I fall asleep with my face tucked into his chest.
I wake to the scent of searing flesh. A cry escapes my lips as something burns at my waist.
“I’m sorry. I know this hurts, but it’s necessary. Here,” Farin says, handing me a rag that he places rather roughly in my mouth. I bite down on it, peeking through my eyelashes, still flirting with passing out.
He’s holding what looks to be a brand, glowing hot as a lone ember.
Then he presses it to my bare waist.
Pain overwhelms me, but this time I force my cry into the rag inside my mouth, bearing down on my teeth like somehow I can focus on the pain there rather than the searing of my flesh.
It helps. Not by much, but I’m taking what I can get at this point.
Farin stares down at the burn site, sighing as he runs his hands through his hair. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looks distressed.
Probably just me being delusional.
Agony tends to do that to a person.
“I really am sorry,” he says again, and then pain assaults my skin so completely, I lose consciousness.
When I wake again, it’s still to the scent of burning flesh, but this time it’s a significantly more pleasant odor. The scent of a boar roasting over a fire, I realize, as I open my eyes and take in my surroundings.
Farin and I are still in a cave, though there’s a glaring absence of spiderwebs, for which I’m grateful. He paces beyond the smoking boar, practically drilling a path in the dirt with his repetitive steps.
He glances over at me as he tugs at his sleeves, then stops in his tracks.
“You’re awake,” he says, to which I, probably stupidly, respond, “Your deduction skills amaze me.”
Farin blinks, then actually lets out a huff that’s suspiciously familiar to a laugh as a smile quirks at his lips. Just barely.
“How did we get out?” I groan.
“I carried you, Wanderer.”
I furrow my brow. I might be disoriented, but I’m fairly sure Farin didn’t strap me to his back and free climb up the side of the canyon.
He must read my mind, because he says, “The canyon levels out eventually. If the two of you had figured that out, I wouldn’t have had to rush to trail you.”
Huh. I suppose Nox and I should have followed the canyon in the other direction.
I go to sit up, but the aching in my abdomen prevents it, and I let out a sharp cry. Farin’s at my side in the next instant, propping me up with his hands gliding down my back.
They’re strangely warm, not at all the cold, clammy things I’m expecting.
I suppose he’s not a vampire, though.
“You probably shouldn’t do much moving around,” Farin says. “I can’t say I’m all that confident in my repair attempts.” He nods to my waist. It’s bare, Farin having rolled up my shirt to my ribcage.
“To let the wound breathe,” he explains, actually clearing his throat.
“Why else would you have done it?” I ask, unable to fight the edge in my voice.
He ignores me, but he lowers me back to the floor all the same, wrapping his cloak around itself to make a pillow for my head. His fingers linger in my hair for a moment, before he quickly pulls away and returns to the other side of the cave.
“Why’d you save me?” I ask, peering at him past what I’m sure is a double chin.
Farin pokes at the boar. “I didn’t mean for you to almost die. I didn’t realize your body couldn’t heal itself in a timely fashion.”
“Yes, but why do you care?”
Farin shrugs. “I figure I’m not getting off this island, out of this world, without your help, am I?”
Oh. Right.
Well, he’s not getting off this island with it, either.
“And what if there’s not another way?” I ask.
Farin flashes me a grin, the same one that caught my attention the first day we met. “Well, then. I suppose you and I have this island to ourselves.”
I let out a scoff, which rather upsets my still aching abdomen.
“You don’t seem too worried about that outcome,” I say.
His smile is as sinister as it is beautiful. “I’m not concerned about finding ways to entertain ourselves, if that’s what you mean.”
My cheeks heat, and I glance away, but I can only keep my eyes averted for a moment. Turning my attention from a murderer doesn’t seem like the best self-preservation instinct, after all.
