29. Rowan

Chapter 29

Rowan

I settle on the floor beside Kai, angling my body to let the maximum light from the torch illuminate the wound. The shaft is broken and there isn't much of a tail left to grab onto. I pull the fabric away from the incision to get a better look at what we are dealing with—only to yank my hands away when Kai chokes on a pained howl.

Shit. I’d already suspected something on the arrow head, and his reaction proves me right. This isn’t just a puncture injury, it’s something else all together.

Kai gulps for breath, his face ashen, his jaw clenched so tight I fear his teeth might shatter. Sweat beads on his forehead despite the wet and cold cellar around us.

“Kai…” I hesitate, my hands hovering over the wound. I don’t know what to do. But I know that I don’t want to hurt him like that again. And I’d hardly done anything.

His ice-blue eyes flash with something. Pain, obviously. Stubbornness, always. But also… fear? No, that can't be right. Kai doesn't do fear.

Reaching down, he grabs the pant leg and tears the fabric himself until the whole calf is exposed. The flesh around the embedded arrowhead is an angry, inflamed red, but it’s the thin black spidery lines that radiate from that puncture wound that make my stomach turn. The skin between the lines is sickly and grayish, as if the arrow is leeching the life from the flesh it punctures.

I use a wet corner of my cloak to wipe away the blood. And he gasps again.

Maybe he is right. Maybe manipulating the wound will do more harm than good. “Do you want me to stop?” I ask.

Kai shakes his head, and for a second I see that glimmer of fear in his gaze again. “No,” he whispers. “Get it out. Please. Get it out of me.”

“All right.” I touch his good leg. “I will.”

Kai blinks and his walls return, his eyes all strength and determination again. "You’ll need something to pull it out with. There. That should do.”

I look to where he is pointing to find a small, rusted pair of pliers beside the wall. I realize they’ve been left behind by accident, not recently brought in on purpose.

Kai braces his hands against the floor in anticipation.

I leave the pliers on the floor. Digging about with them would be madness—crude madness—and rub my hands together instead.

"What are you doing?" He sounds annoyed, but I know better now. I can hear the hidden edge of anxiety in his voice.

"I’m trying to not be stupid. Don’t bother me.” Closing my eyes, I place my hands firmly on either side of the wound and focus on the one thing I know well: alchemy.

I don't usually work with metal through flesh, and the heat of Kai's skin coupled with the sticky wetness of his blood is distracting. Pushing past that, past the way his entire body spasms beneath my hands, I let my magic seek out the metal and the auric alloy I know so well. There, beneath the surface, I feel it. The harsh shape of the arrowhead, its edges jagged and cruel and pliable. But more importantly, I sense the unique signature of auric steel. My auric steel. I made the alloy that went into the arrow. I know it. And it knows me.

I begin to work, my fingers moving in small, precise motions as I manipulate the very structure of the metal. The steel obeys well enough—the greatest danger is to avoid corroding Kai's flesh along with the projectile—but the auric alloy itself is another story.

"The alloy is reacting to something in your blood," I murmur, trying to pull back the molecules that keep escaping my control. It’s like the metal is alive, hungry, and latching onto Kai’s essence with a viciousness I can’t fully counter. "I don’t understand it.”

“Just get it out,” Kai says through gritted teeth.

Right. I focus on coaxing the alloy toward me, the molecules resisting the eviction from Kai's body. I've never felt them react like this before but I work through it, pouring my concentration and magic into the metal. Into Kai's flesh. Slowly, the metal begins to change at its core, shifting its shape from inside out until the arrow head takes an oval-like form, its edges smoothed and loose speckles of reactive auric alloy clinging to it under protest.

I don't warn Kai before pulling the metal free, but I don't breathe either until it comes out with a sickening pop.

Kai slumps forward slightly, catching his weight by bracing his hand on his good leg. "Thank you," he pants, closing his eyes. “Thank you. Rowan.”

Rowan. Not Ainsley.

I let out a shuddering breath and let my head drop to my chest. I’m exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Staring down at my hands, still slick with Kai's blood, I discover them trembling. I stick them into my armpits, both to still them and to find warmth. Because I’m cold again. That anger that was keeping heat rolling through me?—it’s gone. Spent. And I can’t get it back.

