Page 52 of A Highland Healer Captured
“Daenae,” she said, softer now because she needed to blunt him a fraction before he went to find a throat. “Nae yet. We’ll count who’s come near him. We’ll look at gifts and cups and syrups and who carried which tray on which morning. We’ll find the hand. But if ye march out now and set the keep on fire with yer rage, the one who did this will vanish into the heat.”
“Ye saved him.”
She shook her head once. “He saved himself. We only told his body how to choose.” She drew back a step because being close to him with the fire of that look in his eyes felt like standing too near a forge. It was warming and dangerous all at once. “And now,” she said, grabbing the thread of control before it could spool away, “I’ll hold ye to what ye promised me.”
His brows dipped. “Promised?”
“Our bargain.” She folded the remaining linen, precise movements against the rise of her pulse. “I kept me end. Yer son’s breathing. His pulse steadied. I’ll keep working to keep him that way. But ye’ll keep yers. Ye’ll let me go.”
The silence startled her more than shouting would have. He didn’t pace. He didn’t swear. He simply stood, bandaged hand hanging at his side, and studied her as if trying to decide whether she knew what she’d asked.
“Nay,” he said at last.
17
The single syllable went through her like winter water. She couldn’t tell whether the shiver that ran along her spine was fear or fury, or the bitter spark of relief that she hated.
That shameful flicker that confessed she didn’t want to leave the boy, not yet, not like this, not while the cup that had tried to take him still existed in someone’s hand. She set her jaw. “Ye gave yer word.”
“I gave me word to keep him breathing,” he said evenly. “I’ll nae carve the promise thin enough to let it bleed out while we stand here arguing the shape of it.”
“It wasnae thin.” Her voice rose, heat threading through it. “Ye stole me. Ye told me I’d go once he was safe. I’ve held him to this world all night long and?—”
“And ye think I’ll cut the rope now?” His voice didn’t rise, which was worse. “Ye saved him from one dose. Whoever did this may dose again. If ye want him alive as much as ye say ye do—if ye want to keep whatever vow ye made to yerself the day ye first touched his brow—then ye’ll stay long enough to help me find the hand that feeds him poison.”
“This is comfort dressed as command,” she snapped, anger and something more frantic pricking her eyes. “A man’s way of calling a cage a kindness.”
“I’masking,” he said, and it did something to her because he wasn’t the sort to gild orders in courtesies he didn’t mean. “Nae for me. Forhim. Stay.”
She felt the world tilt, and hated that it didn’t tilt clean.
Ariella’s name flashed through her like a bell.
Run, then heal, then run,a voice urged.
Heal, then run,another argued.
Daenae run at all,whispered something treacherous that wore Grayson’s laugh for a mask.
Skylar pressed her palm to her sternum as if she could pin herself to the best version of herself by force of will.
“Daenae look at me like that,” Zander said, and the roughness in it sounded like a man who knew exactly the knife-edge he’d put her on and hated himself for it.
She needed to get out of this room before she did something she could never take back.
“I’ll send for yer kin. I’ll send a rider to yer aunt. I swear it on—” He stopped, breathed, changed the oath. “—on me son’s breath.”
She stared at him and believed him, which only made things worse. “Why have ye always chosen the vow that ties me to ye,” she whispered.
“I choose the vow that holds him.”
The room felt smaller, the walls closer. She was suddenly very aware of how near his body was to hers, of the heat rolling off him, of the blood still wet at the cuff of his sleeve.
She told herself the shiver down her back was fear of what he’d become if he didn’t have her work to hold him steady. It might have been. It might also have been the echo of his mouth in the study, the memory of how easily she’d gone against herself when he’d kissed her like a man in a burning building taking one breath of good air.
“Fine,” she said, and hated that the word came out a shade huskier than she meant. She cleared her throat. “We’ll do itme way. Quiet. Methodical. We’ll not spook the snake from the heather before we ken the angle of its fangs.”
He held her gaze as if weighing how much she could bear if he broke his vow not to frighten her. Then his shoulders lowered a fraction. “Ye’ll help me name them.”
