Fearless (Nameless #3)(19)

When she dropped her hand, her fingers were so cold she could hardly bend them. But the swelling around his eye had vanished, and even the dark bruise that had formed was replaced by healthy pink tissue.

He watched her in stunned silence, all attempts at humor lost in the intensity of the moment. Taking hold of her hand, he pulled it to his lips and kissed each finger.

Zo leaned her head against his shoulder, sharing some of the warmth she’d just given him. Did he feel her love during the healing? She certainly had. It blinded and consumed her, and left her heart sputtering and gasping for renewal.

“Tess?” She lacked the breath necessary to speak louder than a whisper. “Will you … ”

Her little sister nodded. “I’ll tend to his bruises.”

Millie walked over and frowned at Zo. She’d somehow found herself sharing Gryphon’s narrow healing bed, resting in the wing of his protection, half asleep. She hadn’t remembered burrowing into his side. Her eyes fluttered open and shut. She was barely able to stay awake as a strange and distant pain grew in her stomach. A contracting pain that made her shudder along with the cold.

“What manner of healing was that?” the old woman asked Tess, her voice muted and distant.

Zo’s position shifted as Gryphon inched off the bed and slid his arms beneath her knees and back. He lifted her as though she were a child. She tried to protest against his exertions, but knew his ribs were strong and whole. She had felt them shift and mend under her hands during the healing. Somehow.

Gryphon carried her into the adjoining Women’s Tent and laid her down in her own bed. She let her fingers slide the length of his firm chest, let her eyes flutter open and linger on his handsome face as he leaned over her semi-unconscious form to kiss her forehead and then her lips.

“I love you, too,” he whispered in her ear. The warmth of his breath against her skin carried her into a dream-filled sleep where fiery pain lanced her abdomen and spread through her veins, radiating to every corner of her body.

Millie’s distant question tumbled through her semi-conscious mind.

“What manner of healing is this?”

Trapped in her pain, Zo had to wonder if the concern in Millie’s voice was actually foreboding. This new level of healing—whatever it was—hurt.





Gryphon stared down at Zo, tears invading his vision. He brushed them away—one thought plaguing him, staining the beauty of the moment.

How will I ever leave her?

Twenty-two days remained before the scheduled meeting. Twenty-two. How would he explain his decision to Zo in a way she might understand? It was one thing to torment himself, but after feeling Zo’s healing hands upon his body, upon his face, he understood, like never before, just how much his absence would distress her.

She loved him. There was no room to question her feelings when the velvety warmth of her love and compassion ran through his very veins. With her touch, the fierce pains of his body had faded to almost nothing—replaced with achingly sweet light.

He pulled the blanket bunched at the bottom of her bedroll up around her shoulders before small hands tugged him away from Zo’s sleeping form.

“Let her rest. You still have bruises I need to mend,” said Tess.

Millie frowned over Tess’s shoulder but didn’t say anything to contradict Tess.

Gryphon walked back into the Healer’s Tent in something of a daze. Tess worked on him in silence, except when she murmured her quiet blessings. The flow of the child’s healing touch was like a babbling brook compared to Zo’s fast-paced current of power.

When she finished her work and began clearing away supplies from Zo’s kit, Gryphon asked, “Is everything all right, Tess?”

Tess’s tiny lips pursed and she looked away.

Gryphon sat up from his bed and frowned. “Are you mad at me?” The girl had hardly spoken a word to him since he arrived yesterday.

Slamming the medical kit on a table filled with other supplies and bandages, Tess blurted, “Why do people always have to leave me?”

Gryphon blinked. “Excuse me?”

Tess sighed. “I’m tired of being left behind. My parents. Zo. One day Joshua will leave to go fight some war. Gabe left us under the tree and you will leave me too.”

“How do you know?” Gryphon asked, his throat dry.

“Because that’s what people do. I hate Zo.”

“No you don’t.”

Tess perched her hands on her narrow hips. “I want to hate her. It would be easier. She lied to me, Gryph.”

“She was just protecting you.”

Tess sighed, her anger waning. “Sometimes I think protecting means lying.”

Gryphon tugged at Tess’s arm and pulled her to sit in his lap. “Sometimes we have to leave to protect those we love.” He thought of his best friend Ajax, his wife Sara, and their newborn child. Then he considered the lives of the other brothers in his mess. The shame and dishonor that would befall their families if their Ram citizenship wasn’t restored. Gryphon had no choice but to leave, for their sakes.

But I’m a liar, too.

Tess sat lost in thought for a long while before she finally nodded to herself and said, “I think if you really loved someone, you wouldn’t leave them behind. When you leave, you choose something else instead of them. It isn’t fair.”