Susan Krinard - Lord of Legends

“I will not leave you,” she said, knowing her promise was only a partial truth. “I am your friend.”

“Friend,” he repeated.

“I care what happens to you. I want to help you.”

Belatedly she remembered the bottle of water she’d brought and considered the basin Ash’s keeper had left just inside the cage. She would have to take the risk of filling it with fresh water.

She crept toward the cage, knelt and poked the bottle’s neck through the bars. Ash made no move toward her, and she managed to fill the basin halfway before it became too difficult to pour. She glanced at the towels that still hung over the back of the chair. Rising, she wetted one thoroughly, walked back to the cage and held the moist towel up for Ash’s inspection.

“Wash,” she said, demonstrating for him by bathing her hands and face.

He followed her every movement, his gaze finally settling, as always, on her eyes. “Wash,” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said. “Wash.”

Her throat felt thick. “If I give this to you,” she said, “you must not touch me.”

He seemed to understand. When she extended the towel, he simply took it. No flesh touched flesh. But as he withdrew his hand, she saw something that made the squirming minnows in her middle seem like ravenous sharks.

His hands were burned. Red and black marks crossed his fingers and palms, stripes matching the bars he had so often grasped. There were similar stripes on his face. Even as she stared in horror, they began to diminish.

“Good God,” she whispered. Without hesitation, she seized his hand, wrapping it in the wet towel he still held. “How did you burn yourself?”

“Iron,” he said in a low voice.

“Iron? You mean the bars?” She touched one gingerly. They were cold, not hot.

“I don’t know how you did this,” she said tightly, “but your hands will need to be bandaged. And your face.” She looked up from her work. The brands across his jaw, cheeks and forehead were gone. She peeled the towel away from his hand. The marks were disappearing before her eyes.

She dropped his hand. It brushed the bar, and an angry red welt formed across his knuckles.

Astonished, Mariah took his hand again. The welts were nasty and raw, but they lasted no longer than she could murmur a prayer.

She raised her head. “Ash,” she said. “How is this possible?”

He seemed not to hear her. “Ash,” he repeated.

Her face felt as fiery as his vanished wounds. “You … don’t seem to remember your name.”

His fingers tightened on hers. “Ash is my name?”

“I …” She felt utterly foolish, befuddled, incapable of harboring a single rational thought. “For a while. If … if you approve.”

His head cocked in that way she found so oddly endearing. “Ash,” he said distinctly. “I … approve.”

Relief weakened her knees. “Very good,” she said faintly. “Have you any other injuries?”

“No injuries.”

She closed her eyes, grateful to be allowed a few moments to recover and focus again on the questions that must be answered.

“Ash,” she said, pushing everything else from her mind, “who else has come here? Who has been bringing you food and water?”

His black eyes seemed to gather all the lantern’s light. “The man,” he said.

“What man?”

Ash hunched his back, slinking about the cage in a perfect imitation of the stranger she’d seen skulking near the folly. “Who is he, Ash?”

“I do not know.”

“When does he come?”

He frowned, lifted his hand and held up three of his fingers.

“Three days ago?”

The frown became a scowl, and he raised his fingers again.

“Every three days?”

His forehead relaxed. “Yes,” he said.

He knows his numbers , Mariah thought. “When was the last time he came, Ash? Was it this morning? The first time I visited you?”

“Morning.”

Thank God for that. Whoever this keeper was, he was unlikely to return for another two or three days.

“Did he ever speak to you?” she asked.

“No. Only you.”

So no one had spoken to him. How long had he been wrapped in a shroud of silence?

Distressed and wishing to hide it, Mariah glanced stupidly at the damp towel in her hands. “I think you ought to wash now,” she said.

“Dirty,” he said, gesturing down at himself, compelling her gaze to follow. She noted that his—she swallowed—his “member” was very much in evidence beneath his loincloth.

“Yes,” she said thickly. “Quite dirty.” She moved to wet the towel again. She managed to pass it to him without looking at him, and after a brief pause she heard him sweeping the cloth over his body, followed by the almost inaudible “plop” as his single garment fell to the floor.

She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing her mind to become a perfect blank. This feeling had nothing to do with the way he’d licked her fingers. A lunatic might make just such an inappropriate gesture, lacking the qualities of courtesy and judgment found in the sane.

But there had been purpose in it .

“Mariah.”

The sound of her name nearly wrenched her out of her prickling skin. Involuntarily she turned. He was quite, quite clean, and he had neglected to retrieve his covering.

She shut her eyes again, edged to the chair, felt for the trousers—giving up entirely on the drawers—and used the tip of her boot to push them toward the cage. “Please,” she gasped. “Put on these trousers.”

“How?”

Good Lord . “Haven’t you … ever worn trousers before?”

“No.”

She opened her eyes for a fraction of a second and could barely stifle a gasp. He was quite … quite … prominent. And she was very, very hot.

He has not come to his present age in a perpetual state of nakedness. He has simply forgotten all his old life. How am I even to begin?

“Show me,” he said.

Her eyes flew open again. “I beg your pardon?”

“Remove—” He pointed to her walking dress. “Remove that.”

She nearly choked. “Ash!”

“Did I speak incorrectly?”

He spoke beautifully. Breathtakingly. For a man who hadn’t been able to talk less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d become downright verbose.

“That is quite unnecessary,” she said, knowing that outrage would do no good and possibly much harm. “One does not remove one’s clothing in the presence of others.”

“Never?”

The one exception flooded her mind with fantastical images that sprang unbidden from her imagination. “Not in society,” she said as steadily as she could.

“This is wrong?”

His gesture and glance down at himself made his meaning exceedingly plain. In vain she made another attempt to shut her wanton thoughts away.

“It is not polite,” she said. “You must dress.” She held the trousers up against her body with shaking hands. “You put them on, so. Step into one leg, then the other. The buttons are here.”

“Do they not make it difficult to run?”

Laughter burst out before she could think to forestall it. “Gentlemen seldom find occasion to run.”

“Am I a gentleman?”

Very good, Mariah. A fine beginning . “You will not need to run,” she said. “Can you put them on, Ash?”

“You wish it,” he said, as serious as the monk he most decidedly was not.

“I wish it very much.”

He held out his hand. Half turned away, she passed the trousers through the bars. The mad beating of her heart almost drowned out the sound of his movements. She counted to herself, waiting for him to gather up the garment, put it on, fasten the buttons over his … his burgeoning masculinity. If the buttons would close at all.