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Her throat felt raw, and not just from the emotion that tried to choke her. She’d been talking for most of the day, talking to a man who might never heal. Maybe that was why it felt so easy. Tears filled her eyes.
“I deserved what that man did to me,” Alina said. Having the words out in the open made her feel almost weightless and like she’d swallowed lead at the same time.
“No,” the word came out choked and drew her shocked gaze to Luka. His eyes had opened. Her own had adjusted to the dark, and she could see the confused glaze in his lighter ones, which seemed to almost gleam despite the lack of light.
“Hush now,” she murmured, forcing her hand to keep moving. “Rest. You’re very sick.”
“No,” he repeated, but it wasn’t in response to her urging. His hand clamped on hers, where it held the cloth, and he struggled to bring his face closer. “Didn’t deserve,” he mumbled, though he fell back all too quickly.
“I said stop that.” Her words were thick as she felt how very warm he was through his fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Don’t you dare waste your energy on me. Fight the fever instead.”
His eyes slid shut, and his hand dropped away.
She moved the cloth to the bowl even though it didn’t really need it.
“Sorry. I should talk about something else. I’ve been talking about drawing techniques, but have I told you much about painting?” She returned the freshly soaked cloth to his arm, noting how his tension seemed to ease with the coolness. “Painting is my true love. I wish I could afford canvases and tubes of acrylic, but I’m too scared to spend the money. Acrylic paint is my favorite, especially mixing it into all sorts of new colors, but I first started with watercolor. I think it was cheaper, but I still had to beg the woman for any type of supplies before I got them. With watercolor…” Alina continued on well into the night.
Shortly after dawn, his fever finally broke, but she couldn’t seem to stop talking. Or stop making the steady strokes of the cloth, not her hand, though she imagined it was her touch soothing him.
Chapter 14
The nightmares had tried to take Luka again, new ones meant to punish him for thinking he’d ever overcome his monster, but a steady voice weaved through his thoughts, keeping him from settling deeper into the blood and pain. Not that the words he recognized talked about happy things.
Luka wasn’t certain when he became aware that it was Alina’s voice. At first he’d thought it was his mother, reading through Ephesians aloud again. That had been her favorite, God’s promise to his enslaved people. But the voice was younger than his mother’s. His mind tried to conjure Willow, but her tone had never been soothing, only shrill and demanding.
Alina’s voice held no demands. It didn’t ask for a response at all. When he squinted through his blurry sight to find her drawing again, it was more like she was walking herself through the steps. She wasn’t drawing him, so the strange tingling didn’t return. Her pencil captured Giovanni well, and Luka’s eyes closed despite the panic that wanted to take over, the one that told him he’d done a bad thing.
He dreamed about lunging at her with a knife and woke in a cold sweat. Only it wasn’t the sweat that was cold. It was the washcloth on his forehead and the one she was running over his arms with her hand, taking care not to touch his skin. The sensation was wet and soothing except for the fact that the terrycloth seemed to raise nerve endings he wished would stay dormant. The uncomfortable tingles were back. They weren’t pleasant, not exactly; they were too close to how it felt to be touched, though it wasn’t spikes of pain running through him, as had happened when she touched him to change his bandage.
His focus latched onto the cloth. Soon he was almost trembling, which was pathetic. He switched his attention to her murmuring voice instead, but it made the trembling even worse.
Someone cared that he might die.
He’d never heard that sort of message before. His father had begged for the monster not to kill the women, but never for his son’s life. His mother had reassured him God would understand, not that he would live. And his sister Willow had wished for death for both of them for as long as he could remember. Luka had been the one too stubborn to let her go until she’d taken the decision from his hands.
His life had held only one purpose: to kill the man who had made him a monster.
Giovanni had understood. They were alike in how they viewed the world and in the things they never said.
Tears filled Luka’s eyes as he tried to hear the words again, but Alina had shifted subjects. She was talking about someone who had hurt her. The decision to kill them was automatic but unnecessary, he learned. And while he understood the elation she had felt to watch them die, he was confused by the guilt that crept into her voice.
“I deserved what that man did to me,” Alina choked out through an almost closed throat.
She spoke of another person Luka couldn’t kill for her—he already had. It had been the wound he inflicted that had sealed Mikhail Balakin’s fate, even though Alina had stabbed him over and over again in her rage.
It was a rage that no longer consumed her, and since Luka couldn’t kill someone a second time, he tried the only thing left to him. He pushed out his voice.
“No.” The word sounded loud in his ears and as choked as hers had been. He found that he was crying, tears dripping through the sweat on his face.
Alina tried to quiet him, obviously worried for his sake. Because she didn’t want him to die.
His second attempt to say it came out even louder; he could hear it over the thundering in his heart. “No.” His hand felt weak, and though pain arced through his fingers, he tightened them around her wrist. “Didn’t deserve,” he told her, disgusted with his body. Even with the familiar pain, he was as weak as a child.
He waited for her to acknowledge his words, but she just shook her head and forced his hand away, worried about him. The tingles of the stroking washcloth multiplied. They stayed with him as he rested like she asked, vaguely compelling and preventing him from slipping all the way into sleep.
Still, he rested because she wanted him to. The almost intolerable heat slipped away but not those steady strokes. He wanted to tell her to stop, that the tingles had become too uncomfortable, but he also never wanted them to go away. They were proof that even though the monster had gutted him, he lived.
When he was able to steady his breathing into feigned sleep, Alina’s ministrations stopped. The bed dipped at his side before she rose with the bowl, emptying it in the attached bath. Instead of returning to the bed to rest, she approached the wall again. There was little space left that she could reach. She sank into a seated position as she sharpened the broken pencil nub to a point. Then she lifted the heel of her hand so that it brushed against the wall as she drew.
