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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Violet

I was staring up at the tree, hands on my hips, wondering if I would be a better person for the job of climbing the tree.

True, Wick was stronger. But I was lighter.

That said, my little holding on for dear life over a raging river escapade from the day before might have weakened me too much.

I honestly wasn’t even hungry. I should have been ravenous with all the exercise. But when you are eating the exact same thing over and over, I guess you kind of lose your taste for it. And when it is your only option, you just don’t want to eat at all.

I’d just knelt down to open my backpack when I heard it.

Not a simple, maybe even playful, Marco Polo .

It was a guttural scream.

I’d never heard anything like it.

I didn’t think; I didn’t stop to consider what I might be walking into. I just turned toward the sound of Wick’s screams and ran.

My heart felt compressed in my chest, like it didn’t have room for how hard it was punching against my ribcage.

Because it wasn’t like Wick had just let out one loud scream. Like he’d fallen. Or got his hand crushed or something.

He was screaming nonstop, the pain so raw it felt like it ripped me open too.

What the hell could have happened to him to make him scream like that?

The sound only got louder as I drew nearer, drowning out anything else.

Until, finally, I broke through a clearing.

And there he was.

He was sitting on the ground, his hands clutched around his leg, his shirt damp with sweat, his face beet red.

“Wick!” I cried, rushing forward. “What is it? What happened?”

Had he broken his leg?

Dread washed through me.

What could we do if he had a broken leg? There was no rescue. He would have to walk out. Or be pulled out.

He was a big guy compared to me, but I imagined if I used the tent to pull him in, I could use my lower body strength to move him. It would be slow going.

“What is it?” I asked, dropping to my knees, trying to pry his hands from his leg so I could investigate the injury. “Okay. I’m trying to help,” I said as Wick continued to groan in pain, sweat pouring down his face. “Did you break…oh.”

His hands finally moved away, revealing his leg.

“Alright. Okay. It’s not that bad.”

It was awful.

His whole lower leg was swollen and red, but it was worse in one spot. And in the center of that spot, a dark dot.

Almost like…a sting? A bite?

Why was he screaming over a bite?

“Were you bit? Stung?” I asked, putting my hand on his swollen, red skin.

It was a barely-there touch.

But Wick responded like I’d stabbed him. Another scream escaped him and when I looked over, tears were pouring down his face.

“Oh, my God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do. Was it a snake? Should I be, like, sucking out the venom?”

“Bull…et.”

“Bullet? No, no this wasn’t a bullet, Wick.”

“Ant,” Wick hissed out between clenched teeth.

“Bullet ant?” I asked, getting a fierce nod from him.

My mind raced back through the conversation we’d had when I’d freaked out about a bunch of freaky red ants that looked like they did steroids and lifted dumbbells for fun.

He said those were harmless.

But that I had to watch out for the big, black bullet ants. Which were as high on the venom bite pain scale as you could get.

When I had no frame of reference for other insect bites or stings, he’d started to compare it to other, more tangible things.

Touching a live electrical wire.

Third-degree burns.

A broken bone being twisted.

Surgery without anesthesia.

And the pain could last twelve to twenty-four hours.

“Oh, oh, God,” I said, looking into his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do,” I said. My lower lip wobbled as tears flooded my eyes.

His leg was trembling in agony, and that shaking was spreading through his whole body.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

He was the one who knew more about this kind of thing. And he couldn’t tell me what to do. He could barely breathe.

My gaze went down to the wound again. Leaning closer, I noticed it wasn’t just a hole; something was sticking out of it.

Honestly, I didn’t think.

It was like that time I’d broken my little toe and had just… reached down and pulled it back straight again.

I reached down and yanked the stinger out of the wound.

Wick’s whole body jolted and flew backward, leaving him rolling and writhing on the ground, grunting and huffing out his breath.

“I’m sorry. Shit. Okay. I’m sorry,” I said, going to him and reaching down to wipe some of the sweat off of his forehead. “I don’t know what to do,” I said, sniffling hard.

“Ahhh!” Wick roared, back arching, his whole body contorting like in the throes of violent death.

His hand shot out, closing around my arm, squeezing so hard I saw stars.

But I let it stay.

Lord knew it was nothing compared to his pain.

“It will pass,” I told him as his hand clenched so hard, I thought he might crush bone. “It won’t last forever. I know that won’t help now, but it will pass, okay?”

The night came down around us slowly as Wick writhed. He alternated between panting, groaning, or yelling.

But as it got dark, the forest got quiet, and my heart hammered, worried that the sounds of his pain might draw the assassins toward us.

I jumped at every crunch, my stomach clenching.

“Okay, try to breathe with me,” I said as I poured some water on a pair of my clean underwear, using it to mop his heated, red face.

I sucked in a deep breath, waiting for him to try to do the same. And he did. But the pain just made it impossible, making him break off into curses or howls.

So I just kept wiping his forehead, rubbing his arms, talking to him, reminding him that it would ease, that he would feel better eventually.

As the night dragged on, though, the pain either continued to get worse, or his tolerance lowered.

“I know. I’m sorry,” I said, pressing my hand over his mouth to muffle his cries, terrified the men would find us while he was incapacitated and we couldn’t get away. “It won’t be too much longer,” I assured him, pressing my forehead to his overheated one. “It’s going to pass.”

The night dragged on forever.

But somewhere toward the morning, his groans became fewer, lower, and my hand moved away from his mouth.

At some point, I must have drifted off because I woke with a start, gasping, shooting up, terrified at Wick’s stillness beneath me.

“It’s okay. We’re alright,” Wick assured me, his voice sounding exhausted but not tense.

