The Arrows of the Heart Read online

  My head felt too heavy to lift, so I reached up to the wound with my other hand, finding my shoulder bare and a hole above my breast oozing liquid—and another like it in the meat of my upper arm. Blood—or worse? I held my fingers up to the light, finding them covered with slick, pink fluid, like watery blood, none of the oily black ooze of Deyrr.

  “I didn’t bandage them because they need to drain,” Zyr said, and I looked to find him staring at me, his eyes catching the firelight in a blue-gold shimmer. “How do you feel?”

  “Cold,” I said, my voice hoarse. I coughed again. “Thirsty.”

  With his mouth flattened to an unhappy line, he thrust a piece of wood onto the fire and crawled over to me with one of our water flasks. I tried to lever myself up and hissed at the spike of pain. Weakness washed over me in a wave of heat, leaving chill behind. The shivers turned to racking shudders.

  “Don’t do that,” Zyr snapped. “Let me help you.”

  “Yes, Lord Zyr,” I whispered, but he didn’t smile. He slipped an arm behind my shoulders from the good side, and eased me up, holding the flask to my lips. I drank the cool sweetness, wanting to gulp it, but he held it at such an angle that I could only sip. Reaching for the flask so I could adjust the angle, my left arm simply refused, howling with such pain that I choked on the water.

  Muttering viciously in Tala—which still sounded pretty, despite the angry tone—Zyr clasped the flask between his knees and levered me over him, patting my back as I coughed.

  “I’m fine,” I managed, embarrassed to be essentially draped over his lap. Wearing nothing, I realized, under the blankets. “Why am I naked—where are my clothes?”

  “Now there’s a sign she’s more herself,” he declared, sounding still terse. But his hands were gentle as he returned me to my back, adjusting the blankets to cover me and holding the flask to my mouth again. “Be a good girl, lie still, and sip carefully. Too much and you’ll puke it up and mess up our dry, cozy nest.”

  I took a sip, glaring at him. He returned it in equal measure, but this close I could see the lines around his mouth and one between his brows. Worry, not anger. The firelight danced with unusual brightness, and I still shivered. Fever. Which meant infection. Wonderful.

  “It doesn’t smell dry,” I observed during one of the long, enforced pauses between sips.

  His mouth quirked in a half smile—at last, as an unsmiling Zyr means the world has turned the wrong direction—and he glanced around. “Relatively so. Compared to the pouring rain outside, not to mention the stormy surf that would like to join us in our cave.”

  “We’re in a cave?” Silly question, but now the low, shadowed and rough ceiling made sense.

  “Yes. You’re welcome. If you’d been conscious while I dragged you around the beach in the rain, looking for some shelter, any shelter, then you wouldn’t sound so disdainful. It’s a lovely cave, its best feature being that it’s not under water.”

  “Sorry,” I said, before I remembered not to apologize. That explained why he looked so bedraggled. And tired. He looked purely exhausted. “I’m sure it’s a wonderful cave.”

  “Well, once I pitched out the dead seal and other decaying matter stranded by storms and tides, it improved considerably. The fire is helping to dry it out.”

  “Is that wise, with the smoke?”

  He shrugged a little, giving me more water, expression stony. “Our domicile is lacking a chimney, it’s true. But the smoke is going somewhere because it’s been a full day and we haven’t suffocated yet.”

  “A day?” I couldn’t imagine it.

  “Besides,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “you’re burning up with fever and needed the warmth. Practically everything we had was soaked. That’s why you’re naked, by the way, as I couldn’t leave you in wet clothes. You also had several other injuries that you either didn’t notice or didn’t mention. They had to be cleaned and tended.”

  Oh. “Thank you,” I tendered, trying to sound grateful, though it bothered me greatly that he’d examined me while I was naked and unconscious.

  “You’re welcome, again.” He smiled wider, a hint of his former mischief in it. “I tried very hard not to look at the nicest bits.”

  “Then how do you know they’re nice?” I retorted, but I’d gone muzzy, not sounding as sharp as I’d wanted to.

  His fingers feathered over my face, soothing, calming. “I have a vivid imagination. Go back to sleep, gréine. You’re safe with me and you need rest.”

