Halani’s gaze was soft, her eyes reflecting moonlight. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts, then. Should you need anything during the night or suffer pain, don’t hesitate to come to our wagon. Mama and I are both light sleepers. We’ll hear a tap on the door. Good night.”
She turned away, stopping when he called out to her. “Golnar was a female draga,” he said. “Her flight into that ravine was one of rescue, not thievery. Kansi Yuv knew that.”
Halani spun on her heel to face him once more, eyes wide, surprised. “Golnar was female?” Numerous questions filled her eyes, the slip and change in her perception of a tale where the actions of the hero suddenly came into question and became those of the villain.
“I promise to tell you soon.”
He didn’t tease on purpose and would have said more if the smoldering anger inside him didn’t threaten to flare again and turn the draga restless. The last thing he needed was to lose control of that emotion while giving Halani the truth about Kansi Yuv and Golnar and end up immolating himself in front of her.
Her lithe form folded into the shadows cast by the wagons before disappearing into the darkness where the moon’s light didn’t reach. The creak of steps under footfalls and the soft click of a door closing told him she’d entered her wagon to join her mother.
He remained outside the camp as people drifted to their wagons to find their beds, and someone smothered the communal fire. Wolves howled in the distance, and the wind whispered secrets in a language only the grasses understood.
The moonlit landscape no longer appealed to him, and he made his way to the provender wagon to sleep a few hours.
The door of Halani and Asil’s wagon bore intricate carvings created by a skilled hand. In the daylight, those carvings were awash in bright colors, muted now to shades of gray. Malachus paused to study them. They were runes, employed both as decoration and as wards.
Though he couldn’t translate them, he recognized their function. Wards against evil, sickness, and nightmares. Others remained a mystery, as fascinating and enigmatic as the mother and daughter who slept behind the safety of their shield.
He walked past the wagon, gliding his hand over the rails and boards, the inset of the small window. Malachus sensed a charged stillness from inside, as if someone listened to him outside. He smiled and pressed the flat of his hand to the wagon’s surface. “Sweet dreams, Halani of the Lightning,” he said in a soft voice.
An equally hushed voice carried to him through the open window. “A fair moon above you, Malachus.”
He spent the remainder of the night wide-awake in the provender wagon that had become his home while he convalesced. The mother-bond still called to him, though its draw remained murky. Despite the imperative to retrieve it, Malachus didn’t find any joy in his impending departure.
He fell asleep close to dawn and woke to a camp swarming like a disturbed beehive. Leaning against the wagon’s door frame, he watched as the ring in which the wagons were parked only hours earlier broke apart.
Several free traders led ox, horse, and mule teams to those wagons pulled away from the fractured circle. A few were already harnessed and in their traces. Those people not busy with the teams carried or rolled barrels and crates across the inner ring for loading into the wagons or strapping atop the roofs and flat hitches tucked under the doors with the steps. Malachus spotted Halani chasing a trio of sheep who’d escaped their pen. A sheepdog worked opposite her to herd the animals back to the enclosure.
Kursak stood amid the eddy and swirl of animals and humanity, barking instructions and giving orders with the ease of long practice.
It was orderly chaos, and Malachus chose to observe from his perch and stay out of the way.
Halani’s gaze met his. She waved, shooed the last escapee sheep back into the pen, and jogged toward him, skirting the children, dogs, and squawking chickens in her path. She wore a bright smile in contrast to the tired crescents of shadows under her eyes. “How are you feeling this morning? Give me a moment to gather my things from my wagon, and I’ll check your wounds.”
He gestured to all the activity behind her. “Splitting the camp already?”
“Starting to.” She darted away before he could stop her but returned soon enough, arms filled with a basket, bowl, and pitcher. She climbed the steps and joined him inside the wagon.
The day was still young and the sun not yet so harsh. The wagon’s interior was cool and dim. Malachus stood this time as Halani peeled back his bandages for her regular inspection.
“Stand closer to the door,” she said. “Morning light is better than lamplight for me to see how you look.”
He did as she instructed, using one arm to brace himself against the wall as she unwound bandages and set them aside. Her cool hands drifted across his skin. A shiver shot down his spine, and he jerked a little when her fingertips glided along the edges of sore flesh at the wound on his hip, creating a ticklish pain that was almost erotic.
Behind him, Halani retreated before setting her hand on him once more, this time just above the wound. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It didn’t hurt,” he replied in guttural tones.
