Page 64 of Red Demon

“We’ll just take it one step at a time. Let me help you get on your feet.” She extended both hands toward me.

I accepted her help in a daze, allowing her to support and steady me as I rose to my feet. The underground cabin seemed to sway around me. I had to cling to the Red Demon until my head steadied. The blanket fell away, leaving me wearing nothing but those stained bandages.

“How many steps?” I grit my teeth, finding I needed her to support a lot of my weight even on the flat ground.

“I don’t remember.” Faruhar adjusted my arm over her shoulder. “And I don’t think I can carry you and a lantern. We’ll just need to figure it out in the dark and hope the wild dogs have given up on your trail of blood.”

My heart skipped and stuttered, but maybe that was just the blood loss or the lung I’m pretty sure I punctured. I still wasn’t breathing right.

She opened the cabin door with a creak. It was pitch dark beyond, like she said. I took a first step up into the narrow passage, and touched cold, smooth walls. She opened another door. One jaw-clenching step more on flat ground, and I found a stone railing. I shifted my weight off of Faruhar, to the stone.

And then my eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I saw the toilet. A fucking toilet, sink and soap in front with a folded towel on the wall.

I shifted to glare at her, but she was busy lighting the lantern by the sink.

“Should I stick around to wipe your ass, or do you think you got that?”

My mouth bumped open with a hoard of tangled thoughts. “I’m good.”

I caught the spark of a smirk as she closed the door.

Chapter 29

What I Am

Once back to my pallet, exhaustion kicked in fast, either from the Red Demon’s herbs or my body’s limitations, I don’t know. She changed my bandages as I drifted to sleep, leaving me to meditate on the fact that her hands were as deft and gentle with my bandages as they were efficient at piercing Mal’s chest.

I woke to a glass of water on a stool beside me, and a lumpy loaf of mushroom-grain flatbread. As I reached for the water, I heard mumbling, the sound of the Red Demon whispering in her sleep. I turned to watch. Sometimes it was groans, sometimes indistinguishable speech. All of it sounded … afraid.

I didn’t know Chaeten-sa could feel that. I thought they modded that out.

“Please,” she said between words I could not make out.

I sat up, gripping the blanket around me. Stale air in the cave chilled my skin, the fire long out. The bed across the cabin room lay untouched, the worn sheets neatly folded. The Red Demon slept huddled on the mat by the fire, weapon in hand.

“No. No. No!” she mumbled, her chest heaving fast under loose, shining hair. Her fists gripped the dusty rug underneath her.

I cleared the small stool beside me of its water and bread. Then, I tried to rise, leaning all my weight on the stool so as not to bend my legs. I gripped the cool stone wall with my other hand, inching up. My knees and chest throbbed, though less than yesterday. I could manage the pain through clenched teeth as I stood.

Across the dim chamber, the Red Demon lay sleeping on a floor mat, her lean, scarred body lost under all that hair, her knees curved to her chest like a newborn child. I felt a mix of emotions at the sight. The weaker part of me would apparently forgive that vulnerable woman for a meal and a fucking glass of water. The rest of me recognized how easy it would be to kill her right now, honor or not.

I took a step closer, my head throbbing.

She breathed fast, eyes closed and tight. One of her swords lay sheathed on the ground between us. I could pick it up, give her the justice she deserved. I’d be saving lives.

“It is no sin to kill a demon,” Galen would say. Maybe Taam would say how that feeling of hating myself made no sense at all. I should kill her, regardless of what I said yesterday; get this over with.

But I knew what Ash would say: if I had to talk myself into it, not the path. Walk the path.

Fucking fine.

Another uneasy step toward her, and I leaned heavily on a side table. On it, some jars, herbs, a pen, and that stained leather journal I’d found at her camp.

I flipped open well-worn pages filled with scrawling text. On the first page, I read, “My name is Faruhar.” Then something crossed out in heavy ink. Below it, “Look after Bria.” Then, scratched out but still legible, “Be near people, be helpful to them. You’ll remember more.” Angrier text lay below it and to the side. “They will die when you sleep. Do not stay near people.”

Her swords lay beside her, in easy reach.

I flipped the pages: blank pages in the middle but at the end, angry lines, page after page of tallies, broken up by descriptions: “The man who gave me tea at the cottage, the priest with the candles.” The last entry read: “The man in the market.” Beside it, scrawled on the side, it read: “Galen, Jesse’s taam.”