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He reached out slowly, giving me time to object again, but I couldn’t. Because I wanted his touch. Needed his skin against mine. Instead of taking my wrist, his fingertips lifted my chin, and our eyes met. His eyes had always been my undoing.

“I’ll clean and wrap your wrists and neck so you don’t make them worse while you run. I’d rather you…” His gaze snagged on my lips before lowering to my wrist. “They could get infected.”

Shrugging, I turned my wrists back and forth, truly studying my wounds for the first time. “I’ve had worse.” That was probably a lie.

“I’m sure.” The words came out flat. His hand dropped to my wrist, and his thumb ran over my pulse, making goosebumps spread down my arm. The familiar move built a lump in my throat; it had been three years since I had felt his thumb over that delicate skin. It was our symbol… our promise to each other. By doing it now, it was as if he were trying to tell me everything he couldn’t voice.

There were a hundred things I should have said then—about his disappearance, about the life he’d built among the Celts—but his warmth and the smell of food and the pounding pain in my body blunted all of them into one raw, ugly emotion. And tiredness. Bone-deep, soul-deep tiredness. So I put my foot on the nearest chair, and he stepped between my legs as he reached for a cloth.

The cloth was hot enough to make me hiss when it touched the broken skin. A sharp sting shot up my arm, and I couldn’t stop myself from flinching again.

“Sorry,” he murmured. He was gentler than I expected. “Hold still.”

The last thing I wanted from him was pity. It was easier to survive in the world when rough words and hard hands fed the anger and hatred that fuelled me.

“This is me holding still.” I noticed the fire poker to my right.

“No. You look like you’re preparing to stab me if I make one wrong move.”

I shrugged. “That too.” Why lie to him when we were finally being honest with each other?

His mouth nearly twitched, but whatever ghost of old amusement had risen there died quickly. He cleaned the raw skin with maddening care, wiping away dirt and dried blood before smoothing the green salve over the cuts. It smelled of pine resin, honey, and a bitter-smelling herb that was probably mountain-grown in the summer months and therefore incredibly rare. He always did love herbology.

His thumb brushed a small circle on the inside of my wrist once more, and my whole body leaned into him before I could stop myself. Memories I had buried came rushing back. The training room in the cellar below the boarding house. The safe room in the seamstress’s shop. His hands on mine, correcting my grip on the pin; his breath at my ear telling me to strike first and never hesitate.

I yanked my wrist back. “I can’t…” do this. Pain and exhaustion were fraying my willpower.

His eyes lifted to the corners of the room and then flicked back to mine. “Can’t what?”

“This,” I signed, but my hands wouldn’t… couldn’t keep moving.

His eyelids closed, and when he reopened them, his mask of ‘Lord Aster’ was back in place. “Wren, everything’s different now.”

It was different, and yet deep in my heart he still felt the same.

His fingers brushed over my other wrist again, and this time it built a lump in my throat. I let him pull my hand towards him, because the burn of the salve was sharp enough to bury old memories. If a tear escaped, it had to be from the salve and not the far more dangerous ache of hope.

Once he had wrapped both wrists in linen, he sat back on his heels and examined my throat. “Your neck too.”

“Leave it. It’s fine.”

“Aliwen.” His voice was a low, pained whisper.

“I…” The sound of my full name on his lips stripped my resolve. “No more… I can’t…” And I wasn’t talking about him tending to my wounds. I meant being so close to him again… him touching me. His eyes held mine—he understood.

“You can. And you will. That’s how it is now. You aren’t someone who changes her mind. Neither am I.” His finger brushed up my arm before he pulled away to sign. “We are who we have to be.”

And that meant we were now so very far apart, even sitting next to each other in the same room. Breathing deeply, I composed myself. “Don’t sound like you still know me. When you left, I became someone else entirely.”

He shook his head, and his shoulders sagged ever so slightly. “I know you. I stood with you on the battlements as Lex fell. We saddled those horses together for us all to escape.”

I laughed once, without any humour. “You knew a girl caged in a boarding house who still believed we were all getting out of this. Now I’ve killed a Barren Master, and they’ll burn me for it.”

“And you did it without flinching.”

“You don’t know that I didn’t flinch.” But a smile lifted my lips as my gaze met his shining green eyes. He tilted his head, and then his lips rose too, almost as if he were proud.

It was true, and I hadn’t hesitated to stab Torran, either. Desperation can make anyone do anything. He held my gaze, waiting for me to tell him everything, just as I once would have. “I wasn’t going to leave him breathing once I saw what he was doing to… Red.”