Darkest Before Dawn (KGI #10)(15)

After downing both medicines, she reached for the binding around her knee, the last task before she could close her eyes for a short time. She’d taken special care to wrap it tightly before she fled from the clinic and to use some of the precious room in her pack for an extra Ace bandage and antibiotic cream to use along with the oral antibiotics she was taking.

The swelling had lessened some and the vivid black bruise had turned to a ghastly-looking mixture of green and yellow, which relieved her. It didn’t appear to be anything serious like a fracture or dislocation. It was painful, definitely, but the tight wrap had enabled her to have mobility, something that wouldn’t have been possible for a prolonged period of time if it were broken or dislocated. Not to mention she would have been screaming in pain and unable to continue after that first arduous day when she hadn’t stopped for twenty-four hours.

She doctored the cuts, pressed around the kneecap to test for the degree of swelling and then deftly rebound it after using some of the sunburn aid, which contained the numbing agent lidocaine.

Although she needed her hands to appear beaten and weathered to keep up her appearance, she still applied topical antibiotic cream to the deepest lacerations because she couldn’t afford for them to become so infected that she became ill and was unable to keep traveling. Knowing she would—hopefully—replenish her waning water supply in the morning, she used almost all of the remaining liquid to cleanse the dirt and pieces of debris still embedded in the skin. She hadn’t dared pay attention to them, and until now, she’d been able to block out the discomfort of the embedded shards.

Now when she carefully pulled them free and poured the last of the antiseptic she carried with her over the wounds, she let out a hiss of pain and held her breath, simply breathing through it and compartmentalizing it just as she had everything else. After patting the areas clean, she rubbed the antibiotic ointment on each of the cuts and then wrapped them in gauze. Just for this little time of rest. Before she went into the village in the early morning, she would unwrap them and pack dirt over the wounds again, and she’d keep her fingers curled so her hands weren’t readily visible by anyone. They spent much of the time beneath the enveloping folds of her garment, but when replenishing her supplies, she would need her hands and they would be exposed for a short time.

Up close, it would be more obvious that her hands were injured and not those of an older woman. But at a distance, with the rest of her costume giving the assumption of what she claimed to be, no one would look too hard at her hands. No one overly scrutinized any women here. It was forbidden. And while the Western culture ingrained in her chafed at the idea that women were commanded to only appear in public completely concealed, all but their eyes, and in some regions not even their eyes could be visible, she was grateful for the extreme laws women lived under at the moment because were it not for those laws, she would have never gotten as far as she’d come.

And since younger women weren’t allowed outside their home without the escort of a male family member or an older woman, like a mother-in-law, posing as someone younger would also gain her unwanted notice. She didn’t pat herself on the back for coming up with such a good disguise in the few minutes after she’d escaped the wreckage trapping her in the relief center. She’d been operating on raw instinct. Survival instinct. And she’d gathered every bit of her extensive knowledge of the languages and customs of the regions she worked in to help her not only escape her immediate prison but stay hidden in plain sight and pray that she was able to make it to a place beyond the seemingly all-encompassing reach of the militant group that terrorized such a widespread area.

After carefully replacing all items into her sack and ensuring that there would be no sign of her left behind, she once more leaned against the rough support the rock offered and closed her eyes, trying to push back the paralyzing fear of having to go into the village and show herself, even though only her eyes would be visible.

But eyes were the window to the soul, or so the saying went. Would her terror be there for the world to see? Would the villagers know of her pain, sorrow and abject fear just by looking into her eyes? Would she have the look of someone who was being hunted, who’d been handed a death sentence? For a second time? She’d been condemned to die in the attack, but somehow she survived. Could she survive being sentenced to death again?

It’s a game, Honor. One you’re winning. You can’t let yourself think anything else.

Honor swallowed and slipped further toward the veil of sleep. She could pretend all she wanted. She could wear the armor of denial forever. But neither changed the fact that this was no game. This was a fight and nothing less. The most important fight of her life. For her life.

There was no room for second place. Second place got her unimaginable pain and degradation and eventually death. Her only choice was to fight as she’d never fought before.

And win.

CHAPTER 5

HONOR awoke with the first rays of sun that crept over the horizon, bathing the area in its pale light. She emitted a mental groan because all she wanted to do was sleep. For days. Even as uncomfortable as she was among the rock formations and the sand biting into her skin.

The wind had kicked up, showing promise of being as forceful as the night before when she’d fought to control the swirling hem of her robe.

She could have sneaked into the village in the dark of night and gone to the small river that was the life’s blood of this village. It was where the people bathed, did their washing, got their drinking water and did any number of other daily chores. She could have washed her wounds and replenished her water supply, but she needed a small clay or metal pot—even a tin cup—to boil the water in now that she had run through the untainted water she’d gotten from the clinic.