Page 19 of Artemysia

“I’m not the hero of any story.” - Riev

“M ilitary outpost. On the other side of town. I’ll take Delphine.

” Filled with horror, I take charge of Ivy and Throg, who kneel beside Delphine, attempting to staunch the flow of blood.

“You two, collect her elk and make sure there are no more Syf. Rendezvous at the outpost. Leave the dagger in so she doesn’t bleed out. ”

Shit, shit, shit . Delphine threw herself in the way to save Ivy and Throg. Saved both at the same time. I’ve never seen someone so fucking selfless—and stupid.

Why does she keep sacrificing herself?

First during my nightmare, and now this.

Nothing she does is what I expect.

The outpost will have advanced medical supplies.

The Syf knife needs to stay in place until I get there so I can stop the bleeding after I pull it out.

Our first-aid kit won’t be adequate if the wound is deep enough to have hit something I need to repair first. I can’t tell at this point, because she’s passed out. I won’t risk infection.

Delphine regains consciousness on the ride, and I attempt to relay what’s happened to her.

“Dagger in your back, at least the length of a finger. You’ve lost a shitload of blood.”

I am not good at reassuring people.

Probably should’ve been less graphic, because poor Delphine passes out again.

The outpost in Limingfrost is a small cottage house well stocked with supplies. Normally, Academy guards would reside here, but since the entire town has vanished, it’s empty. The door is open. Luckily, the cottage is outfitted with the newer gas lamps, so I don’t need to bother with candles.

I slump Delphine sideways over the arms of a chair, knife-side up, and sterilize the first-aid implements I need to extract the dagger and sew her up.

I inject a slew of antibiotics and painkillers.

Thank gods this outpost carries the latest equipment and medication.

I don’t question how someone came up with the medical advancements we most needed right as the Syf began to attack two decades ago.

An irony and a mystery for another day, although the coincidence of it nags at the back of my mind like a conspiracy theory waiting to bloom.

Luckily, Delphine wakes up again, and I’m able to give her an extra anesthetic pill.

This is going to hurt.

“Painkillers should take effect quickly.” I try to be soothing, but my voice comes out rough. I’m worried.

“I know. I’ve had all these before. The combination of meds—” she points to the used syringes beside her “—makes me loopy and chatty and way too honest.”

“They might make you sleepy. I need to cut you out of your leathers and clothes. You’re going to be okay,” I lie, because there’s no way of knowing yet what the knife has hit. I offered the same words to my previous comrade as he lay dying in the woods.

She nods, and I hope it isn’t because she’s in too much pain to talk.

The painkillers should have numbed her by now.

I hand her a blanket to cover her front side, then I untie the bindings of her leather armor.

With a sharp pair of scissors from the first-aid kit, I’m able to trim off the leather around the dagger.

Next, I cut up the back of her shirt and peel it off.

Her skin is smooth, broken up by old pink and white scars.

“I have to unhook your bra. It runs into the edge of the cut where I need to sew.”

She turns to me with a look, as if she’s about to say something quick-witted or sarcastic, but the movement must hurt her. She tenses and whimpers, choosing to bite her lip and nod again instead.

“You were amazing in battle,” I grind out, steadying my hands to avoid hurting her more.

She and Ivy fended off two dozen Syf. They held their own like no man or woman I’ve ever witnessed.

The incredible thing is that they’ve never fought together.

Yet Delphine coordinated their maneuvers in a way that leveraged Ivy’s strengths.

She somehow ascertained Ivy’s skillset either before or during the attack and exploited it to their advantage.

I’m certain Delphine was disgusted by my killing frenzy. It’s effective, and it keeps those around me alive, but I turn into someone else.

An unstoppable, uncontrolled killer.

“So were you,” she finally says.

I slip off her torn shirt and bra, and she covers herself with the blanket.

I try not to look. Of course I don’t look. I’ll be the first to go to the deepest circle of demons under the mountains if I look and accidentally become aroused while she’s hurt like this.

