Page 23 of Wolf's Bane
Anger, bright and furious, anger she normally kept bottled up flared in her. So much about her had grown and matured, but she felt emotionally stuck at sixteen, and it was horrid.
Solenne looked away, needing a moment to collect herself. She breathed in and out. Sweat and green grass and cool water. The scents were warm, like the promise of summer.
Once under control, she approached with a rag soaked in the hot water. Just a shoulder. Never mind the moonlight highlighted the musculature of his upper arms or the cords in his neck. Just another shoulder.
When she dabbed the cloth to the bite, his body tensed, but he remained stoically silent.
“Is this recent?” The bite appeared recent.
“It must be, to look like that,” he eventually said.
The teeth had pierced deep. “Any difficulty moving your shoulder?”
“No.”
“Show me.”
With a put-upon sigh, he raised an arm, then dropped it quickly back to his side.
“Touch your ear,” she said. He touched the ear on the same side. “No, the other one.”
Moving stiffly, he reached around and tapped his other ear. Then, to be clever, he patted his head and moved his arms in a circle.
Solenne cleaned the bite and slathered on a generous layer of a cream made with wolfsbane. The red rash under his silver necklace and wristband received the same attention.
As she held his wrist, she felt his pulse flutter. He watched her work, eyes sharp and following every movement like a guard dog. There was so much she wanted to say but didn’t know how to start. She wasn’t the same sixteen-year-old girl, deep in the clutches of infatuation, but in that moment, close enough to smell his soap, she was.
His wounds cleaned and covered, she brought the pitcher and bowl and hot water over and placed them nearby on the trunk. Luis had helpfully laid out a pair of scissors, a razor, a small mirror, lather brush, and a cake of shaving soap. Using a mirror, Alek hacked away at the beard while she worked the soap into a lather with the brush. Just as she raised the brush to Alek’s face, he caught her wrist.
“You do not need to do this,” he said, his voice thick and betraying the first sign of emotion.
She dabbed on the soap as a means of answering. Slowly, the beard vanished under a layer of white foam. Carefully she dragged the razor across his skin, each stroke revealing a civilized man.
“The house is quiet,” he said.
“Indeed.”
“It used to be filled with…”
The voices of people not afraid to laugh or otherwise be heard. The house used to be filled with life. She wanted to say nothing, focused on the razor scraping along his cheek. Let him think what he wanted.
Instead, she said, “I guess something has changed after all.”
He did not waste a beat, pouncing on the crack in her defense. “Afraid of upsetting your father?”
Her hand jolted with surprise. Alek hissed as the blade nicked him. Quickly, she dabbed the injury with a clean corner of the wet cloth until the bleeding stopped.
“Initially, perhaps, but no. Father gets a piece of my mind when he deserves it.”
“Afraid of upsetting your fiancé?”
Fiancé? Hardly. Her nose scrunched at the thought.
“No promises have been made.” Unlike the kiss and promise Alek made to her.
She knew her father regarded an alliance with Colonel Chambers as inevitable, and Chambers himself was a pleasant enough man, but she held nothing more for him than friendly regard. If Chambers was of a mind to marry, he never made his intentions clear.
“Not according to your father.”
