Lips that moved, speaking to him in a voice not from the past but from the present.
* * *
Crouching in the corner of the cell with the lone candle she’d lit flickering light over the stone walls, Kavin cringed. Sound asleep, the sahad was like dead weight, and just lifting his elbow made her muscles strain.
His eyes were still closed, his head resting against the wall, but his skin was burning hot to the touch. She’d tried to ignore his murmurs, hoping he was simply dreaming, but the longer they’d gone on, making zero sense, the less she could. Especially when she realized he must have given her his blanket sometime in the night.
She didn’t owe him anything. He’d made it perfectly clear he didn’t want her around. But she couldn’t ignore him either. So she’d lit a candle, climbed out of bed, and crossed the floor. And now her stomach was tossing on a sea of unease at the bright red blood staining the bandage against his ribs.
“You’re impossible to fight with, Marid,” she whispered.
His eyes popped open. His body jerked. Then his hand closed over hers against his elbow.
Kavin gasped, tried to pull away. His grip was strong, locking her in place, reminding her of the night he’d held her against the wall. Fear threatened to push in as he stared hard into her eyes, his gaze clouded and unwavering. But instead of being filled with venom—as before—this time, his eyes looked haunted, not those of a killer per se, but of a man who’d seen too much, lived through too much, and was fighting to cope with the fallout.
Silence stretched between them. Her heart raced beneath her breast. He wasn’t a man, and she was foolish to think him anything but the monster she’d come to know. But…as his fingers seared her skin, as his gaze bore into hers, tension and something Kavin hadn’t felt before—some electric and overpowering current—charged the air.
Her pulse picked up speed as she stared into his hard, dark eyes. Her adrenaline soared. Before she could figure out what the odd sensation was, he let go and dropped his head back against the wall with a groan.
Relief spiraled through her—or was that regret? Her head was so jumbled she suddenly didn’t know. Rubbing her hand over the spot he’d just held, she tried to make sense of what had just happened. Couldn’t.
“Allah,” she muttered, noticing the sweat beaded his brow, the pale and clammy skin. He wasn’t just injured, he was sick. “You need help.”
“Don’t want help,” he whispered, eyes closed. “’Specially not yours. Just want to be left alone. Alone is…safe.”
Emptiness rippled through Kavin’s chest. An emptiness she’d been fighting since the moment her parents had sold her to Zayd. One that had grown and multiplied exponentially with every second she’d been locked in this cell, wondering—dreading—what would happen next. “Being left alone isn’t safe,” she whispered. “It’s the greatest form of torture there is.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even move. And suddenly, fear for her own safety mingled with urgency for his. If he died from infection now, she was all but dead. Jarriah did not get second chances in the test, no matter the circumstances.
She pushed to her feet, bent and slid her arms under his, careful not to touch the wound on his side. “Come on, get up.”
His big hands landed against her shoulders. He rolled his head against the stones. The groan that echoed from his chest told her he still didn’t want her help, but he shifted his feet under himself, regardless.
“Come on, Marid,” she ground out, pulling as hard as she could. “I can’t do this on my own.”
Somehow she got him up, braced his back against the wall, and leaned against him to keep them both upright. He had to weigh twice what she did, and he was burning up with fever. She grunted, pulled, and eventually maneuvered him toward the bed. With a groan, he dropped onto the mattress, flopped over onto his back. Blood trickled down his skin from beneath the thin, red-soaked bandage.
Her stomach rolled again, but she ignored it, instead propped his tree-trunk-like legs up onto the mattress, pulled the blanket out from under him, then draped it across his body. Peeling back the cover near his wound, she dropped to her knees, steeled her courage, then slowly untied the bandage from his torso to get a good look.
His hand snaked out again and wrapped around her wrist with stunning force. And just as it had before, electricity arced in the air between them, sent a thousand vibrations all along her skin, and pulled a gasp from her lips.
Her gaze darted to his and held. To eyes that should chill her to the bone but suddenly didn’t. Because this close, she saw something else lurking in their depths. Something she’d missed before when she’d been too scared to think. The same emptiness that consumed her. A hint of vulnerability she hadn’t known was there.
Her breath quickened. Her skin tingled as if it were coming to life. So many times he could have truly hurt her but hadn’t. Even that first night, he’d let her go. And though he held her tightly and could easily snap her wrist with barely a flick of his hand, she somehow knew he wouldn’t.
Words formed in her mind. Words she didn’t even know if he could hear in his current state, let alone understand. Words she suddenly needed to say. “I-I’m not here to hurt you, sahad. I only want to help.”
“You can’t help me,” he muttered. “No one can. Not anymore.”
His gaze never left hers, and energy vibrated through her entire body under his blinding stare. Energy she felt all the way to her core. In the silence that followed, his ominous words settled in the air around them, reminding her what Hana had told her in the baths.
“Marid mate for a lifetime.” Followed by the news that the death of a warrior’s mate was the only thing that could turn him into a monster.
Was that what he was doing? Battling to avenge his dead mate? Questions she hadn’t thought to ask before circled in her mind. Then mixed and swirled with the image of him, dangerous and magnificent, fighting to the death in the arena.
Her skin grew hot. A low ache gathered in her chest. Though she fought it, compassion spread through her veins, trickled to her belly. Suddenly, he wasn’t the beast the highborns made him out to be. He was nothing more than a slave fighting to stay alive, just like her. Fighting to defy those who wanted to see him dead.
That was what she needed to do, she realized. Purpose rippled through her as their gazes held. A purpose that gave her strength, one she’d been lacking since being brought to Jahannam. Zayd could take her body; he could even take her freedom, but she wouldn’t let him break her spirit. No one could take that from her. Not unless she let them.
“Let me try,” she whispered, wanting—no, needing—to help him for reasons even she couldn’t totally understand.
His eyes searched hers. For truth or lies, she wasn’t sure. But something shifted in the air between them in that moment. Something she felt all the way to her toes.
He slowly released his grip, turned his head away, and closed his eyes. And as her chest thrummed with the weight of what had just passed between them, Kavin swallowed hard and reached for the bandage again.
The cut was deep, the edges puckered and swollen. She didn’t see any signs of pus—which was a good thing—so she recovered it. But her hands were shaking when she pushed to her feet, then pressed the back of her hand against his forehead.
“Allah…” Urgency shifted to panic. She crossed for the door and pounded her fist against the cold steel.
“I know you’re out there,” she hollered at the guards. “If you want the sahad to die on your watch, continue to ignore me.”