WITH INCREDIBLE CARE, KANE LAID ME ON MY TENT’S PALLET,
draped in the fox fur cloak he had given me so many nights ago in the Shadowhold dungeon. The single hearth in the small space
was barely flickering, casting a steadfast low glow along the gray canvas. The pitter-patter of rain that had drifted in and out as Kane carried me back was now a full-blown storm, angry droplets and a screeching wind assaulting the canvas above. It was the coolest night I’d had in the jungle thus far, and I sat up, wrapping myself more tightly in the fur before I winced.
The pinching, burning pain where Halden had branded me stung, but the shame was almost as potent. Shame that he’d laid a hand on me, and even more so that, after everything, it still felt like a betrayal.
I grazed my own stomach. Barely any lighte bloomed at my fingertips. Maybe I had used too much power escaping Reaper’s Cave and blasting whatever that was at Halden. I healed what I could—spare drops of lighte calming blistered skin—and tried to make peace with the discomfort.
A small inkling of pride shone inside me.
I had summoned my lighte, and not just to heal. I had used it to protect myself.
Kane was facing the tent entrance. The rain continued to batter the canvas.
“Did you find Mari? Did everyone make it out?” My voice sounded like an instrument missing strings.
Kane turned to face me, still drenched, still rippling with that unwavering fury that I didn’t fully understand. “They’re all fine. I told them you needed sleep.”
His words soothed me. “Did she take the ledger with her?” I asked through my fingers, massaging my temples and brow. What a Stones- forsaken day it had been. And no blade to show for it.
“I didn’t ask,” Kane forced out.
“What is wrong with you?” His anger was making me angry. I was the one who’d been seared like a cut of meat. I shuddered at the memory, and Kane’s eyes grew more lethal.
I couldn’t hold that gaze a minute longer. Dirt and splinters had lodged underneath my fingernails, and I began to pry them out one by one.
Kane released a slow breath before sitting on the pallet beside me. His damp shirt brushed my shoulder as he wrapped one large, warm hand around my own and pulled it into his lap. Cautiously, like I was a mouse in a trap, he plucked the hair-thin slivers of wood from my bloodied nails.
My frustration melted like snowflakes on warm skin.
His voice was still low, but softer as he said, “How are you feeling?” “I’ve felt better.”
“I thought I had lost you. Thinking you had been . . . It was . . . unendurable.”
“I’m sorry.”
He lifted his eyes from my fingers. “Don’t be sorry. Not for anything.” “But you didn’t lose me. I’m right here, and still—you’re so angry.” If
he knew somehow who took me . . . Maybe he thought I had admitted that we didn’t have the blade.
He drew a hand down his face in frustration, the other still clasped around my own. I tried to shift, to face him better, but the sharp pain in my stomach and chest was like being stabbed, and I grimaced.
“Don’t move,” he murmured, releasing my hand and helping me sit back. But every time something touched my burns, they stung. I repositioned myself again.
We both looked down at my blouse, soaked in rain and blood. Studs’s blood.
“Off. I need it off,” I blurted. “It’s sticking to the burns.”
Slowly Kane slipped his hands under the fabric, his calloused knuckles sliding along my sides and sending a very different kind of shiver up my spine.
“All the way off?” His voice was strained.
I hummed my agreement, and in one swift movement, the blouse flew over my head and landed in the corner of my tent in a heap.
And then I was topless. In front of Kane. In the very small, dimly lit tent, only thin canvas and the backdrop of thundering rain to insulate us. His eyes fixed on my burns. If I had thought he was angry before . . . the look on his face now could have ended worlds.
I crossed my hands over my breasts, avoiding the burn as a flush crawled up my chest and onto my cheeks.
“Someone branded you?” The canvas of the tent shook. Birds flew from trees, creatures scampered away in the rain. I wanted to flee, too. He was terrifying. More terrifying than I had ever seen him.
“I thought—” It barely made sense in my own head. “That somehow you already knew? The look on your face when you found me . . .”
“Mari bound me to your spirit. To find you.” His jaw clenched. “I felt what you felt.”
Oh, Stones.
“Your hands being tied. When someone—” He nearly grunted. “When someone removed your clothes, lifted your blouse. When they burned you. I didn’t know where you were. Who or what was harming you. The pain—I assumed it had to be magic . . . That you were still in the caves. I didn’t realize it was a mortal with . . .” Kane examined the burn above my navel. “A fucking hearth poker?” His eyes were like silver flames of lethal rage. “That and a fucking death wish.”
“Kane, I’m all right. You’re getting all worked up for nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I’m here now. I’m safe. You saved me.”
“Not soon enough.” I glared at him.
“Sorry,” he said, blowing out a long slow exhale. “I’m trying to be less of a vindictive asshole these days.”
“You are?” I wished I hadn’t sounded so incredulous.
“And I didn’t save you,” he said, ignoring me. “You got yourself out.”
His words buoyed my spirits. It was true: I had escaped Halden on my own.
Kane released an uneven breath. “Who were they?”
“If I tell you, you’ll go after them. Word could get back to your father that we’re here.”
“Do not play with me right now, little bird. I have been watching you flit in and out of a pitiful sleep for hours. I felt you flinch. Listened to you weep. You have no lighte left to heal yourself, which tells me you were forced to put up one damn good fight to escape. Someone needs to be ripped limb from limb for laying their hands on your precious fucking body.”
His words stirred something in me. Heat rose up my neck. “Promise me you won’t go after them tonight.”
“No,” he growled.
If he went to the Amber encampment, at best he’d murder numerous men, some of whom might be just like my brother. Conscripted, unsure what or who they were fighting for. At worst he could draw attention to us, or be harmed.
“Please,” I tried. “Stay here, with me.”
His eyes skipped from shocked to pained. “Tomorrow then,” he relented. “At first light.”
“Give me your word.”
His silver gaze softened on mine as he said, “You have it. I won’t go anywhere tonight.”
I sighed. “It was Halden.”
Blistering silence. And then, “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“I made it out of the tunnel, and was rescued by pirates—”
Kane rolled his eyes. “I can’t lose sight of you for even one moment.” “They were going to set sail a day later than planned to bring me back to
you. But then Halden and his men found us and murdered them.” I hadn’t let that pain soak in yet, and my heart sank. “I begged them to help me, and got them all killed.”
“No, Halden and his men did that.”
A single tear leaked down my cheek. I tried to wipe it awkwardly with my shoulder, my hands still covering my breasts.
Kane wiped the tear from my cheek with his thumb before tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “You don’t have to hold your hands like that. I wouldn’t look. Especially not when you’re wounded. I’m not that despicable.”
“Right.” I frowned. “I know that.” I didn’t know why I was being so modest. I doubted my nakedness in this state did much for him.
“I should check on the others anyway.” Kane stood and walked back over to the entrance of the tent.
I uncovered myself and lay back until I was comfortable. I couldn’t help the way my lips curved up as relief flooded me. I could have laughed. Kane looked back once more before leaving. “Now, that smile . . . that’s distracting.”
With that I really did laugh. When he came back, I’d—
“Wait!” I called, and he poked his head back in, splattering rain. Kane was not a do-gooder. Not a check on people kind of person. “Check on them? Check on them why?”
Kane’s eyes cooled, and a sliver of fear clanged through my body. “Who is it?” I breathed, sitting up with a wince.
“The prince had a small accident. Nothing worth concerning yourself over—”
But I was throwing on my blouse, cringing at the pain, before he could finish the sentence.
