Page 18 of Captive

She wanted to get up and stab him with his own sword. Instead, pathetically, she put her face in her hands, curled in on herself, and sobbed.

Tears ran down her face and mixed with the water dripping from her hair. The air against her wet clothes and skin was frigid and made it hard to move. She wanted to stop, and couldn’t, and after a while she stopped bothering to try.

At some point, Aruna stopped talking. She wasn’t sure whether he was even still there, and she didn’t care. When she grew too tired to even cry, and she just sat there, quiet. The river murmured behind her.

She became aware of a scraping in the sand. She looked up, and Aruna was writing something.

“It’s cold. Let’s go.”

She shook her head slowly. She had not been sure what his reaction to her breakdown would be, but she had not expected him to stand still and do nothing, as he was doing now. After a moment, he started writing again.

“Please.”

She looked up at him. He looked almost as exhausted as she did. He sniffed, pushing wet hair out of his face. He was shivering.

Novikke sat there for another long few seconds, then gathered her strength and raised an arm to write again, because the pain was so bad now that she could hardly stand it.

“Shoulder hurts. Too much.”

He frowned, his eyes moving up to her shoulder.

He came closer and held out a hand. Novikke looked at it tiredly. When she didn’t take it, he nodded upstream. Novikke followed his gaze. She couldn’t see the bridge anymore. The water had carried them a good distance away. But that didn’t mean that whoever had attacked them wasn’t still nearby.

She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet again.

???

They walked for perhaps an hour before stopping again, but it felt like longer to Novikke.

They both gathered wood for a fire, both slow and shivering, and Aruna somehow manufactured a flame despite his wet tinder. The fire grew, and as soon as it was stable he piled more wood on it.

Novikke was the first to start peeling off clothes. She was too cold and too tired to be concerned with modesty. She stripped to her underwear and chest wrap and draped her wet clothes haphazardly near the fire. The blanket and bedroll in Aruna’s bag were soaked through as well, so there was nothing but the fire to stave off the chill.

She sat in the dirt by the fire with her arms around her knees, edging closer until the heat stung her damp skin. She stared into the flames, vaguely aware of Aruna moving around as he set out things from his bag to dry.

He hadn’t tied her hands again. Maybe he’d decided there was no need anymore. They were too far into the forest. She was trapped by geography and by the strange forces of nature and magic there, not by ropes.

She listened to him moving about the camp and wondered what he was thinking.

If she were him, she would be reconsidering how much trouble a single courier was worth. Someone else in the forest, an unknown enemy, had tried to kill him. They’d both been half-drowned in the river. Maybe he was thinking he should just leave her. Or kill her.

Maybe he was afraid. He was alone, except for her. If he encountered a group of hostile humans or sun elves, he wouldn’t be able to fight them.

After a while, he approached her. Novikke looked up, and her breath caught.

He’d stripped to underwear as well. She hadn’t thought that she had the energy to care about such things until she looked up at him.

Her eyes roved over the outlines of the muscles of his chest and abdomen, down to the V at his hips and down long, athletic legs, then back up to the angles of his shoulders and jaw and the curve of his lips and to his bright eyes.

By the Five.

Why did he have to be so attractive? Why couldn’t he have been old? Why couldn’t he have been cruel? It would make it so much easier to dislike him.

He gave a tiny, half-hearted smile that seemed almost apologetic. She realized she was still tense, and he must have seen it. Maybe he hadn’t noticed her leering.

She noticed that his eyes did not wander from her face. She wondered if that was because he was purposely trying not to look, or if she just wasn’t interesting enough to bother looking at.

She had less to offer than he did in that area. She was taller than average, with a face that was more masculine than was popular, and a body built from traveling long distances on foot and by horse, meaning that she had neither the curves nor toned strength that men might find interesting. And she had a very boring combination of light, freckled skin and dirt-colored hair, though she supposed it was possible that elves might find that exotic rather than plain.

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