.”
She stared up at the night sky as he prepared it to cook, unable to watch. She felt as helpless as that rabbit had no doubt.
Could she give up her life? Though she didn’t want death, it would be her final defiant act. Asear wanted her to suffer. Otherwise, he would have ordered the hunter to kill her. And even though she had been prepared for whatever she thought the old king would do to her, it was different now that she knew it was Asear.
When the smell of cooked meat reached her, she finally looked back at Devdan. He was already staring at her.
“Please,” she said.
“I can’t release you. I’d have to keep hunting you down. It’s—” He shook his head. “I have to. I have no other choice. I can’t say any more than that.”
The sincerity in his voice was so severe that she believed him. “I don’t understand.”
“I can’t say any more than that,” he repeated. Removing the rabbit from the fire, he made quick work of shredding it into chunks before wrapping it in a clean cloth that would keep the heat for several hours.
When he stood up abruptly, she tracked him. First, he put the rabbit into one of the saddle packs, and then he took out the medical pouch. “Let me look at your wounds. You’ve bled through the tunic.”
She was numb as he walked around her, and when she didn’t fight it, he pulled up her tunic carefully. The wounds had stuck in parts to the cloth, but she barely felt it as he pulled it away.
He dabbed something around the cuts, and she wasn’t sure if it didn’t hurt or if her body was just too focused on phantom pains of the past to realize.
“Still bad, but you’re definitely healing. The stitches helped a lot, but I’m going to remove them now. With your faster healing, the sutures will eventually do more harm than good. Are you ready?”
“What does it matter? Stop speaking to me like I’m just on my way home. Like I have seen the worst of what this journey has to offer. Besides, Asear will open me back up as soon as I get to Romul.”
His fingers paused in their work. “Just let me,” he said in a soft rumble.
She didn’t give him permission but didn’t stop him either. Her apathy carried her through it, and he rolled down her tunic gently when he was finished.
When he stepped back around, sitting on another large stone across from her, she said, “You know, for everything that you are or aren’t, I don’t think you are a cruel man.”
“Is that so?” Devdan asked as he washed her blood from his hands.
“I have seen many in my lifetime of all sorts. Some are cruel to protect themselves, and some enjoy brutality like a rare wine. Smart and methodically vicious, stupid and heedlessly violent. Cruelty driven by greed, discrimination, pride. But if you are cruel, I think it is only by necessity.”
