Flamecaster (Shattered Realms, #1)(76)

Adam’s lips twitched, and he almost smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. It looked good on him. “Why is it so important to them to keep you alive?”

“They don’t want me to die before they torture me into naming some names. Then they’ll execute me. Which is why healing me is a waste . . . of everyone’s time.” She stole a look at him. From the stubborn look on his face, she knew he wasn’t going to cooperate.

“Thank you for answering my questions,” he said politely. “Now. I’m going to examine you. Don’t worry,” he said, when she shrank back. “This won’t hurt. It’s not . . . complicated.” His eyes met hers, catching and holding. With a slow, deliberate movement, he reached out and took both her hands, his fingers blazing hot against her frozen skin, his thumbs planted on the pulse points of her wrists.

She tried to pull free, but his grip was too strong. She gritted her teeth, steeling herself against whatever magery he would use against her.

At first, she felt only a gentle tendril of . . . something. Like a shaft of sunlight leaking through a canopy of cloud, warming her a bit. Then the channels opened between them, and images flooded through from both sides. Brilliant, heartbreaking, the unvarnished truth. Colliding and entangling and mingling so that it was hard to tell whose was whose, what was real and what was conjury.

She saw wolves again, like gray spirits haunting the twisting streets of a mountain town. Little Maggi, tossed aside like a broken toy. A small, fierce woman with copper skin and green eyes, pacing, smacking her fist into her palm. Riley’s eyes, locked with hers, his blood steaming when it hit the snow. A solemn-faced, red-haired boy holding hands with a weeping little girl while grim-faced blue-jacketed guards marched by, carrying flower-decked biers. The deeps of the mine, the scent of damp stone, and darkness as impenetrable as a shroud. A dagger with a dragon hilt, its blade smeared with blood. A fair-haired man lying on slushy cobblestones. The red-haired boy knelt next to him, clutching a pendant carved in the shape of a serpent. Her own father’s blood soaking into the tavern floor. The perfect whoosh as the mudback warehouse went up in flames, the bedrock shaking as the munitions inside blew.

A lone wolf with savage, wounded eyes, keeping to the shadows. Scales and claws that glittered in the sun.

She stole a look at the healer. Adam Wolf sat as if mesmerized, lips slightly parted, memories and dreams swimming in the ocean of his eyes, his face changing as each one burrowed into his heart.

He sees it, too, she thought, amazed. He sees me. That had never happened before.

Shared grief and loss, unquenchable rage and vengeance. Familiar. Connecting the two of them in a hundred ways. There was no going back—she’d given too much away. She was vulnerable to him now, but it didn’t seem like a bad thing, because he was vulnerable to her.

The wolf was the one who broke it off. He jerked his hands back and stared at her with the most peculiar expression on his face, like he was looking into a mirror and seeing himself reflected back. “What the hell?” he whispered, his voice thick and unfamiliar.

“You tell me, Wolf,” she said, blotting tears from her eyes with her sleeve. “What the bloody hell?” She sank back into the bedclothes, trembling. “How . . . was that . . . not complicated?”

Just like that, she was done sparring with the healer. In a world full of villains, she didn’t have to know exactly who and what he was in order to know that he was not the enemy.

Adam wet his lips and flexed his shoulders, as if to relieve the tension there. Stole a look at the door as if planning his escape. “What . . . what did you do to me? What does it mean?”

“It means that we are done lying to each other,” she said. “There’s no point. All right?”

She looked into his eyes, but saw no agreement there, only a new wariness, as if he’d never expected to be ambushed by his patient. And then the shutters closed.

He’s scared he’s revealed too much.

Didn’t you see what I saw? Didn’t you? If you know the truth, you have to honor it.

She wanted to shake him, but the conversation was wearing her out. The edges of her consciousness were crumbling away, like the fragile pages of an old manuscript, like wolves breaking away from the pack.

The door banged open and in came Karn with a basin and rags, a fistful of linen strips, and a pot of steaming water. “Am I interrupting something?” he said, looking at the two of them with their heads together. He clunked the supplies down next to the bed.

The wolf blinked at him, as if breaking out of a dream. He gently rocked the pot of water, so it sloshed. “Did you really boil this for ten minutes?”

“Isn’t that what you said?” Karn gave them both a pointed look, then went and sat against the wall by the door, so he could watch what went down from a distance.

With Karn in the room, the healer left off questioning her and got down to business. He pulled the pot of water closer, tipping some of the contents into the basin.

“Jenna, I’m going to clean out your wound a bit and see what’s going on. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

“We?”

That brought forth smile number two. Almost. “Are you able to sit up? If I help?”

She nodded.

Gripping her hands again, he gently pulled her upright, turning her so her feet dangled over the edge of the bed. She clutched her bedclothes under her chin, like they were a fort she could hide in. Her head began spinning, and black spots danced before her eyes. She swayed, and he instantly gripped both her shoulders, preventing her from tumbling off the bed.