  “So do you,” I replied, though my eyes had drifted closed and my words sounded very far away.

  He chuckled. “Always deferring. I’m going to lie down and sleep next to you. That way I’ll know if you wake. Will that satisfy you?”

  “No sex,” I cautioned, and he snickered.

  His weight settled down on my good side, a surprising comfort. “I may have had many lovers, of all stripes and spots, but even I draw the line at corpses.”

  “Hey…” I protested, but I wasn’t sure the sound came out at all.

  ~ 16 ~

  I tossed through dreams. Birds chewing off my fingers and hands, and I couldn’t move to stop them. Drowning in the ocean, a huge monster wrapping rotting tentacles around me, dragging me under, no matter how I flailed and fought. The gríobhth, beak clacking, speaking with Zyr’s voice telling me I was only dreaming.

  “I never dream,” I kept telling him, trying to explain, but he only laughed. And the birds pecked at my eyes, no matter how I wept and begged them to stop. “I want to go home,” I sobbed, and my mother placed a wet cloth on my brow, shushing me, telling me I was home.

  “I’m home?” I couldn’t believe it. Could it be true? Maybe I smelled the fruit orchards in bloom, so flagrantly redolent of spring.

  “I’m your home and you are mine. Stay with me, gréine.”

  “I don’t know that word.” I focused on Zyr’s face. His long, black hair fell around me, gleaming like night, the firelight gilding it. So beautiful. It was him that smelled of flowers, like the sweet air of Annfwn, with its tumbling blossoms and gentle warmth. “Kiss me.”

  He brushed my lips with a kiss, but pulled back when I tried to deepen it. “It means a burst of sunshine,” he said, kissing my cheekbones and brow instead. Light, butterfly wing kisses like soft rain on my face. “Like when it’s been cloudy and all of a sudden, the sun breaks through. You’re that to me.”

  “That’s pretty,” I mused. “You’re pretty, too. So wild and sensual and just… so beautiful. I want you, Zyr. Please. I want to—” I cried out as I tried to lift my arm. “It hurts.”

  He took the cloth from my forehead, dipped it in a bowl, and washed my arm with it. I hissed at the pain, and his face creased.

  “Am I dying?” I wondered. I felt so weak, as if my life drained away by the moment.

  “I need to open up the wounds,” he told me. “Drain the infection.”

  “All right.” My words came dully, the ceiling already swimming again.

  “It will hurt,” he cautioned me.

  “Your hand is full of claws,” I said, and giggled at the sight. “Cat paw claws.”

  “Mrow.” He rumbled the cat’s purring sound and I laughed again. “Pretty kitty cat.”

  “Brace yourself,” he warned, leaning his weight on me and pinning me down. Excruciating agony rolled over me and my giggles turned to tears. “Karyn?”

  “Do it,” I said, the pain making me abruptly, brutally alert. “It can’t hurt more than this.”

  But I was wrong.

  When I woke again I’d fought off the blankets, certain the sea monster had returned, but it drowned me in fire. So hot. I was burning alive. “No!” I cried, trying to escape the tentacles.

  “Shh. It’s good for you. You need to cool off.”

  I opened my eyes, the light hurting them. Every part of me bloomed with agony. I lay naked on the blankets, Zyr wiping me with a cool cloth. He saw me looking at him and laid a hand on my cheek. “You’re so h
ot, love.”

  I could only whimper. “Then don’t cook and eat me.”

  That seemed to decide something, because next I knew, I was in his arms, being carried outside. Water misted on my skin, blessedly cool. Then a wave of salt water crashed over me, freezing and shattering. My wounds stung like broken glass grinding into them. I wailed and thrashed, but Zyr held on, wading into the waves. “I won’t let you drown,” he said. He cupped my head, holding my face above water, the rest of me submerged, both of us floating.

  The night sky soared above, the stars dancing in all colors. “So pretty,” I whispered. I lifted my good arm, trying to pluck one.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to give you a star.” I reached again. “Too far. Will you fly me there?”

  “Anywhere you want to go, gréine.”

