“Whatever way you remember it, the consequences to Ava are very real, rumor or not.” Luc wouldn’t let him off the hook for this. Not after the way he’d attacked her last night.
Revek closed his eyes again, and his skin seemed to lose color in front of Luc’s eyes. “I’ll let her sew me.”
Ava laughed, the sound exploding out of her. She put her hands over her mouth, as if even she was surprised by her reaction. “You’ll martyr yourself to me as penance?” She shook her head. “If you don’t want me to sew you, that’s no skin off my nose, Revek. I’m doing this because Dorea asked me to. Not to punish you.” She turned away in disgust and followed Haslia out.
“I never . . . say or do the right thing where she’s concerned.” Revek shifted on his pallet, the movement labored.
“Well, I’d say boohoo to you if you didn’t suddenly look so bad.” Dorea bent over him, and Luc thought she looked worried. “You can do better than this poor me attitude, Revek, but right now, I’m giving you some slack.”
Luc studied him. “He is getting worse.”
Dorea sent him a warning look. “He needs his open wound sewn up.” She placed a hand on his forehead. “And he needs something to bring down his fever.” She crouched lower and slid her arm around his back.
Luc mirrored her, taking most of Rev’s weight as they lifted him up.
Revek couldn’t hold himself up, and Luc ended up carrying him to the fire.
Ava was there.
He’d assumed she’d stalked off in disgust at the lot of them and he’d have to go find her, but she was sitting cross-legged by the fire, a pillow on her lap.
“It’s easier if you lay him down here.” She patted the pillow. “I can see better that way.”
Luc tried to catch her eye as he set Rev down, but she was already focused on the wound.
Revek’s eyes had closed, and Luc didn’t know if he was semi-conscious, or simply blocking out an ordeal the best way he knew how.
He stood, at a loss for a moment, and then found a place to sit where his shadow wouldn’t fall over them.
“The wound is clean,” Dorea said to Ava. “I disinfected it just a few minutes before you arrived.”
She nodded, and began to work.
Unable to look at the needle digging into flesh, Luc studied her face.
She seemed to be saying something under her breath with each tug of the needle.
He was too afraid of distracting her to ask what it was, but it sounded like an incantation.
“Do you hear her?” Dorea asked him quietly. She’d been standing on the other side of the fire, watching, but must have gotten tired of being on her feet and come to sit down.
“No. What’s she saying?” His voice was close to a whisper.
“She’s saying healthy and a beautiful, straight scar over and over.”
Luc frowned as he looked up. “That’s all she’s saying?”
“Like a mantra. I do it myself sometimes. Talk to myself as I’m working with patients. Telling them they’re going to pull through.” She shrugged. “Not sure if it works, but it can’t hurt, can it?”
“No.” But Luc rubbed his forearm, where once the skin had been cut open to the bone beneath. Now it was smooth as the day he’d been born.
If this was the result of Ava saying a mantra, then it had worked all too well.
Chapter 18
“Is it my imagination, or has Revek got considerably worse?” Ava glanced over at Luc and Dorea, and Dorea rose up to come crouch beside her.
“His fever is higher. He’s more listless.” The healer felt for the pulse in his neck.
Ava had been aware for a few minutes that he had slipped into unconsciousness, and while that might be best for him, to manage the pain sewing his wound caused, she didn’t like how hot and dry he felt beneath her hands. And how hard it seemed to be for him to breathe.
“There’s something on his cheekbone. Oil of some kind. I can see it glistening in the firelight.” She was sitting directly behind him, with his head and shoulders in her lap, and the gleam of it in the firelight had caught her eye.
She often grew tired when she worked, especially if she worked in magic. The precision needed, and the focus, sapped her energy. But she was already exhausted and she had only sewn half of Revek’s injury. It felt as though something was working against her. Taking the work she was doing to imbue healing into him and dissipating it as fast as she created it.
“What are you saying?” Luc was suddenly crouched on her other side, his gaze on his friend. “That there is something wrong with the oil? Something doing him harm?”
She looked at him carefully. She really was only going on instinct here. Just as she’d been forced into doing in so many other ways. And she wasn’t sure of her ground. “I don’t know, but the way Haslia swiped her thumb across his cheek, and the way he seems to have worsened since . . .”
Luc lifted his head from his friend’s face, met her gaze. “I agree. I thought there was something strange about it at the time.”
“I’ll get a warm, wet cloth.” Dorea strode into the tent and came back in moments, wiping Revek’s cheek. She turned the cloth and wiped again, then, in a sudden, violent move, threw the cloth into the fire.
It flared up for a moment, the water spitting in the intense heat, and then they all saw the flame turn green before it burned away to nothing.
Revek drew in a rattling breath, the deepest one since Haslia had left the tent.
“I think his color is already looking better.” Dorea looked over Ava’s head at Luc.
“I’ll go find Haslia. Find out what she has to say.” Luc got to his feet, his face as grim as Ava had ever seen it.
“Wait.” Ava hoped it would go faster now whatever had been fighting her had gone. “Let me finish, then we can help Dorea get him back on his bed. I’ll go with you to look for Haslia.”
She tugged the thread through, for the first time without resistance, and thought about healing again, and a straight scar.
“You got your orders, boy.” Dorea snorted out a laugh. “And the lady is right. I can’t carry him in on my own.”
Confused, Ava looked up, and saw Luc watching her with a wry expression. “What?”
“Nothing.” He suddenly grinned. “I’ll wait for you.”
She focused on finishing up, tying off the thread and looking over her work critically before she eased back and stood, stretching out her stiff legs.
While she’d been sewing, Luc had found two guards to help carry Revek back inside, so she tidied away her things and was ready when Luc emerged from the tent.
“You look tired.” He stood in front of her, and lifted a hand to cup the back of her neck.
She nodded, unsure whether to tell him about how she felt something had sapped her strength while she worked on Revek.
He waited for a response, and then stepped back and let his hand fall away. “I want you to be able to speak freely to me.”
She thought back to his reaction earlier today. “And I want the same of you.”
He inclined his head in acceptance of her rebuke. “We need to talk. But first, I need to deal with Haslia. I cannot have a spell caster with ill-intent in my camp.”