He exhaled with relief, though his nerves had barely had a chance to recover before she was back again, a cup of some strange-smelling liquid in her hand. He recognised the aroma though he wasn’t conscious of having smelled it before, as if it had somehow been a part of his dreams. If ‘dreams’ was an appropriate word for what he’d gone through. Nightmares combined with horror-filled memories seemed a more appropriate description, all of them revolving around the same day three years ago.
The woman held the cup to his lips and he drank, glad of the distraction. The taste was bearable rather than pleasant, but it soothed his throat and made him feel more relaxed.
‘Thank you.’ He tried to catch her gaze as she pulled the cup away again, still hoping for some kind of response, but she refused to oblige. It unnerved him, being unable to communicate with her, not having any idea what she was thinking either. He wasn’t accustomed to being ignored, especially by women. Most of them were usually more than eager to talk to him, but this one...she was a mystery, tending to his needs without as much as a look or murmur.
Who was she? It was the last thought in his mind before he drifted back to sleep.
* * *
What was happening to him now?
Danr stared up at the branches again, wondering what the noise was. This time he was reasonably certain he wasn’t dead, though he had the vague impression of having drifted in and out of consciousness over the past few hours...or perhaps days? He had no idea how long he’d been lying in the shelter, but at least he felt better, more like himself again, all except for the loud drumming sound in his ears.
He rolled on to his good side, trying to escape it, only to find the woman lying beside him, curled up beneath a fur with the back of her head only a few inches from his face. He stiffened with shock. Surely they hadn’t...? No. Both his mind and body rebelled at the idea. In his current state, he wouldn’t have been able to and, even if he had, he’d sworn a solemn oath after the massacre in Maerr. No woman would share his bed, not like that anyway, until he’d made amends to his brothers and earned their forgiveness, Brandt and Alarr especially. After he’d achieved that, well, maybe then he’d consider a bedmate again, but he’d never go back to the way he’d been before. He’d never treat sex as a mere sport again. He hadn’t even looked at a woman during the past three years, although he had to admit that the sight of the one lying beside him now was unexpectedly stirring.
What was she doing there?
He craned his neck to peer outside. Presumably it was morning, though it was hard to tell just by looking outside the tunnel. The world was a veil of slate grey, interspersed with the darker grey outlines of the forest. The snow seemed to have been replaced by a steady flow of rain, running in fast-flowing rivulets over the ground and pummelling the roof of the shelter like hailstones, which at least explained the drumming sound. He could see the doused remains of a small fire outside, too. That explained the woman’s presence. She must have taken shelter beside him, sharing the warmth of the fur and his body to survive. It was the sensible thing to do, although part of him wished that she hadn’t, a part that was growing larger and harder by the second. Not that that had anything to do with her, he told himself, willing the feeling to subside. She was far too flat-chested and wraith-like for his own personal tastes, not to mention uncommunicative. It was probably just her scent affecting him, slightly musky but with a hint of sweetness, making him want to move closer, to press his lips against the soft-looking curve of her neck and to nuzzle the delicate skin behind her ear...
What would she taste like?
Stars! He swallowed a groan. Three years without a woman were clearly taking their toll.
He tore his gaze away, forcing himself to remember the last time he’d lain with a woman. He hadn’t known her name and her face was little more than a blur in his memory, which was particularly ironic considering how attractive he’d found her at the time. Their coupling had been fierce and energetic, and so loud that he’d only become aware of shouts and screams in the distance afterwards. Too late he’d wrenched his clothes back on and charged outside, but the assassins had already done their worst. His home had looked like something out of a nightmare, a burning, wrecked shell of a village... The woman herself had seemed unsurprised by the scene, though by the time the thought had occurred to him, she’d been long gone and no one else had remembered even seeing her. It had been as though she’d simply walked into Maerr with the sole intention of seducing him, which in all likelihood she had, arriving and leaving with the assassins and playing her part to perfection. Not that he’d made it a challenge. A pair of swaying hips and a few provocative looks and he’d followed her out to a barn on the edge of the village like a hound with its tongue hanging out.
You inherited all the very worst traits of your father...
Hilda’s scornful words floated back into his mind. She’d never made any secret of her contempt for his womanising and now he had to admit she’d been right to judge him. He had been less of a man than his brothers. If his behaviour hadn’t been so notorious, then the a
ssassins wouldn’t have been able to trick him so easily. If he hadn’t allowed himself to be lured away, then he would have been at the wedding and his father, Ingrid and Gilla might still be alive. At the very least he would have died trying to defend them. Instead he had to live with the shame of having survived.
His companion coughed in her sleep and rolled over, stretching her arms above her head like a cat before opening her eyes and looking straight at him. He looked back, experiencing a flash of recognition as if their eyes had met once before—although for the life of him he couldn’t remember when—while her own looked surprised and then...nothing, as if she’d just deliberately wiped her expression clean.
But he’d seen her surprise. For the briefest of moments her lips had parted, too, as if she’d been about to say something. Which meant that she could speak, just like she could understand him. He was suddenly certain of it.
He opened his own mouth and then closed it again. All the usual things he might have said to a woman he’d just woken up beside didn’t seem quite appropriate somehow. The whole situation felt familiar and yet brand new at the same time. So he waited, gazing into her face while her pale, silvery-grey eyes stared back. It was a curiously intimate feeling, lying side by side with somebody, their breaths intermingling with only the sound of the rain between them, as if time itself were slowing down. He wasn’t sure he’d ever looked, really looked, at a woman’s face before, but now he found himself examining every individual feature as if they might each reveal something new about her. Her forehead was narrow, her chin slightly pointed and her eyes small, with sharply arched brows a shade darker than the rest of her hair, which was the same colour as a wheat field gilded with sunshine. There were still patches of grey on her cheeks, too, and he had to resist the temptation to reach a hand out and wipe them clean. Beneath the smudges and wild tangle of hair, she was...not pretty, exactly, but interesting. Unique. Distinctive. He let his eyes drift lower. Her lips were the most distinctive of all—larger than the rest of her features, with the top one almost as full as the bottom. Somehow just looking at them made his own turn dry.
He didn’t know how many moments passed before she sat up abruptly, crawling her way towards the end of the tunnel and curling her legs up beneath her to look out. The rain was so heavy now that it seemed more like small pellets than drips falling out of the sky.
‘A good day for sleeping.’ Danr heaved himself upright. To his surprise, he managed the feat quite easily. In truth, he felt ten times better now than he had even when he’d woken up, as if just looking at her had somehow helped him. With the obvious exception of his injured arm and some stiffness, his body felt almost completely restored. Whatever she’d done for him, it had obviously worked. He shuffled forward, coming to sit beside her when she didn’t answer.
‘I hate rain like this. It makes you feel cold and damp just by looking at it, then the clouds hang in the air for days.’ He peered out at the grey sky between the trees. ‘Although I’m glad to be alive to see it.’
Nothing.
‘How long was I asleep?’
Nothing.
‘You’re a healer.’ This time it wasn’t a question. ‘I’m indebted to you for saving me.’
He stole a sidelong glance at her face when there was still no response. Now that they were no longer lying side by side, he found that he missed looking at her. ‘I’d like to repay you.’
Nothing.
‘Although it would help if I knew your name?’ He lifted an eyebrow hopefully.
Nothing.