Page 57 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

“Iknowyou don’t care, Summer, butIdo. And I do not want to be healed.”

I glared at him in frustration and debated healing him despite his wishes but quickly decided against doing that. The concept of consent was too important to him.

“Fine, you stubborn prick!” I growled furiously as I sat back and motioned for him to sit forward so I could tend to his wounds by hand.

“I heal quickly, you know,” Sage attempted to argue, his voice pinched in pain as he moved for me.

“Build a fire, get me some Ichor of Airmid if you have such a thing in this court, and boil water,” I said to Ciaran as he finished unsaddling his vargr. I fully expected him to react angrily to my demands, but he merely nodded his agreement. He easily cleared ground and started a fire and then disappeared to hunt through the underbrush.

There were a few moments of quiet in which I tried to remove Sage’s clothing as gently as I could. Serafin came and curled up next to him, moving as stiffly as his rider did with arrows in his hips and side. He put his head on Sage’s thigh and nosed myanamin demand for affection. It seemed like it was too painful for Sage to move his arm to pet the vargr, but he was able to scratch Serafin’s ears with his fingers without moving too much.

“You look good in the armour,” Sage told me once I had him stripped down to his undershirt and counted four arrow stubs sticking out of him. I scoffed at his comment. “And you seem to be angry with me,” he added.

“You think? You gave me your armour, and then you pushed me over a cliff,” I growled, and I felt him hesitate as if I had taken him off guard.

“I’m sorry to have scared you. I knew Pyrope would catch you, and it was either that or watch you kill yourself with your own magic,” he explained a little curtly.

That certainly didnotsound like an apology.

“You pushed meoff a cliff, and that’s all you have to say to me?” I demanded in disbelief. I had been expecting him to grovel for my forgiveness after what he did.

“You did not leave me much choice since you were determined to kill yourself!” Sage responded. This time his frustration with me was unmistakable, and I blinked in shock as my hands lowered from his back to my thighs.

The fragile parts of me wanted to shy away from his anger, to bruise and bleed and revert to old habits that demanded I should retaliate to protect myself. But I didn’t want to push him away, and I knew that even if this disagreement felt like an attack, it wasn’t. Sage promised that he could be angry and still care, and I trusted him.

“Are you seriously mad at me for trying to protect you when you are the one who is riddled with arrows because you gave me your armour? That’s not fair!”

“Summer, I would take a thousand arrows in the back if it meant I never have to see you do that again.”

“I don’t understand what I was supposed to have done differently with a cloud of arrows coming at us! I hope you don’t think that just because I’m a female—”

“It’s not that!” he interrupted me sharply, and then he took a deep breath to calm himself before he spoke again. “You are not yet initiated, so you were not a part of the discussion when we devised a plan, and there was no time to explain,” he continued more patiently after a moment. “But if you had looked back, then you would have seen that Ciaran was prepared to counter the arrows. Burning them would have been much easier for him than shielding with water was for you.”

Shit.Shit.

“I didn’t realize,” I whispered.

“I know. You could not have anticipated us, but that is not what made me angry, Summer. Your very first resort was to giveeverything. I have never seen anyone but Rian use their magic so recklessly. It is like you just don’t care what it does to you,” he accused me.

“I…”

“Don’t care,” he finished my sentence in frustration. “Andthatis what makes me so angry.”

I remained kneeling behind him for a quiet moment of uncertainty about how to respond.

“Come here,” he said, his voice more gentle now.

“No. I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said as I reached for his undershirt again.

“Summer. Come here,” he insisted more firmly.

I sighed loudly with exasperation, but then I began to move gingerly around Sage. He winced as he moved his arms unexpectedly, and I gasped when he pulled me onto his lap. I displaced a mildly aggravated Serafin who then moved his chin onto my thigh instead.

“You are in pain! Let me at least take these arrows out of you first,” I protested, but Sage grunted in dismissal.

“You can remove them when it’s time to disinfect the wounds,” he told me as he reached up with another grimace to take my hand that was resting on his chest. And then he bent his head forward, lifting my hand up so he could kiss my knuckles.

I grew very still as all of my attention zeroed in on the soft warmth of his lips on my skin.

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