Thea Harrison - Kinked

Jamming their swords tip first into the sand on either side of her, he took one end of the sail and draped it across the hilts so that the top half of Aryal’s body lay in shade.

“I am a goddamn genius,” he told her. The cry of seagulls answered him.

After he took two swallows of water, he knelt and lifted her head to moisten her lips with a small trickle. Then he stopped the wineskin and sprawled beside her, half in the shade. He would work off the armor after a little rest. Just needed to close his eyes for a few minutes.

He found one of her hands and laced his fingers through hers.

This time when the darkness sucked him down, it was mingled with peace.

This time he dreamed he was in a sauna. Galya’s severed head sat on the bench and sneered at him. She tried to convince him that he wanted to become her shadow panther, and he kicked her into a corner, which was against sauna rules, and somebody started tapping on the door in reprimand, and that pissed him off so much he woke with a start.

Overhead, the edge of the sail flapped rhythmically in a steady breeze that blew off the water. The sun had begun its descent in the sky. They had slept the day away.

Alarmed, he sat quickly, ignoring the twinge of protest in his sore muscles and in the giant scabs at his chest, shoulder, neck and face. He hadn’t meant to rest that long.

His injured eye had gummed up, but when he eased it open with a thumb and forefinger, he was profoundly relieved to discover that his sight had almost returned to normal. Hopefully the rest of that damage would heal over the next couple of days.

Turning, he bent over Aryal’s still form. Was she sleeping—or unconscious? It was past time that she got more healing herself. Gently he felt down her body. Broken leg, cracked ribs, severely sprained wrist that was now so swollen he couldn’t wrap his fingers around it. He lifted up the bottom of her tunic and was horrified to discover that the blackened contusion at her shoulder continued down the entire length of her torso. From the size of it at the edge of her trousers, it probably went down the length of her leg as well.

What the hell happened to her? Was that all from her fall from the bluff? And there were her wings to consider as well. She had taken damage on top of damage.

I’m broken up six ways to Sunday, she had said.

He rubbed the back of his head. The one-trick pony could only do so much, and he didn’t know enough about the healing arts to know if he would hurt her even more by healing whatever had happened to her unseen wings. Caerreth had been right. When an injury was severe enough, as in her crushed carpal joint, sometimes a simple healing spell just fused the damage together.

But he had to start somewhere. He just had to keep it localized. First he worked on her leg, pouring the healing spell over the femur to ensure the break had fused. Then he worked on her wrist. As his Power reduced the swollen flesh, he ripped a length off the edge of the sail so that he could wrap it. That joint was going to need some support as it finished healing.

Next he turned his attention to her cracked ribs, placing a hand along the curve of her torso. He had barely begun when she took his wrist. “Stop,” she croaked.

Blood had dried all over her, so that she was almost unrecognizable. He scowled. “No.”

“It’s too much. You can’t spare the strength.”

“I can spare it. Just a little more.”

“Everything always has to be a fight with you,” she grumbled.

He cocked an eyebrow incredulously at her but didn’t bother to dignify that with a reply. Instead, sensing how her stressed, injured flesh soaked up the healing like a sponge, he eked out a little more Power before he had to concede that he was tapped, and he had to stop.

She struggled to sit up, and he slipped his good arm underneath her shoulders to help. Her arms slipped around his waist, and they ended up simply leaning against each other. He tucked her head into the crook of his neck and held her carefully.

After a while she reached for the wineskin of water, and when she drank her fill, he did the same. The skin was nearly empty when he had finished. He stoppered and shook it. “Gonna have to deal with that issue soon.”

“There’ll be fresh water at the top of the bluff.” She eyed the path tiredly. “We just have to get up there.”

“One step at a time.” He dug in the sack and pulled out wayfarer bread. The apple brandy bottle hadn’t broken. Fuck yeah. They ate slowly and took sips of the brandy as they watched the sunset. He said, “If I don’t see another wafer of wayfarer bread for a hundred years or so, I’ll be okay with that.”

She nodded as she looked around, and he did too. The current had washed Galya’s head onto the beach beside the nearest pier. A few minutes later, she said as she chewed, “I like to see her rotting.”

She sounded so peaceful. He snorted, which didn’t hurt quite as badly as it had before. He told her about his dream, and she gave him a dark look that was almost laughter. Of course, that also meant he had to tell her what the shadow wolf had told him, and she paled underneath the coat of her grime.

She whispered, “They were Wyr after all.”

“Yeah. Hopefully they’re at peace now. Have you ever heard of this Phoenix Cauldron that the wolf mentioned?”

She shook her head and shrugged. “I wonder if it’s one of the seven God Machines. Except all the stories say that Numenlaur had only one.”

He pushed the mystery aside, finished his wafer and said, “Paragliding is not stupid.”

She looked at him blankly.

“The shit fit you threw earlier,” he said. “You said—screamed—that paragliding is stupid, and it’s not. It’s not, sunshine.”

She ducked her head and muttered so low he almost couldn’t hear her, “It is if you’re not there to do it with me.”

His throat tightened. “That’s not ever going to happen.”

She turned to look at him, and everything was right there in her eyes. Fear, vulnerability, and a startled, fierce love. Uncertainty.

He stamped on that last bit with the whole force of his personality. “You made me a promise that you were going to make it, no matter what,” he growled. “And you will. You will not endanger your mate.”

He held her gaze until, blinking rapidly, she nodded, glanced away and then back at him. “You look terrible,”

she said, her voice unsteady. “Why haven’t you gotten out of that armor yet? You must be baking in this heat.”

He fingered the scab on his cheek as he told her, “I’ve been postponing it. I think the tunic underneath has stuck to my chest.”

Her eyes widened in horror. “You just left it stuck to you? Oh gods, where is a knife?”

“You can’t cut it off,” he said, baffled. “I think it needs to be soaked.”

She waved a hand impatiently at him as she looked around. Eventually she settled on one of the short swords and knelt on her good knee beside him, her other leg awkwardly propped to one side. They used the tip of the sword to cut carefully at the fastenings between the plates, which had swollen from his swim in the salt water. Then they stripped the pieces off of him one at a time. He breathed a deep sigh of relief as the last piece, the damaged breastplate, came away without any trouble.

They looked down at his chest where the tunic was indeed stuck to the giant scab.

Aryal’s good hand snaked out. She ripped the tunic off of him.

Fresh fire exploded across his chest.

“GAAAAHHH!” he roared furiously, his fists clenched. “Why did you do that?!”

“Isn’t that better?” His demonic mate held up both hands in a placating gesture. “See, it’s done now, it’s all done. We can put it in the past and move on.”