She went still, a bird on a limb watching as a hunter passed beneath the tree. Where moments before the wagon offered peaceful solace, it now breathed with a growing tension. Malachus turned his head for a glimpse of his quiet companion. Her touch was an ember now, growing ever hotter as the blood tumbled fast through his veins directly to his groin. This wasn’t earth magic that seduced him, but the sorcery of a compassionate woman who made him believe not all of humanity was beyond redemption. Too injured to do more than wish for a greater intimacy, Malachus succumbed to temptation and leaned into her. He expected Halani to move back, maintaining the slim distance between them. She didn’t, and for a moment her breasts pressed against him while her other hand flattened along his ribs. Her breath whispered across his skin in short gusts. Silence hung thick in the air, time a motionless entity that waited for one of them to move or speak. Malachus dared not twitch a muscle for fear of ending the moment.
Halani lowered her hands and stepped away, severing the ephemeral connection between them. “Face me, please, so I can see the wound on your chest.” Her voice was cool, her features stoic, when he turned and met her gaze. Her gray eyes were still soft, still warm, but oceans of secrets lay behind their misty color. Her glance flitted down, noted his erection, and flitted away. Pale pink stained her cheekbones, but her hands were steady as she inspected his chest wound.
She’d seen him naked several times, treating his nudity no differently than his clothed form. Malachus guessed that as a healer, Halani had seen more than her fair share of bare backsides and fronts as well in both men and women. It was not his lack of clothing that caused her to blush.
“Should I wear a blanket or tunic?”
Her wry look told him what she thought of the question and why he asked it. “Only if you’re uncomfortable unclothed.”
“I am not.”
“Then you don’t need a covering.” She bent closer to his side, eyeing the arrow wound there with a worried frown. “You’ll need another poultice pack and a new bandage. This one isn’t looking as well as the others.”
The tension between them eased, though Malachus wasn’t convinced that was a good thing. Halani seemed far more unaffected by his proximity than he was by hers. She instructed him to remain where he was while she mixed another salve, gathered the old bandages in a pile for laundering, and laid new ones out for wrapping. She talked while she worked, nothing in her tone to indicate how her breath had stuttered moments earlier.
“Ignore the commotion outside if you can,” she told him before gently applying more of the numbing salve to his wounds. “Breaking camp, even just half of it, is always a loud affair.”
“Am I the reason you’re in the second group to leave, or is it just a bit of luck for me that you’ll stay for other obligations?” he asked.
She rose, bowl in hand, and scooped out a small amount of the salve to place on his injury. “I’m staying to help man the camp while others take care of the market stall. It just so happens I can do the first and still play nurse to you.” Her mouth turned down. “My mother will travel with the first group. She’ll want to see you before she leaves.”
That was odd. From what he’d seen, Halani and Asil were nearly inseparable, with Halani displaying a ferocious protectiveness toward her mother. He found it hard to believe she’d willingly let Asil out of her sight for long. “Why can’t she stay with you?”
“You’ve never seen my mother guarding a goods table. She looks small and grandmotherly, but she has a hawk’s eye when it comes to spotting cutpurses, and she’s fast. I once saw her strip two thieves running in opposite directions after they pilfered off our table. She picked one of their pockets while she was at it. She’s even earned a reputation in Wellspring Holt. The thieves there don’t bother trying to steal from us if they see her watching our stall. The group leaving today will be trading in other markets. The rest of us will pack up what’s left behind. Mama’s skills aren’t needed here now.”
A reasonable explanation, but Malachus heard the undercurrent she tried to hide in her casual tone. He stayed silent until she finished with his new bandages and helped him shoulder on a long tunic she’d borrowed from one of the free trader men. The garment had been sewn for a shorter man of greater girth, and it swallowed him in its folds while the hem brushed his knees instead of his calves. Halani stood before him, sliding the wooden buttons sewn down the tunic’s front panel through loops to hold it closed.
Malachus rested a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to his. “You will miss your mother and worry until you see her again.”
Her eyelids lowered, hiding the emotion in her gaze but not the tears that slid past her lashes to trickle down her cheeks. “Yes.”
What must it be like to be loved this way? So devotedly that the person you parted with cried at your absence before you even left? He had known affection in his life, sincere if distant. This was something else, something he had no experience of. In that moment, he wished he did.