Page 194 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
“Your neck,” I countered.
I had avoided looking at the blood smeared across her throat, her collarbone, knowing how close it had come to taking her from me.
She narrowed her eyes. “It’s nothing. It’s already stopped bleeding, which is more than I can say for you. You’ll stain the carriage seats.”
There was forced nonchalance in her tone, but it was easy to see she was precariously close to...something.
So instead of arguing, I turned to give her access to the wounds.
She used my flask to clean her hands before silently pouring the remaining vodka over my wounds as well. I winced as it burned my open flesh, but it was nothing compared to the solution she applied next.
It burned like every kind of hell.
I forced myself not to flinch, taking slow breaths as it bubbled away on each of my seven lashes.
She hissed an apology under her breath before gently applying a salve. Afterward, she wrapped a muslin bandage around me several times, but by the last wrap, her hands were starting to shake.
I pulled my shirt back on, turning to tend to her neck. I made quick work of her wounds, which were deeper than she let on, and tried not to show my rage all over again.
She avoided my gaze the entire time, her fingers quivering a little more with each passing moment. When I was done, I took her slim hands in mine. They were freezing and trembling, all of the adrenaline from the battle leeching from her body.
“Lemmikki?”
She shook her head.
“Rowan?” I tried again, using her name softly.
Finally, her eyes met mine, glistening with unshed tears. Something inside me broke apart at the rare sight, and I squeezed her hands a little tighter.
“I almost lost you,” she whispered, her tone low and insistent to the point of sounding panicked. “And I—I don’t want to be in a world where you’re not.”
Her words landed like blows to my chest. As well as I could read her, she kept her emotions on a tight leash most of the time. It was one thing, knowing that she loved me, but this...it filled me with a mix of elation and pure terror.
Because I was a soldier, and the reality was that my life had been on the line more than once and undoubtedly would be again.
“Don’t ever say that, Lemmikki,” I growled. “Whatever happens to me, you’re a survivor.”
Her features hardened, her furious green eyes boring into mine.
“No.” She shook her head again. “You don’t get to walk willingly into that evil woman’s clutches, put your life on the line, and then tell me I can’t feel the same way.”
Then the tears started spilling down her face in truth, and I pulled her against me, cradling her against my chest.
I didn’t respond, because there was nothing honest I could say, so I only pressed my lips into her hair while I ran my hands in comforting lines up and down her back.
I understood her panic better than I wished I did.
It was the way I had felt tonight watching that dagger bite into her throat, like if I lost her, I would lose every part of myself that mattered, too.
Like there was nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to stop that from happening.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
We rode through the rest of the day and most of the night, until we finally had no choice but to rest the horses.
It was still too slow. I needed to get Rowan back to the estate, behind the fortified walls, before Iiro decided to come after us. But this situation was tense enough. I couldn’t show up and proclaim myself Duke without my father’s body, couldn’t be seen to abandon it on the road.
Rowan passed out in our small bed at the inn before I could even send up dinner. Sleep didn’t come as easily to me. Or at all. Finally, I could lay there no longer and I crept from our bed, walking silently into the hallway.