36. Killian

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

KILLIAN

S titching was the worst part of being wounded.

Well, recovery in general was my least favorite part of being injured, but stitching was awful. It didn't hurt all that much, just tiny added pinpricks and tugs, but the tugs were the problem. Not that they were painful, but that your skin wasn't supposed to tug in those directions. If you were conscious for the stitching, aware of the movement, it was the most unsettling feeling in the world.

So when I woke to the healer stitching my wound, it was irritating.

After all, being rendered unconscious by blood loss was supposed to get you a free pass to not have to live with being stitched.

The Hawk healer, an older woman with a face like she'd spent all her free time sucking on a lemon, scowled up at me as my eyes fluttered open. "Stop moving," she demanded.

I only blinked at her, not sure my tongue would move on command just yet.

"Damned Cranes, always trouble," she mumbled as she went back to stitching. "Who can move around so much while injured this badly, that he tears his stitching?"

Ah.

Yes, that would be me.

The first time I'd woken up after major injury, I'd been strapped to my own bed, because I'd reacted in my sleep as though in a fight, trying to dodge the needle.

I was considering the merits of asking the sour woman to tie me up when the bed moved next to me, and I turned immediately to defend myself.

Well, I tried. The healer's large hand pressed into my chest, and for perhaps the first time I remembered in my life, I didn't have the strength to fight. Not that I actually wanted to fight the healer.

Instead of trying anything more strenuous, I turned my head to see what was happening on the other side of the bed.

It was a bed I didn't know, but that was nothing new. I'd woken in plenty of places I didn't know after injury before.

It was clear, however, from turning my head, that I'd never been injured this badly before. Just that tiny movement, rolling my neck to one side, had taken every scrap of effort I had. Or maybe it had been the attempt to roll my whole body and defend myself that had left me exhausted, sweaty and panting.

Next to me on the bed, though, was Hector.

He looked like a corpse from a battlefield had just stood up and walked to me, with deep circles under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks that had never been there before. No amount of broth and oats could keep a person's strength up like actual, substantial food.

It was his eyes that held my attention, though.

His absolutely irate glare.

"Three months," he hissed. "Three months, you insist that I can't go fight on the wall. I can't fuck you, for fear of Avianitis. I can barely fucking move or breathe, because if I step wrongly, I might be killed, and you can't abide that. But then you—" He broke off for a moment, panting, his breaths wheezy and wrong. "How dare you demand of me what you're not willing to give yourself?"

I blinked at him for a moment, uncertain of how we'd gone from my concern for his life to something I demanded from him before... oh. He was worried I was going to die. Angry that I'd insisted he live and then gone and possibly gotten myself killed.

But getting myself killed was my job. It was a minor miracle I was alive. I'd already passed the age my mother would never reach. I was a Crane.

I was Crane.

Dying to defend Nemeda was what we did. It was all we were good for anymore.

I wanted to turn toward him. To explain that dying was what I was supposed to do, but not him. Never him. But the healer's hand on my chest seemed made of steel, so I settled for looking him in the eye.

For a moment I just breathed, centering myself, making sure that when I opened my mouth words would come out. The last thing I needed was for my voice to fail me, and worry him more. I glanced around the room, looking for any clear signs I was about to die, not that I knew what those might be.

Brett was standing in the doorway, looking pale and concerned, but mostly fine. The only other people in the room were Hector and the healer.

I glanced at her, and my instinct was to tell her to look after him, not me.

Which was when I realized he was right.

"'M I dying?" I asked the healer, and it mostly came out right. Not as slurred or broken or raspy as I'd feared it might.

She pursed her lips, and for a moment, stared at my wound. Then she looked up and met my eye. "If you tear these stitches again, I might kill you myself," she began, and then she didn't continue. There was hesitation in her voice. Worry. She thought I might die.

Damn.

I sighed and looked back to Hector. "Sorry. I'll try to live." Now my voice was going raspy. That was a little pathetic. The tickle at the back of my throat said if I tried to do much more talking, I'd have to cough, and I had enough experience with stitches to know that wouldn't end well.

Fuck, I wished Orestes were there. Not only because he would be the perfect replacement for me if I did go dying on everyone, but because the bastard was big enough to sit on me and keep me from thrashing about if he needed to. More than that, he knew I thrashed, and he'd have told them to tie me up to begin with.

Instead of trying to reassure Hector further, I reached out and grabbed his hand with my own. Even as the tugging in my skin continued, something settled inside me at the touch. As though he'd read my mind and knew my throat was tickling, a moment later Brett was propping me up and forcing me to drink water.

I looked up at him as I let him move me around like a doll, drinking as much as I could manage, and he sighed, glancing over to the rest of the room. "We've got to start replacing all the damned blood you lost, you ass. Drink more."

I glanced where he had, and that was... well, it looked like a triage room. Which was disconcerting because it was clearly a bedroom, not intended for this sort of work. Also, it wasn't the blood of everyone who'd been treated after a southern incursion... well, except that it was. The problem was that in this case, everyone was me.

When Brett let me back down, resettling me on the bed, I looked back at Hector. My voice was stronger this time, when I said, "I'll live if you will."

From the look on his face, I wasn't sure if he wanted to hit me or kiss me.