“I’m not the hero of any story.” I grit my teeth. “Are you shocked at how good I am at murdering?”

Perhaps it looked as if I enjoyed it?

Maybe it’s the only way I feel useful, and I enjoy not dying.

“We were all doing the same,” she replies.

That’s a very generous assessment. She sacrificed herself to save our team. If this dagger had hit a little lower or a little deeper and punctured her lung or her heart…there would be nothing I could do to save her.

I tap the skin around the dagger next to her left shoulder blade. “ Are you numb yet?”

“Yes.”

I ask a few more questions to ascertain it hasn’t hit anything deadly that would require extra repair.

“The curved blade entered at an angle between your shoulder blade and your spine, so it isn’t terribly deep.

I’m going to yank it out and pack it with this black stuff that should stop you from bleeding out.

Throg already applied some of it when you were out.

I’ll have to go back into it layer by layer to sew it up so you don’t lose use of those muscles.

” This is why I needed a sanitary location with sterilized equipment.

“Okay, but keep talking while you work. I don’t want to imagine what you’re doing. Where’s Throg? And Ivy?”

“They’re okay. They’re scouting the area for Syf and will meet us here.

” I pull out the dagger. Blood begins to pour but doesn’t spurt in pulses as it does when it’s hit an artery, so I’m thankful for that.

I apply pressure and already have in hand a ripped-open package of the black stuff—quicksand, it’s called. I pack it in as fast as I can.

It’s not the first time I’ve had to assess horrific damage and do such procedures.

“What else?” she asks, her voice a little higher than normal.

“What do you mean, what else? You want me to make conversation?” I grumble.

The muscles of her back tense. “I can feel you sewing flesh, and it’s grossing me out. It doesn’t hurt too much because it’s mostly numb, but I can tell.”

I brush the tail of her braid out of my way, and she shivers. Perhaps my touch disgusts her in this vulnerable state.

“Sorry…” I can’t think of anything to say, glowering idiot that I am in most parts of my life.

“Tell me about yourself. Such as—when’s your birthday?” she asks, wincing when I tighten the next suture.

“Huh? Birthday? I…don’t have one.”

“Everyone has one,” she insists.

“The villagers of Riverheart found me twenty-six years ago and turned me over to their military outpost. The old cleaning lady at the branch of the Academy there raised me for six years. When she died, the Academy gave me room and board as an errand boy.”

“I’m sorry you had so much loss so young.” She sucks in a breath as I pull through a deeper stitch.

Uncomfortable feelings surface. I never thought of it as loss at a young age. It’s what I expect in life. To be left on my own, to be alone—first as a newborn, then as a kid, and even now, as the king’s assassin. No one would mourn me if I died.

It’s probably for the best for someone like me.

“What month were you found?” she presses.

“Eleventh moon rising. When Major Moon is full for the last time in autumn.”

“Oh! That’s just happened. Do you want to celebrate your birthday? Let’s say it’s today. Eleventh month, eighth day. You’re an autumn-moon baby. I’m thirteenth month, thirteenth day.”

I’m taken aback by how much she cares about my birthday.

“If you want.” Why is she such a cheery maniac right now? I bet she’s loopy from the meds already.

“I do want. Birthdays mean sugar and presents.”

“Do they? Got any more of that candy from the watchtower?” I say absently as I concentrate on repairing the deepest part of the wound.

“For your birthday, I’ll gift you the rest of it when we get back.”

Well, that’s fucking adorable.

“When we get back, hmm? Okay. Thank you for my first birthday present since I was six,” I mutter, pressing needle into flesh and hooking it back out as cleanly as possible.

She looks over her shoulder and gives me a strange, wide-eyed stare with those kind brown eyes of hers, and I liquefy like hot beeswax.

I’m already trying to keep it in my pants.

She’s topless, with dirt and blood on her face from a battle, and the whole thing is confusing and arousing.

It might just be one of the sexiest sights I’ve ever seen.

I’m clearly depraved, I know.

