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“I’m sorry,” I finally got out. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’ve gone through more than most humans could bear. Don’t apologize for that.”
“Do remember the first time we met, when my throat was injured?”
“How could I forget?” he replied in a wry tone, slipping the image into my mind of me, bound in silver to the bed in his castle, looking like a hot mess. “You were brave then too.”
“I was terrified. And you were an ass.”
“And yet you survived both. You’ll survive this too.”
I surely hoped so. “Can you heal my hands—even a little?”
“No. The damage is too great and that is, as you know, the least of my skills. Lady Healer is still in residence at my castle, and she will be able to.”
I decided not to comment on my feelings about the fae noblewoman who’d healed me that time, when I’d been bound to that bed, and who then exacted an extraordinarily high price for it. I hated to think what I’d have to pay this time. Good thing my firstborn child had already been bargained away. I would have to deal, if I wanted to survive this. Pride goeth before amputation, after all. “How far is that, at our current pace?”
“Days, I imagine. I never go by horseback.”
“I think we need to find a healer sooner than that.”
“Why? Are you in pain? Darling Hercules Goliath can—”
“No, it’s not that. I’m sick, Rogue.”
I sat up so I could look into his face. His eyes were intent, concern swirling in the depths. Absurdly I wanted to kiss him. Because I could, I did kiss him—something I’d rarely, if ever, done of my own accord. And more for comfort than for anything else.
He hummed in his throat, returning the kiss with interest, then pulled away, frowning. “Your skin is very hot.”
I nodded. “Fever. It means infection. See the red streaks going up my wrists? That’s a…poison from the infection traveling inward. If it gets too far, I’ll die.”
He looked stricken, the lines on his face shimmering, nearly coiling on their own, as they did when he was upset. “I won’t allow that to happen.”
My favorite megalomaniac. I forged on, hoping that his fervent determination came at least partially from care for me and not just the embryo growing inside me, that selfsame firstborn child he’d won rights to in a complicated exchange.
“I know you can’t take me with you when you poof yourself, but maybe you could go and find someone—Lady Healer, maybe—and bring her back faster than I can get there?”
He was already shaking his head. “I won’t leave you again.”
It was less romantic this time. “Rogue. I’m seriously afraid I’m going to die. Or lose my hands forever.” I gave myself credit for saying this in a steady tone. I had grown up a child of technology. Of all the strange, unsettling and downright terrifying aspects of Faerie, the lack of actual medicine bothered me a great deal. Magical healing was all well and good—except when it landed you with life-debts, like mine with Rogue.
I’d listed that for him once, as reason three of five that I did not want to have his baby. Being cornered into agreeing to give him my firstborn—and letting him sire it—had determined the course of my recent life. Giving birth in what amounted to a Third World country just exacerbated a bad situation.
I couldn’t think about all of that at the moment. My current problem demanded attention or the whole giving-birth problem would be well and truly moot. “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed, hating to throw my fate any more in his lap—literally and figuratively—than I already had. I’d meant it when I said I didn’t want to be dependent on him. Still. “I need your help.”
That changed something in him. In me. The shift thrummed between us and he bowed his head, as if acknowledging a new agreement.
“Then you shall have it.”
“What do I have to give in return?”
“We can decide later.”
Having an open-ended bargain with a fae led to dire consequences—hence aforementioned firstborn child—but I couldn’t muster the energy to insist on setting terms. Which showed how bad off I was.
“We will fly.” He stood, uncoiling and bringing me with him. I almost protested that I could stand, but in truth my limbs felt weak and weary.
“Can you call the dragons then?”