  I giggled and snuggled against him. “I changed my mind. Let’s stay here forever. It’s cool here.”

  This time the sea monsters didn’t chase me.

  I woke at one point, curled up again in the blankets. A large dog, golden-furred with floppy ears, licked my face, making me smile, and I drifted off again.

  When I next woke, I stretched, the immediate rush of pain reminding me of where I was and all that had happened. But it hurt nothing like I remembered. I lifted my injured arm—and could, so that was a good sign?—and held it up to the weak light. A bandage I recognized as a piece of one of my shifts covered the wound now. Black stripes like the tributaries of a river crept out from under it and traveled toward my hand, and up the other direction, spreading over my shoulder like a spiderweb. By tilting my chin and craning my neck, I could make out a similar starburst of black radiating out from another bandage just over my left breast.

  It looked really horrible. But I wasn’t dead. At least, I didn’t think so. How did the dead know? Did the Deyrr-animated creatures retain their thoughts? Trapped inside those blindly, soundlessly trudging bodies. I shuddered at the notion. I should’ve told Zyr to kill me instead of trying to save me if I was to become that.

  Moving slowly, bracing on my good arm, I sat up and looked around. The fire had gone out and the light came entirely from the mouth of the cave, tumbled black rocks beyond, shining in bright day. The sea churned, but not so furiously, and the pounding of rain had gone.

  So had Zyr.

  That familiar panic rose up, the certainty that I’d been abandoned completely and at last. No reason for him to stay, especially when he had a mission to fulfill, a responsibility to his people. I wouldn’t blame him for leaving me. I’d even told him to. And yet my heart pounded, fresh sweat breaking out in runnels between my breasts.

  Breathe, I instructed myself. All the stuff is here.

  Maybe he’d gone hunting. But what if he’d run into more of Deyrr’s creatures? He might be dead, or alone and injured.

  A shadow swept over the cave mouth and I froze.

  Then Zyr walked in and I nearly collapsed with relief. He was his post-shift self, hair perfectly smooth and tied back, blue shirt laced and incongruously unwrinkled given the surroundings. He grinned, scanning me. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  Hastily, I gathered the blanket to cover my breasts, and when I met his gaze again, his smile had gone crooked with mischief. “I feel much better, thank you,” I replied with considerable dignity, especially taking into account my undignified state. But I couldn’t help glancing at my arm. “How bad of a sign is all of … this?”

  Zyr crouched as he made the rest of the way to me under the low ceiling, then sat beside me, setting a bowl down. The scent of roasted meat filled the air and my hollow stomach growled. He chuckled and handed me a leg of something. I didn’t even care what it was as I bit in with a complete lack of manners, the hot fat trickling down my chin.

  “Slowly,” Zyr advised. “Remember the puking thing. If you can,” he amended.

  I chewed and swallowed. “I remember.” One memory surfaced. “Were you a floppy-eared dog at one point?”

  He smiled—self-consciously?—and nodded. “I needed to keep you warm and calm, and get some sleep myself. I thought if you woke up, that form would scare you less than some of the others.” Then his smile widened to a grin. “I thought about being a nice fuzzy bunny for you, but I was afraid you’d shoot me with your bow.”

  “My bow broke,” I said, feeling its loss again.

  “I know—I found the pieces. Was it special?”

  “No. Kral took it from an Imperial Palace guard for me.”

  “Then why so sad, gréine?” He touched my cheek, fleetingly, and I recalled the way he’d rained kisses on my face. And how I’d said he was beautiful and begged him to kiss me for real. Said I’d wanted him. How humiliating. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. Looking away from him, I stared at the cave entrance, willing the tears to stay back.

  “I’m even less useful than before,” I said, my voice small. “I have no bow, no way to help or defend myself. You should’ve left me here. You still should. Go on without me.”

  “This again?” He shook his head in disgust.

  “I’m weak, and there’s this stuff in me. It’s Deyrr, isn’t it? I’m going to become one of those monsters, aren’t I?”

  “We don’t know that,” Zyr replied, wrapping his arms around his knees. “You’ve fought off the worst of—”

  “Don’t lie to me,” I bit out, interrupting his soothing words.

