Master of Iron (Bladesmith #2)(5)

“Here,” Petrik says sometime later. He hands over a bowl of broth. “I can feed her, if you’d like?”

“No, I’ve got it.”

“I’ll still help.” He kneels behind Temra and raises her to a sitting position, while I bring a spoonful to her mouth on trembling fingers.

I force open her lips, pour in the broth, tilt back her head. I breathe out a sigh of relief when I watch her throat working to swallow.

“We’re going to make it,” Petrik says.

“This healer you spoke of—is she good?”

“She can work the body the way you work iron. She’s good, Ziva.”

The next spoonful of broth ends up being coughed out with yet more blood.

“She can mend the hole in Temra’s lung?” I ask.

“I’ve seen her reattach limbs.”

The hope burning in my breast is dangerous, but if I lose Temra, I’ll lose the last of my family. I’ll lose my heart.

Kymora really will have taken everything from me then.

When Temra’s eaten enough, Petrik’s gaze lands on his mother. “I guess I’d better go feed her.”

He leaves me, scoops out another bowlful of broth, and pads over to his mother. He removes the gag gently, offers her some water first. Kymora drinks and drinks and drinks. She paces herself, as if not to show weakness, but by the amount she swallows, I can tell she’s suffering from the journey. Her limbs must be aching from the way she’s constantly bound. Her wrists and ankles are red and swollen from the tightness of the ropes, not that they would be forefront of her mind with her more severe injuries.

I’m glad she’s suffering, and I feel no shame for that.

Temra’s face has turned whiter over the last four days. Her lips are cracking. Her lungs are weakening. She has sores from lying in the same position for so long. But I dare not move her too much, lest I make her injuries worse.

These might be the last days I spend with my sister, and I don’t even get to talk to her.

I try to will my thoughts elsewhere.

Petrik and Kymora converse in whispers when she’s drunk her fill. I can’t hear the specifics of the conversation, but Petrik winces at something she says. He spoons her up some broth and feeds it to her. Says something in response. Her face gives nothing of the conversation away, and I begin to wonder if I should move closer.

Then Temra begins coughing.

I gently turn her on her side and rub her back. Her shoulders heave, and her body tenses. Blood spills from her lips.

“I’m not leaving you,” I say. “I’m here, Temra. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

Movement out of the corner of my eye has me turning. Kellyn bends at the knees to scoop out some soup for himself. His towering six-and-a-half-foot frame has a long way to go to reach the cooking pot. With golden-red hair and soft facial features, he’s a beauty in every sense of the word, even covered in grit from traveling.

He once meant so much to me. We were … together for a time. But instead of running to help my sister against her fight with Kymora, he came after me and the men who tried to steal me away.

He saved me instead of her.

And if she dies, I will never be able to forgive him.

Even if she survives, I don’t think I can forgive him. He knows my sister is my whole world. He knew I wasn’t in any real danger. Kymora wanted me alive. But she wanted my sister dead to teach me a lesson.

Still, he came after me.

He chose wrong, so how can I choose to be with him?

When he has his food, he pads over to my side of the cart. A jolt of awareness shoots through me to have him so close. I don’t know how he can still affect me when we’ve spent so much time together. Yet it’s always the same with him. Excitement and anxiety rolled together in a confusing mess.

“I’m sorry I doubted Petrik,” he says.

“Again,” I remind him.

“Again.”

“It pains him to see his mother bound like she is, but every time she says something, trying to manipulate him into helping her, he looks at Temra. Reminding himself why his mother is a prisoner and must be kept that way.”

“I know. I just worry. I can’t help it.”

“He shouldn’t have kept his parentage a secret from us. But he’s nothing like his mother. He’s here with us now. Leading us to help.”

I’d been staring at Kellyn’s chest while we talked, but feeling his eyes on me now, I raise my own.

His brown meet my blue, and a hurricane of emotions battle for dominance in my chest. Fear. Want. Hate. Resignation.

I was once terrified of speaking to him. Couldn’t even get a word out without my anxieties taking over. That changed slowly. During the journey where Temra and I hired him for safe passage to Thersa. From there we had to flee across two more territories, eventually landing in his hometown of Amanor, where I met his family. Where I felt like I truly knew this man and wanted him to know me.

I maybe even started to lo—

The thought hurts, so I don’t finish it.

Because liking him, trusting him, wanting him—it all feels like a betrayal to the one person who has always been there for me.

Temra doesn’t have my anxieties. She’s protected me from awkward encounters my whole life.

And when I should have protected her, when I called on Kellyn for help, she was mortally wounded.