Her words were senseless. He’d healed her body but her mind was something he couldn’t touch. Kjell sat back on his haunches, putting a few feet between them.
“Are you . . . all right?” he asked. He wanted to ask if she was whole—healed—but didn’t want to draw any more attention to what he’d just done. His gift frightened people. It frightened him. She began to raise herself up gingerly, and he extended his hand to assist her. She didn’t take it, but paused, sitting silently as if listening to her body. He needed to stand. His knees were numb, and his hips screamed from kneeling so long at her side. His head felt light and disconnected from the rest of his body, as if it floated above him like a cloud, thick and weightless, his thoughts muddled with fatigue.
His hands trembling, he pushed himself up, demanding that his cramped legs hold him. The healing had left him bled out, depleted, and he didn’t want his men—or the woman who watched him with hollow eyes—to see the after-effects of using his gift. They couldn’t know. Such knowledge was noted and tucked away, a secret to be traded among warring tribes and plotting men. He was not loved like his brother and had never inspired a similar loyalty. But he was feared like his father, and that suited him well enough.
The woman rose with him, defying the blood that still soaked the earth where she had lain. She was taller than he expected—long and slim—saving him from getting a crick in his neck to look into her face. Her hair was unbound and fell in matted disarray past the swell of her hips. Her thin dress, little more than a gown for sleeping, stuck to her skin in gory splotches. Her feet were shod in the short leather boots of a desert dweller, as if she’d left her home in a hurry, prioritizing shoes over her clothing.
“What is your name?” he asked. She hesitated, and he suspected that she was going to lie to him. He was well-accustomed to women who lied, and immediately braced himself not to believe her.
“I am called Sasha,” she supplied reluctantly, and his brows rose in disbelief.
It was hardly a name. It was a command used on horses or cattle—often accompanied by a kick to the flanks or a slap to the rump—to get them to move. He hissed the word several times a day, and wondered who had given the poor woman her moniker.
“And where is your home, Sasha?” He winced as he addressed her.
She turned toward the cliff that loomed above them, steep walls and jagged teeth, unwelcoming in the flickering torch-light.
“I live in Solemn, but it was never my home.” There was grief in the simple revelation, and he braced himself against it. He did not want to know her pain. He’d done what he could for her. Some pain was not within his power to ease. She said no more, but continued staring at the cliffs, as if her life had truly ended there, and she didn’t know what came next. She took a few steps toward the cliff wall, and he stepped aside, following her with his eyes. His gaze caught on a white cloth caught by the brush that grew in the cracks and crags about twenty feet from the base of the cliff. The woman—Sasha—moved toward it as if it belonged to her and scrambled up several feet before he realized she had every intention of scaling the wall to reach it.
“Come down. I won’t heal you twice.”
She bowed her head briefly, as if she knew she should listen, but then continued, scurrying upward several more feet and untangling the pale fabric from the branch while clinging to the wall with curled toes and one hand.
“It is mine,” she informed him—slightly breathless—when she stood in front of him once more. She wrapped the cloth carefully over her blood soaked hair and secured the edges around her waist. She was calm and composed, and her serenity made him wary. He’d healed her body, but a physical healing didn’t erase her memory or alter her experience. She had fallen. She had teetered between life and death. Yet she did not cry or tremble. She didn’t ask him questions or seek to understand—or explain—what had happened.
“There is a stream in the crevice between the cliffs. I will show you and your men,” she said.
“How did you know I was not alone?” he asked.
“I saw you,” she replied, repeating the first words she’d said, and his stomach shivered uncomfortably at her insistence. She’d been unconscious when they found her.
He whistled sharply, the sound piercing the darkness, sending a signal to his men. He waited, his eyes on the strange woman, until Jerick and several other men stepped out from the shadows and halted with stunned curses. A lance clattered against the ground.
“The woman knows where there is water. We’ll stay here for the night,” Kjell directed. “Gather the others and bring me my horse.”
“And Solemn?” Jerick asked, recovering quickly, as if he’d never doubted his captain’s ability.
The woman jerked like the word was a whip against her flesh.
“Tomorrow,” Kjell answered, and her eyes shot to his. “We’ll go tomorrow. When it’s light.”
Sasha was curled nearby, Kjell’s cloak tucked around her, the length of cloth she’d reclaimed from the cliff folded beneath her fiery hair. He could now see that the cloth was the palest blue, shot with streaks of white, like the sun had bleached it unevenly. When he’d fallen asleep, she was still huddled near the fire in his cloak, her simple, dark blue gown spread out to dry nearby. She’d clearly found him in the dark and lain beside him. She was closer to his feet than his face, but near enough that he would have stumbled over her had he risen before dawn. He didn’t know what to make of her proximity beyond the obvious: If he’d healed her, she had value to him. If he valued her, she was safer with him than with anyone else.
In the gathering light, the copper flecks on her skin were bolder, reflecting the warmth of her hair. The blood had left her dress stained in darker patches, but she was relatively clean, her hair free of gore and glorious in the yawning rays that stole across the plains from the east and collided with the crags. She’d been right about the water—a stream tumbled from a crevice and collected in a gulley between two jagged walls—and she’d lead them through a narrow canyon only minutes from where they’d found her. She’d waited until the men had filled their bellies and their carafes before kneeling beside the pool and rinsing her matted hair and soot-streaked skin. Her blood-soaked gown was another matter, and Kjell had left her with his cloak and a wedge of soap, withdrawing to a small clearing nearby with his men.