“Did it stop?” I asked, leaning down to look at his leg. The skin was still a bit swollen, but it had gone down a lot, and the redness had faded to a less alarming pink.

“It’s still sore as fuck,” Wick said, drawing my gaze back up to his face.

His eyes looked small and red with deep, sleepless bruises beneath.

“But it’s nothing like it was. I probably got all the venom in that little fucker. I didn’t realize the stinger was stuck in. If I’d been present of mind enough to pull it out sooner, it might not have been so bad.”

“It took me a while to find it too.”

“It would have emptied into me before you even got here,” he said, reaching out to brush my hair behind my ear. “You came when you heard me.”

“You were screaming.”

“I could have been getting tortured by assassins.”

“You would have come for me,” I said, knowing it down to my bones. “Besides, I was dead out here without you anyway. The spiders were starting to mobilize.”

That got a small laugh out of him.

“Here, you need to hydrate. I’ve never seen someone sweat that much in my life,” I told him, handing him a bottle of water.

“Jesus,” he said, reaching for my wrist instead, bringing my arm closer to inspect the bracelet of bruises on my skin. “I did that?”

“It’s fine. You needed something to hold onto.”

“Does it hurt?”

It was sore. But that was the least of our problems.

“No, it’s fine. Drink your water.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, but his gaze kept creeping back to my arm.

“You should probably get some rest,” I insisted when, finished with his water, he slowly got to his feet.

“Fuck, that’s sore still,” he said, taking a few steps. “Better than it being completely fucking paralyzed, though.” He moved around until he was no longer wincing with each step before coming back toward me. “You okay?” he asked.

“Me? Nothing happened to me.”

His head cocked to the side. “Duchess…”

“What?”

“It’s not easy to watch someone in pain like that. With no way to help.”

“It was a long night. I’m just glad you’re—”

“Fuck,” Wick said, eyes wide as my words fell away because I heard it too.

Men’s voices.

My worst fears from the night before were realized. The screaming had led them right to us.

And they sounded close.

There was no thinking.

Wick grabbed my hand and we ran.

I knew his leg must have been killing him, but Wick set a punishing pace regardless.

Unfortunately, moving quickly meant we weren’t as careful about making sure our footsteps were silent.

And all that cracking of twigs and scattering of birds sent the assassins in our direction.

I would swear that even over my own labored breathing, I could hear theirs as well.

If anything, I was sure they were catching up to us even as the sky above us darkened, the air taking on an electric feel that had me tensing.

“You feel that?” Wick asked, his breath a little ragged, making me feel better for my own labored breathing and burning lungs.

“A storm, right?”

“Thunderstorm coming, I think.”

“Are they bad here?”

The slight pause in answering told me all I needed to know.

“They can be really bad, yeah. Nonstop thunder, lightning, hard wind, and rain.”

“Well, at least we will have some sound cover, right?”

I didn’t like the tension in his shoulders, though, as we kept going, as the sky grew more and more ominous, the air feeling crackly and the rumbles of thunder drawing nearer.

Then, suddenly, the storm was right above and around us.

The thunderclap rumbled so hard it vibrated up through my feet just seconds before a bolt of lightning shot down out of the bruised sky, white-hot and furious, splitting a tree just a few yards ahead.

The scent of scorched wood and ozone cut through the heavy humidity.

The shockwave of heat hit my face like a slap. And for just a second, everything went silent. Like the rainforest itself had gone still with fear.

It was broken only by the crack as a branch the size of a telephone pole came crashing down, taking vines and plants down with it.

My heart hammered as I stumbled back, vision flickering, skin prickly with static.

“Fuck,” Wick said, panting heavily. His usually unflappable demeanor was definitely, you know, flapped.

“Do we stay here?” I asked as the thunder rolled above us again. “Lightning already struck here…”

“Yeah, that whole not-striking-the-same-place-twice thing is a myth. It frequently strikes the same place. I think we should keep moving. Oh, great,” he grumbled as the rain finally poured down, seeming to soak through us in an instant.

Ordinarily, it would have been refreshing. Given the size and ferocity of this storm, though, it was just another layer of fear.

“Go where?” I called over the roar of the rain.

The sky lit up somewhere in the distance, making my breath catch.

“Somewhere more dense. A lot of trees.”

“Doesn’t lightning like trees?”

“Yeah, but we want it to have options.”

Without waiting for an answer, Wick grabbed my hand and we were running again.

The darkness of the rainforest slowed our progress.

With our hands attached, we could each feel the way the other tensed with each clap of thunder or crack of lightning.

Beneath our feet, the ground got muddy and slick, seeming to suck our feet in with each step, slowing down our progress, or we’d risk falling on our asses.

We’d broken into an open area when, out of nowhere, all the hairs on my body stood on end.

“Wick!” I screamed.

“Get down,” Wick demanded, pulling me low down near one of the few trees in the clearing.

Not two seconds later, the lightning crashed, completely whiting out my vision with its intensity as the air sizzled.

Then, the crack.

“Fuck,” Wick said, trying to throw his body over mine as the tree we’d crouched down next to splintered.

Then I was knocked onto my ass, something coming down hard and heavy across my legs, making pain explode.

A cry escaped me as I looked down to see a tree limb, still smoking and charred, across my thighs.

Panic surged through my system, making my heart lodge up in my throat as adrenaline raced through my veins.

“Wick!” I cried. When I got no answer, my stomach twisted, searching in the darkness for him, praying that he hadn’t gotten struck.

When another bolt of lightning lit up the sky, I caught sight of his prone form on the ground a few feet away.

Passed out on his back.

But the wind was picking up, so loud that even if he were awake, it would have been impossible for him to hear my cries as I tried to free myself, tried to get to him.

To no avail.