Page 37 of Ties of Death

“I’ll put on my riding gloves,” I decide aloud. It will make this slightly more difficult, but if this is what I must do to convince him to let me care for him, then I’ll do it. “Now sit down before I make you.”

That smirk ghosts across his face again, probably because the Daenn he’s grown into is one I couldn’t possibly force to do a single thing, but he obediently sits in the dirt right in front of me.

I tug on my gloves and pull out the salve. I hesitate before dipping my fingers in it; will it ruin my gloves? Or worse, what if the leather ruins the salve so it’s useless for him?

“I’ll apply that,” he offers after a moment. “You can do the rest.”

I consider, then agree. I tilt the salve jar toward his free hand. He efficiently strips off his glove and dips his fingers in the salve.

“I’ve been thinking…” I trail off as I watch him smear the salve over his wound. He gives no visible reaction to the touch of salve, but his tension is palpable over the bond. I have to resist the urge to wince despite feeling no pain myself.

I clear my throat and start over. “I was thinking—what if we don’t need to get rid of the magic?”

Daenn’s hand stills for half a moment. His jaw ripples. “No.”

“No, listen. The problem before has always been that it would strike wildly, yes? You couldn’t control it, couldn’t wieldit. But I did. I used it during our fight with those riders. I’ve never been able to wield my magic before this bond either, so perhaps you can now too. Maybe you just need to learn to control it so it doesn’t lash out without you willing it to.”

He finishes applying the salve and silently offers me his arm. I pass him a rag for his fingers before setting about carefully rolling his sleeve up without brushing it against the wound or the salve. Once it’s out of the way, I begin wrapping his arm in bandages.

The silence stretches. His gloved hand rests on my shoulder to keep his arm in the right position to wrap, and I find myself resisting the urge to lean into it. His lack of response is a growingthingin the air, making me want to squirm. I focus instead on my task, on the way his muscles ripple under his skin with every slight shift, on the rich light olive tone to his skin.

It’s certainly not a hardship to help him.

I am nearly finished wrapping his arm when he finally speaks.

“If this is a way you can defend yourself while we travel, I encourage you to do so. But it carries too much risk as a permanent solution.” He glances sideways at me. “And if we don’t dissolve the magic, you will have to stay in your current role. You can’t be rid of me while our magics are tangled together. The bracers solve all our problems. They allow me to be free of my magic, and you to be free of me. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Of course,” I say automatically. “Of course I do.” I tuck the end of the bandage under itself and lean back. “You’re done.”

He nods like it’s settled, but there’s a twinge of hurt over the bond. He speaks before I can summon my courage to askafter it. “Thank you. Get some rest; I’ll keep watch. We have a full day of travel tomorrow.”

I bid him goodnight and prepare for bed, a nagging tightness in my chest all the while. I successfully dismiss it until I’m lying on my bedroll, buried under a blanket to keep off the mosquitos and too warm. Then there’s nothing to distract me, and the feeling refuses to be ignored any longer.

Why am I looking for ways to prolong this misery? Neither of us want this bond. I never asked for this. I should keep my mouth shut and leave him to his fate. Whether he survives the bracers with his mind intact is of no concern to me. I will be free of him once the bracers do their job, and that’s all I care about. I don’t want to stay trapped by his side forever. I don’t want to be his wife forever. I want my freedom. I want to be left alone.

…Don’t I?

22

A Twisted Tangle

We leave with first light. I didn’t sleep well; every noise of the jungle around us made me jump, and I lay awake for ages after a particularly loud screech that Daenn told me was “only a monkey.”

I’m not sure what a monkey is, so that’s not really comforting.

But this morning is calmer, quieter. The sun is cheery, and up above the oppressive closeness of the jungle, the air is cool. I imagine the wind is tugging all my worries away from me, and for a little while, I simply bask in the sunlight and the wind and the solid feel of Daenn at my back.

We touch down for lunch in a clearing, scaring away some sort of fuzzy wildlife that chatters at us from the trees for a solid minute after we land. Storm loses patience and shrieks in its direction.

It’s silent after that.

I leave Daenn to unpack the food, and I walk the edge of our clearing, stretching my legs and peering between the trees for any sign of snakes or monkeys or insectoid monsters. The sticky heat under the canopy is already getting to me, so I tug off my gloves as I go. There are a few flashes of color in this area—strange rounded flowers in shades of orange, white,and pink, with an opening that reminds me of a lowland lady’s slippers. Waxy deep green fronds are interspersed with lighter green bunches of a moss-like plant with long tiny strands I could see on an old, wizened man’s face in place of his beard.

I stop at a flash of deep color out of the corner of my eye. In the shade of the trees beyond the clearing’s edge grows a profusion of flowers. They’re almost a maroon or purplish-black, especially toward the centers. Delicate yellow pollen stems cluster there, seeming even brighter against the dark petals. A single flower is huge, nearly as large as my face, each petal glossy. I walk closer, pushing past the leaves of a frond. I reach out a hand to touch one—

A spike of alarm stabs through me from the bond, and Daenn’s gloved hand shoots out and grabs my arm before I make contact.

“Don’t,” he warns, his panic subsiding in my chest to a dull relief.

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