Page 46 of Marin’s Promise

“Come now.” She eased a hand behind him and helped him sit forward.

His side pinched at the simple action and dizziness caught him in a swirling grip. He grunted, unable to even warn her he might retch.

Marin's hand was firm behind him. “Lean against me, Bran. I am stronger than I look.”

“I know,” he ground out.

“At least you haven’t fully lost your senses.” There was a smile in her voice, and it was as beautiful as she.

A cup pressed to his mouth.

“Drink,” she said. “It should not be too hot.”

Obediently, he opened his lips and the liquid poured into his mouth. As promised, the temperature was comfortable. Warm and appeasing on his dry throat. It quelled a ragged thirst he did not know he possessed, and he drank it until there was naught left.

Marin settled him back against the bed, and her fingers swept over his brow. A pleasant, heated glow followed the graze of her skin over his. He wanted to turn into her touch, to encourage more.

The bed shifted again, and the welcome presence of her body left his side. He wanted her back beside him. He craved her gentle voice as much as he did more of her delicate caresses.

The pull of sleep grew stronger. It wrapped around him in a cradled embrace and dragged him toward the temptation of oblivion. And yet the vestiges of his nightmare hovered at the edge of consciousness, ragged and raw. Ena.

Ena.

“Ena.” He spoke without meaning to.

Marin was at his side once more, her delicate hand set atop his. “She is well. The arrow missed her heart. She is resting now.”

“My lady, do ye speak of Leila?” The healer's voice sounded distant.

He'd begun to relax at Marin's words, but the healer jarred him in his confusion.

There was a pause, then Marin continued. “Ena is well, Bran. She is abed resting but will heal.” Something cool stroked over his face, and her perfume of lavender water washed over him as surely as did the need to sleep.

“Rest,” she breathed in a whisper.

The tension drained from his body as if by magic and he floated toward the deep darkness of sleep with the knowledge Ena was safe.

“Will he live?” Marin spoke low in a volume meant to not be heard by others.

Bran roused back to awareness once more, his ears straining around the thickness of his jumbled thoughts.

“Aye, he'll live.” The healer's voice was just as quiet. “He's got a few cuts. I wager he's had worse by the look of him. But it's the knock to the head that's got him addled. He'll be well upon the morrow when he's had a fine bit of sleep.”

There was a click of something glass set atop a hard surface, followed by silence.

He'd almost thought the conversation was done when the healer spoke again, so discreetly he wouldn't have heard her had he not been straining. “He doesna have to recover, my lady.” The simple words were heavy with a suffocating implication.

Marin did not respond. Her lack of a reply pressed upon him, crushing at his rapidly beating heart.

“I could poison him,” the healer whispered. “A mix of herbs and no one would be the wiser.”

“You mean to say,” Marin said slowly. “You would kill him?”

“Aye.”

Marin's answer did not come readily, and with that great hesitation, Bran was sure he knew her choice.