Page 42 of Artemysia
She takes a deep, slow breath. “Just the opposite,” she mutters, her lips barely moving as if she doesn’t know she’s saying it out loud. Maybe she doesn’t. She’s looking a bit heavy-lidded, drowsy from the anesthetic.
A prickle rushes up my back. Does she mean shelikesmy touch? No. It must be the medicated haze she’s in.
“Maybe it’s like the time Ivy and I picked ‘edible’ mushrooms, but they made our skin tingle and glow? Everything tickled. So, like fucking morons, we threw rocks at each other and laughed the evening away, only regretting it the next day when we found ourselves bruised like pearberries,” I blather on, partly to keep her from drifting off to sleep.
She snickers and shakes her head. “No, it’s not quite like that.”
Delphine can’t possibly want anything more from an unhinged savage like me. Can she? No, of course not. Why do I care?
Demons alive, this woman will be my ruination.
She’s staring out the window. Unfortunately for me, the blanket covering the front of her chest slips away as she relaxes. I shut my eyes, but it’s too late. The swell of her breasts ending at her exposed rosy nipples peaked from the cold air just about destroys me. I hope she doesn’t notice that I’m jutting out obscenely, hard as steel and practically rupturing the seams of my pants.
“You’re done,” I say stiffly. “You were very brave. Thank you for saving Ivy.”
“I’d do the same for any of you,” she says softly. “I’m your captain. It’s what I do—I keep people alive.”
It takes all my willpower to resist clasping her to my chest like a baby bird needing warmth. Instead, I wrap her tighter in her blanket and guide her to one of the two bedrooms. I dart into the bathroom and return with a warm towel to wipe her face and help her clean the dried blood off her back.
“You’re going to get sleepy soon. That’s the second part of theanesthetic.”
She grips my forearm to steady herself. “No, wait! Can you send Throg in to sit here when he’s back? I don’t want to wake up alone and hurting in a strange place. Or…could…you stay for a bit?”
This must be the unbridled honesty she was talking about.
It slays my hardened, charred heart. The vulnerability in her tone is genuine, because I know she would never admit this otherwise. She’s too strong. Her pleading eyes are glassy, and I know she’s in the gauzy stage right before sleep.
“Sure. I promise. You won’t be alone. I’ll sit with you until Throg is back.”
“Okay, thanks, Riev.” She gives a quick squeeze of my arm before releasing it.
She rises up and leans in to brush her warm lips on my cheek. “Thank you,” she says again and turns away. She unbuckles her belt with one hand before kicking off her boots and riding pants. She has thermals on underneath, which she leaves on as she tucks herself into the quilted bed.
I don’t know what else to say, so I ease into the plaid wool armchair beside the bed and pick up a book from the nightstand, pretending to flip through it.
She’s lying on her right side, the uninjured side, facing away from me. “If there are any good verses in there, you can read them aloud if you want. You know I like poetry. You saw my collection in the clock tower.”
“Why do you enjoy flowery words like that?”
“Poems remind me of the beauty in everyday things when the days get tough…” Her voice drops off.
My heart melts like sheep’s milk butter.
I read aloud a few paragraphs from the book. It’s some old tale about giant flying snakes and monsters of yore beyond our southern mountains.
Her heavy breathing tells me she’s passed out.
I wonder if she’s warm enough, so I get to work building a fire in the bedroom hearth.
As I return to my chair, listening to her light snores, it drives me mad to realize my violent heart is in trouble and that there’s no fucking way to fight it.
“I almost died when she murmured my name.” - Riev
Delphine sleeps through the night and most of the next day. The drugs were strong, but while I was sewing her up, her skin was cold and ashen, her breathing shallow, and her pupils enlarged.
All signs of shock.
Overnight, I obsessively checked for signs of fever or chills, took her pulse, and made sure she didn’t roll onto her stitched shoulder and reopen her wound.
