While she had been fevered, he’d woven another mat, and every night he slept beside her. If ever she stirred in the dark, instantly he seemed to wake, asking if there was anything she needed.
All that she needed was Aruk, close beside her. So he had already given her everything.
Over the next week, more strength she gained. Except for when he hunted, everywhere Aruk carried her then, as if he feared letting her out of his sight. He had decided to make the dinghy more seaworthy, so that the small boat might carry them the two days’ voyage to Savadon. Trees he felled and began to shape, explaining to her what he did and why he did it, so that she watched him not only in admiration of the way his powerful muscles gleamed beneath the sun, but in admiration of his skill and knowledge. Less strenuous tasks, such as braiding vines into ropes, he showed Jalisa how to do after she complained of being useless. So much more he showed her, too. How to start a fire with no flint and steel, how to catch and clean and roast a fish, how to make a flute from a thin hollow bone he found.
But he could not teach her to play it as beautifully as he did.
Nearly every waking hour, they spent together. Aruk told her of his twin brother, Strax, and of growing up in the wastes of the Dead Lands. Of the adventures they’d had as hired swords, the places they’d been, the things they’d done and seen.
To Jalisa, who had rarely stepped outside the palace walls and who had never been beyond the borders of Savadon, his adventures were the most wonderful of all stories.
In turn, she told him of the war-torn history of her kingdom, which served as the only route through the southern realms to the Illwind Sea, and the battles fought over the riches that the trade through Savadon brought. She told him of the heroes and villains in her own royal line, she told him of books she’d read—and said nothing at all of her own life. But if he noted how she avoided ever mentioning growing up within the palace, never did he say.
When she could trudge through the soft sand for more than a minute without having to stop to catch her breath, longer walks they took along the beach. Each day she grew stronger, and each night she fell exhausted and happy into bed, Aruk within arm’s reach beside her.
And through it all, so desperately she fell in love with him.
But Jalisa knew a reckoning was coming. For he had tended to her so closely. Feeding her, bathing her.
She knew he’d seen the rune carved into her skin, a rune that matched one of his.
She knew he’d seen the small scars that climbed her inner thighs like ladders.
And she suspected they were why he hadn’t touched her again, except to care for her in sickness. In the first weeks, her wound might have been the reason, except that more than a month had passed since the fever had broken, and her side barely pained her now. Yet still he didn’t touch her. And despite the yearning ache within her, she hadn’t reached out to him, either—too afraid that he would push her away.
When the reckoning came, it was not unexpected. Too quiet he’d been that morning. Together they walked along the shore, Aruk gazing out beyond the cove to where her ship had once been anchored, when he asked gruffly, “What did you pay for the wind spell?”
Painful constriction circled her heart. No use was it to lie, to name a sum of gold. Already he must know that she’d not paid with coin.
“A drowning cough,” she whispered.
He drew to a halt in the sand, eyes closing. “The scaling of the spell stole the good wind from your lungs?”
Essentially that was what it had done. Almost never was the consequence exactly equal. “Yes.”
“How long?”
“Almost two months.” Desperately struggling for every breath, stricken by fever—all the while her father waited for her to heal, so she might be wed. “As soon as the illness passed, that was when I fled.”
“Two months of drowning in your own lungs.” Jaw clenched, he opened his eyes, his gaze blazing into hers. “Blood magic should never be used.”
“Perhaps not.” But it was the only magic she had.
“‘Perhaps not?’” he echoed. “Do you not know why it should not be used?”
“Because it defeats the purpose of this rune.” She passed her fingers over her hip, where the marking was—the rune that bound her magic to the border of her skin.
In the Dead Lands, that rune was a vow made to never use spells that would push the world out of balance. That was likely what it meant to him.