“Are you alright?” Kai asks. He’s torn the hem of his shirt off and is now wrapping the material around the wound with a great deal less discomfort than he’d had earlier.

“I’m fine.” My head throbs and my vision blurs at the edges. The dank air of the cellar is suffocating, thick with the coppery scent of blood that seems to bother me more than Kai now. How had things shifted so quickly?

“I've never felt metal behave so malevolently before,” I say. “It was actively fig hting against my control, as if it had a malicious will of its own. It doesn’t make sense.”

“You concoct an alloy in a workshop. It’s not exactly real life over there.”

I raise my face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kai pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

It’s not nothing. I try to summon my anger again, but I just have nothing left. “Fine.”

“I just meant that things are always different in real battle,” he says more gently. “It’s always harder. Unpredictable. It’s normal to be surprised.”

I know he means well, but all I hear is that it’s normal for me to be a mess out in the field. Which isn’t news to me, but it still stings. “Give me your shackles.”

“Why?” He asks but moves his legs toward me obediently.

“Metal,” I place my hand on the chain. “I can’t melt it or break it like another enchanter might, but maybe I can manipulate it on a molecular level. Weaken it.” Or maybe I can’t. I don’t know. But it’s better than sitting here being cold and useless.

After a few minutes of intense focus, I feel Kai's gentle touch on my shoulder. "Aisnely, stop.”

I shake my head stubbornly. “I can do this.”

He pulls my hands away from the shackles. “You are exhausted.”

“And you aren’t?” I try to shake him off. “Kyrian isn’t? Logan? Wherever the bloody hell he is now. Whoever else they are holding hostage in this inn? Everyone is exhausted, Grayson. And, unlike me, they didn’t take a little nap in the middle of a battle, causing their team to get shot and captured.”

"No. Ainsley. Rowan." Kai kneels over me, his attention and warmth wrapping about my shoulders. "This isn't on you. Not any of it."

"Don't lie to me." The words come through clenched teeth. I wish I could drown in his murmurs, take them as the kindness they are offered as, but I can't. "Please. Just don't lie to me. That's all I ask. No lies. "

"Alright," he agrees with obvious reluctance. His hand moves to cup my face, tilting it up so I'm forced to meet his intense gaze. Even in the dim light of the cellar, his eyes are piercing, filled with a mixture of determination and something softer that I can't quite name, but instinctively know is rare. "No lies. This isn't your fault."

"You wouldn't be out there if not for me," I say.

"That's the job I signed up for."

"I... swooned. What kind of soldier swoons?"

"The kind who has a unique skill set in alchemy. Or did you think everyone wants you for your size and brawn?"

"I made the arrow," I confess. "The auric alloy the steel was treated with. I made it. I could feel the composition."

"And had that arrow been the work of another alchemist, the metal may not have obeyed you. You saved my leg." His thumb brushes away a tear I didn't realize had already made it to the bottom of my jaw. Another tear. What is happening with me? Why am I suddenly falling apart when Kai looks utterly put together.

Taking one of my hands, he presses it against his chest, right over his steadily beating heart. “I’m alright now,” he says. “See? You made me alright. You did that.”

I smile weakly and he nods, his touch sending a shiver through me and making me suddenly and acutely aware of every inch of him—the way his muscular thighs press against my own, the bend of his shoulders as his lean body hovers protectively over mine, the spicy masculine scent of his skin.

His hand moves from my face to the nape of my neck, fingers tangling in my rain-dampened hair. I can feel his heartbeat quicken, matching the frantic pace of my own. We're balanced on a knife's edge, and I'm not sure if I want to pull back or lean in. The only heat in the whole place is the furnace of his body so close to mine.

Kai's lips part slightly, and something in my subconscious finds the movement familiar. As if I'd felt his mouth on mine recently, an anchor amidst the pouring rain, wind, and fear. Did I imagine feeling him kiss me? Or is the phantom image new, a desire turned into a taunting memory? Does it matter ?

I want to taste him. I want him to taste me.

"What do you want?" Kai whispers against my ear. "No lies, Rowan. Tell me what you want."

"I want to not be here," I say. "At least for a while. I don't want to be here."

"I think I can do that," Kai replies, and suddenly the feel of his lips on mine is anything but an illusion.

Except hadn't Logan once promised me something similar?