Page 25

Chapter

Twenty-Five

RANAN

D aidu’s potions taste like the underside of a hamarii turtle, but they’re effective. They also make me sluggish, and I spend most of the day sleeping in the healer’s tent. When I wake up, my leg no longer burns, and the skin is less swollen than before. My stomach growls fiercely, and I sit up in my bed, wondering where the healer is.

Before I can get up, the tent opens and Vali steps in with a large bowl in her hands. Her hair is dry and piled atop her head, and her nose is pink from being out in the open all day. She still wears the wrap given to her earlier, but there is a new belt around it and it fits better. It emphasizes her large breasts and her long legs. She looks good. Fresh. Beautiful.

I sit up, eager to speak with her. To hear her thoughts on the flotilla. To hear if she still hates me. “Where have you been?”

Her brows go up.

My face grows hot. Perhaps that sounded demanding. “I was worried about you.”

“Your job is to lie here and rest up,” she says in a light, cheery voice. She sits next to me and holds out the bowl of food. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself.”

“I still worry about you.” I deliberately brush my fingers over hers as I take the bowl. “How are you feeling? Do your lungs ache? I worry you took in too much water.”

“I’m fine. You eat.” She flicks a hand at the bowl.

I hold it back out to her. “Share?”

“I’ve already eaten. Balo’s husband caught a large fish and there was enough for several people.” She clasps her hands in her lap, watching me.

“You found Balo then? What did you think of him?” The dish is one of my mother’s favorites—fermented fish wrapped in dried seaweed. It reminds me of being a young minnow and eating everything put before me so I could grow up strong and tall like my father. It is a very typical dish for my people, and a delicious one. It is also one I suspect Vali would not like, as Balo hated it when he first arrived. It is my mother’s quiet way of enticing me to rejoin the flotilla.

A nice thought, but I like my life on Akara’s back…and I think Vali would prefer it to being with the flotilla. What she wants matters to me.

“Balo is very nice. I like him. It’s impossible not to.” She smiles. “He took me under his wing and was showing me around. He’s going to give me swimming lessons, too.”

Hearing that makes me bristle. I think of Vali, with her wet clothing clinging to her breasts, rubbing up against me when I’d tried to give her lessons. Balo is not interested in women, but it does not mean I am not jealous that he’s going to spend so much time with my wife. “It should be me teaching you.”

She eyes me warily. “It should, but I am pleasing myself.”

Her words wound me. They are my words, and I hate them as much as she does. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“You say that a lot, Ranan, yet you still keep hurting me. At some point I need to learn not to put my hand into the fire, right?” Her smile is bright but unnatural. “I can’t trust that the things that slip out are the truth or not. You say they are not, but it keeps happening. How can I believe you?”

“You judge me on my actions instead.” I hold a hand out to her.

She doesn’t take it. Her own hands remain on her thighs, curled into fists. “I need to think, Ranan.”

Her shoulders tense as she says it, as if she expects me to strike her, and I have to remind myself that she was a slave before she was my wife. She has to learn that she is safe even if she disagrees with me. “Take all the time you need, my Vali. I understand.”

She eases a bit at that, glancing around the tent. “Where is the healer? Do you need him?”

I grunt. “He’s probably preparing another foul potion to shove down my throat.”

Her lips twitch. “But are the foul potions working?”

“Aye, they are.” I sound woeful, even to my own ears. “Which means I’ll have to drink more of them.”

She chuckles and gestures at the dish forgotten in my hands. “Eat. You need your strength. You’ve been weak ever since you were injured.”

I take another large bite.

“A sea dragon, hm?” Vali asks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Sea dragons sound fearsome but they are not dangerous unless you wander into their territory. I didn’t want you afraid because there was no chance you would stumble across it. You cannot swim deep enough.”

“But you can.”

“Aye.” I sigh. “My grotto will have to be moved. One does not fight a sea dragon for its territory.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It happens. I am glad I made it out alive and whole. Moving some trinkets is nothing. I might just leave them behind.”

She sputters. “No you’re not! There’s so much money there! You can’t abandon it.”

“If you want me to keep it, I will.”

“I do. Absolutely. You robbed a lot of selfish pricks to get all that loot.”

I bite back a chuckle. Why is it so easy for us to sit here and talk, even when things are bad between us? I want to grab her hand and beg her to understand, to swear that I never meant any of it, and yet I suspect she will not listen. She needs to think on it, as she says. And I need to show her my truth with my actions.

Not an easy thing to do when I’m bedridden.

I finish eating and she brings me a drink, and I hate that even now she waits on me. “Thank you, Vali. For everything. I have not said it enough, but you saved my life. And you keep saving it by taking care of me. I know it has not been easy.”

My words make her pause. She studies my face and a small smile creeps onto hers. “I am doing what any wife would do for her husband. Even if they’re mad at each other.” Then her expression falls as she remembers something. “But you didn’t want a wife, did you?”

“I might not have started out wanting one, but now I cannot imagine my life without one.”

Her smile seems a little more forced, a little sadder. “Do you need anything else? Balo has offered to set up a bed in an empty tent for me to sleep in. Are you sleeping in here?”

Again, I want to throttle Balo and his helpfulness. “Aye, the healer wants me where he can keep an eye on me. And one tent is the same as another…but I would like it if you stayed with me. I like waking up with you.”

“I can sleep here,” she agrees easily.

I expected her to argue. Her easy capitulation surprises me. “I am glad.”

Vali moves in close to me, settling on the blankets. I shift my body, mindful of my leg, and make room for her. She squeezes in next to me and then relaxes at my side, and it feels so familiar and so right that I automatically put my arm around her shoulders, tucking her against me.

“Better already,” I say.

“Behold the healing power of sharing blankets,” Vali teases. “You’ll be so tired of me hogging the bed that you’ll miraculously get better faster.”

“More like having a pretty wife at my side makes me realize how much I hate being helpless.” I rub her arm, and it feels so easy to be with her. It makes me happy. Vali makes me happy. I gaze down at her, at her lovely, upturned face. “May I kiss you?”

“If you want to.”

Her answer bothers me. It’s as guarded and neutral—and permissive—as when I first met her. When she was trying to please me. “It’s not about what I want, Vali?—”

“But it is. You didn’t want a wife, and I’ve nowhere to go if you get rid of me, so I’ll be whatever you want me to be. If you want to kiss me, kiss me.”

It feels like we’ve gone all the way back to the beginning, thanks to my careless mouth. “Then we don’t kiss if you cannot be honest with me about whether or not you want my kiss.”

“Very well.”

We don’t kiss. But we don’t get up, either. I Just hold Vali against my side and wonder what I can do to fix this. How do I woo and prove myself when I’m in my sickbed?

Can I afford not to?