  He raised one brow. “Maybe you have been corrupted, interrupting a man while he’s talking and all.”

  “Oh, fuck off.” I said it in Dasnarian, but the tone must’ve gotten through, because he looked shocked, then burst out laughing.

  “You’re definitely doing better. No, listen to me,” he ordered sternly when I opened my mouth. “Yes, you got that Deyrr filth in you, mainly from those talons being in your arm so long, I think. The chest wound is much cleaner. You’re lucky because I’m pretty sure that if you’d gotten that poisonous crap that close to your heart, then you would’ve died. You very nearly did, so be happy that you’re alive. I know I am.”

  He gave me such a fierce look that I decided not to say anything to that just yet.

  “We don’t know what that stuff will do to you, it’s true,” he continued more gently. “But it’s going to do it whether you’re in this cave or not, alone or with me. So it only makes sense that you come with me and continue our mission.”

  “All of that is true,” I replied, choosing my words carefully, “but we can’t make decisions based on sentiment. If I continue with you, I’ll be a liability. I’m weak. I can’t draw a bow, even if I had one. You don’t need me to read the mapsticks. You all said it before—they’re designed for a shapeshifter in animal form to use. I’m extra weight and you have a long distance to fly. Without me, you don’t have to take such a large form, so you won’t be such a target.”

  “Are you done?” he inquired, all politeness except for the hardness in his eyes.

  “You know I’m right. This is the logical thing to do. You’re at war and there’s no room for liabilities in a fight like that.”

  He leaned back on one elbow, apparently casual, stretching out his long legs and chewing on a piece of meat. “I’m betting this is the way of things in Dasnaria.”

  “It’s the way of things everywhere,” I snapped at him. I really wanted to eat more, but he had a point that my stomach needed time. Its churning could be either hunger or nausea—hard to tell which yet.

  “Hmm. No. I don’t believe you’re correct in that, my lovely Dasnarian warrior.” He tipped his head to look at me, expression full of some emotion I couldn’t read. “Where I come from, people aren’t categorized as either assets or liabilities. We are friends, partners, lovers, family—possibly enemies, though we’re honest about that, too—and we don’t decide who is useful or worthwhile. I’m never going to leave you behind. Every. Single. Time you suggest I’d even contemplate it, you insult me.” He bit out each word so distinctly that I could h
ear the sharp clacking of the gríobhth’s beak.

  “I apologize,” I replied stiffly. “I did not intend insult.”

  “You know what—this time I’ll accept the apology.” But he didn’t look forgiving. “What do you take me for, Karyn? I wonder if you even see me as a man, one who might care about you. What am I in your world view—an asset or a liability? Maybe I’m like a puppy to you, nice to pet, but not someone with thoughts and feelings of his own. I’ve been taking care of you for four days, praying every moment that you wouldn’t die, and you seem to think I’ll just flit off now and leave you. No wonder you don’t want me as a lover. Who’d want to be involved with someone like that?”

  Stricken, I stared at the no longer appetizing food. Nausea seemed to have won the day, though not for the reasons I’d thought. “I…” I didn’t know what to say.

  “Something else you don’t seem to have gotten through your thick skull is that this is your mission, too. You might not recognize the King and Queen of the Tala as yours, but they charged you to do this, not me. We all took you in and you’re supposed to be helping fight this war, but you’re too busy trying to find excuses to duck out of it. You don’t fool me for a moment, with all your ‘I’m useless’ whining. You’re not even trying. Maybe you should have stayed in Dasnaria and lived the life they planned for you. You sure aren’t doing anything with the freedom you sacrificed so much to get.”

  I gaped at him, remembering to close my mouth. He sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face.

  “I’m going for a swim. See if I can catch us some fish. The oils will be good for you. Eat some more when you’re ready, and there’s water beside you, and an empty bowl, in case you puke. I figure you can wipe your own ass now.” He became the black panther and stalked out, the shimmering fury somehow perfectly part of his sleek and sinuous exit.

  Leaving me alone with my puke bowl and the even more sour taste of regret.