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“What is it?” Elias asked, noticing my abrupt anguish.

“My knife… my mother’s knife. I’ve lost it.”

“You mean the one that last man was carrying?” He was referring to Vick.

“Yes,” I answered bitterly.

My mother gave me that knife before she died. It was my most cherished possession. And it was gone.

“I took it back,” Elias said.

“What?” I looked at him, dumbfounded.

“I recognized it and knew it was yours, so I grabbed it off his corpse. It’s in my boot.”

His corpse. I had almost forgotten Elias had just killed three menwithout a second thought. For me.

Elias began to lean forward and reach for his boot, but I pushed him back down. “I’m not done yet,” I scolded. “Give me a minute.”

Elias put his hands up in defeat.

Within another minute or two, I finally finished closing his wound, satisfied with my work. I could already tell that it was going to become a deep scar, added to the many that already covered his torso. Elias then leaned forward and slid my mother’s dagger from his boot and handed it to me. I took it, thumbing over the intricate details carved into its hilt. I noted the dried blood on the blade, which clearly belonged to Elias. Somehow, I felt guilty that my own knife was used to hurt him.

“Thank you,” I said. “Truly. This means more to me than you know.”

“What is it made of? The knife, I mean,” Elias asked.

“Silver,” I replied softly. “It’s pure silver.”

“I see.” A look of clarity reached Elias’s features when I looked up at him.

“Does that…mean something to you?” I asked.

Elias only shook his head. “I was just curious.” He looked down at his suture then smirked. “Are you a healer in your spare time?”

I smiled, then began to do as Elias had done earlier, and dripped some of the medicinal elixir onto a clean rag. “When you’re locked away in a castle for over a decade, there’s not much else to do other than hang out with the cooks, the healers, the gardeners… I spent a lot of time observing.” I began dabbing the rag on his now closed wound, hoping the medicine would fight any infection and speed up the healing for him. I looked up to find him staring at me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You still want to heal me. After I left you.” His eyes stared into my soul.

“You also saved me,” I reminded him.

Elias began to stand up before I could finish putting the medicine on his wound, but I didn’t stop him. “You wouldn’t have needed to be saved if I hadn’t left.”

I stood up as well, my head swirling. “Don’t blame yourself. I knew the dangers of this journey, and I accepted the risks.”

“They could have killed you.” His eyes darkened to something lethal. “They nearly did.”

“But they didn’t. And now they’re…dead.” I gulped.

Elias took a step towards me, closing the small gap that was between us. I felt my heart flutter as the heat from his shirtless body tickled my senses.

“Does it bother you? That I killed them?”

“You already asked me that.”

“I’m asking again.”