“Should I have waited for Throg to patch me up? You look like you’re in pain.”

“I promise you my sewing is a hundred times better than Throg’s. I see your old scars.” Fuck, her skin is so silky and warm. Stop being a pervert. Focus on even stitches, Riev.

“Yep, that’s mostly Throg’s work. He does a good job—my wounds never get infected.”

I place a bandage and tape it on, gliding my fingers along the edges to make sure it sticks. She shudders again.

I retract my hands. “Sorry, almost done. Does my touch bother you?”

She takes a deep, slow breath. “Just the opposite,” she mutters, her lips barely moving as if she doesn’t know she’s saying it out loud. Maybe she doesn’t. She’s looking a bit heavy-lidded, drowsy from the anesthetic.

A prickle rushes up my back. Does she mean she likes my touch? No. It must be the medicated haze she’s in.

“Maybe it’s like the time Ivy and I picked ‘edible’ mushrooms, but they made our skin tingle and glow?

Everything tickled. So, like fucking morons, we threw rocks at each other and laughed the evening away, only regretting it the next day when we found ourselves bruised like pearberries,” I blather on, partly to keep her from drifting off to sleep.

She snickers and shakes her head. “No, it’s not quite like that.”

Delphine can’t possibly want anything more from an unhinged savage like me. Can she? No, of course not. Why do I care?

Demons alive, this woman will be my ruination.

She’s staring out the window. Unfortunately for me, the blanket covering the front of her chest slips away as she relaxes.

I shut my eyes, but it’s too late. The swell of her breasts ending at her exposed rosy nipples peaked from the cold air just about destroys me.

I hope she doesn’t notice that I’m jutting out obscenely, hard as steel and practically rupturing the seams of my pants.

“You’re done,” I say stiffly. “You were very brave. Thank you for saving Ivy.”

“I’d do the same for any of you,” she says softly. “I’m your captain. It’s what I do—I keep people alive.”

It takes all my willpower to resist clasping her to my chest like a baby bird needing warmth. Instead, I wrap her tighter in her blanket and guide her to one of the two bedrooms. I dart into the bathroom and return with a warm towel to wipe her face and help her clean the dried blood off her back.

“You’re going to get sleepy soon. That’s the second part of the anesthetic.”

She grips my forearm to steady herself. “No, wait! Can you send Throg in to sit here when he’s back? I don’t want to wake up alone and hurting in a strange place. Or…could…you stay for a bit?”

This must be the unbridled honesty she was talking about.

It slays my hardened, charred heart. The vulnerability in her tone is genuine, because I know she would never admit this otherwise. She’s too strong. Her pleading eyes are glassy, and I know she’s in the gauzy stage right before sleep.

“Sure. I promise. You won’t be alone. I’ll sit with you until Throg is back.”

“Okay, thanks, Riev.” She gives a quick squeeze of my arm before releasing it.

She rises up and leans in to brush her warm lips on my cheek. “Thank you,” she says again and turns away. She unbuckles her belt with one hand before kicking off her boots and riding pants. She has thermals on underneath, which she leaves on as she tucks herself into the quilted bed.

I don’t know what else to say, so I ease into the plaid wool armchair beside the bed and pick up a book from the nightstand, pretending to flip through it.

She’s lying on her right side, the uninjured side, facing away from me. “If there are any good verses in there, you can read them aloud if you want. You know I like poetry. You saw my collection in the clock tower.”

“Why do you enjoy flowery words like that?”

“Poems remind me of the beauty in everyday things when the days get tough…” Her voice drops off.

My heart melts like sheep’s milk butter.

I read aloud a few paragraphs from the book. It’s some old tale about giant flying snakes and monsters of yore beyond our southern mountains.

Her heavy breathing tells me she’s passed out.

I wonder if she’s warm enough, so I get to work building a fire in the bedroom hearth.

As I return to my chair, listening to her light snores, it drives me mad to realize my violent heart is in trouble and that there’s no fucking way to fight it.