Her moonstone gaze searched his features before she looked to the others. Kelir and Fassad gazed back at her with solemn faces. Even Ardyl sat up in her furs now, regarding Yvenne with a grave expression. He could well imagine what they felt now—shame similar to his, if not as deep for being the cause of her injury. For she had saved all their lives that day . . . and then had gone about untended and bleeding for the rest of it.
“I will not deny you,” she promised softly, then louder again so they all heard. “I will tell you of it next time.”
Maddek would rather there not be a next time, but her response would serve for this night. “I will tend to her,” he told the others, though they knew it would be he who did.
She made no protest when he scooped her up, furs and all, only pausing long enough for Kelir to give her Ardyl’s bow and a quiver of arrows. No more practicing would Maddek allow before she had protection for her fingers and arm, but if threat came during the night, better she have the weapon within reach.
Carrying her, he started off toward the statue’s hand, which lay southwest of the head. With Yvenne cradled in his arms, the poisonous ache in his chest began to ease. Another ache started lower, but that he would ignore until her injuries were seen to.
Then he would ignore it no longer. He had not successfully lured Yvenne outside her walls. But although she was becoming his weakness, her desire made her vulnerable to him in return. So he would steal his way over those walls, again and again, until she finally invited him in.
He felt her gaze upon his face for the first steps. When they passed beyond the statue’s ear, she made a soft exclamation of wonder. She had been too focused on Toric to make much note of their surroundings when they’d arrived. So although she’d widened her eyes at the size of the head and foot, she had seen none of the statue that lay behind those enormous ruins because they had blocked her view.
Now the moonlight gleamed over the white marble, rendering it as pale and as bright as her moonstone eyes were in sunlight. Parts of the ancient sculpture had been buried by time, such as an arm mostly covered by an earthen hill. Other parts were completely bare, like the foot Maddek had kept watch upon.
“This, too, was described to me, but I never imagined . . .” She trailed off, her face awestruck.
Maddek hadn’t imagined the statue properly, either—and he still could not imagine it. Not truly. Hanan’s legendary statue had once stood beside the mighty Ageras, which the god had created with his tears and his seed. But the toe Maddek had climbed was three times his own height, so he could hardly fathom how tall the statue in entirety must have been. The Tower of the Moon in Ephorn could have served as the ankle and calf and still barely reached the knee—yet Maddek didn’t think that city’s tower would endure through the ages as this statue had. For the sculpture had broken and fallen apart, but the marble hadn’t crumbled. It was buried in places, yet no weeds grew from cracks in the stone. The surface hadn’t pitted and weathered, though the statue had been already in pieces when Ran Bantik had united the tribes, and the river on whose banks it once stood now flowed farther north, barely visible in the distance. Only the river road they traveled on was as ancient.
“I had not known they built a tower, too,” she said now, her voice wondering and her chin tipped back as she gazed up at a shining column of marble. “Is the base uncovered? Can it be entered?”
Maddek grinned. “That is not a tower. That is Hanan’s pride.”
The god’s colossal cock—and perhaps more colossal than Maddek knew, for the lower part of the shaft was buried, too. Yet what jutted above the ground was nearly as long as the statue’s leg must have been.
After a moment of stunned silence, a giggle shook through her slight form. “Even in ruins, he is upright.”
Because Hanan was always erect. “At least we need not fear that it would soften and crush us.”
“Surely he will never wilt,” she agreed, and eyed the tip speculatively. “Do you think it ever erupts?”
Maddek could not speak again until they had reached the hand, and he had to stop laughing long enough to climb the fingers while carrying her. There she drew another awestruck breath, as she saw what Maddek had spotted from his perch atop the foot. A pool filled the statue’s palm, the glow of the marble through the clear water seeming as if the moon itself were trapped within its depths.
“We must remove our shoes,” she whispered reverently.
As if they entered a temple—and Maddek could not disagree. He set his bride on her feet and she placed her bow and quiver aside before bending at the waist, reaching for the ribbons of her sandals.
Reaching with her blistered fingers.
Maddek dumped the furs and knelt before her, catching her wrists. “I will tend to you, Yvenne.”
Her eyes met his. The slightest hesitation passed over her features before she nodded and straightened again. Allowing him this warrior’s honor.
Though it was not only honor, but pleasure, too. Her feet were small and soft and filthy from the hard travel that she’d withstood better than ever he would have believed at the beginning of this journey. Her silk robes hung to her ankles, the hem as dirty as her feet. He had but a glimpse of the linens wrapping her legs from ankles to thighs as he unlaced her sandals. Mindful of her shattered knee, he bade her to step out, offering support when she had to shift her weight onto that leg. As soon as her feet were bared, he began untying the leather strips that secured his own boots, watching as she drifted to the water’s edge and gingerly poked her toes in.
Her pleasured sigh hardened his cock to stone, but it was the smile she turned toward him that bled away the last of the festering poison in his chest. “It is warm!”
“Then we will make good use of it tonight.” As they would the furs he unrolled, layering them into a soft bed over hard marble. “When the others discover this pool is here, every moment tomorrow that they are not on watch will be spent bathing.”
Her smile widened for a brief moment before furrowing into confusion. “We will be here tomorrow?”
“Toric cannot ride yet.” Maddek joined her, fingers working at the fastening of his belt. “We could make a bedsling of his furs for his mare to pull, as we often do with injured warriors. But if there are revenants or soldiers behind us and the horses must run—”
“Better instead to wait where we have an advantage of position.”
Nodding, he tossed aside his belt and linens and stepped naked into the water. Her bold gaze ran from his shoulders to thighs, though he read the query in the arch of her eyebrows.
“I cannot tend to your wounds without first washing away the revenants’ blood.” Which he had wiped away as best he could after the battle at the stream but still was dried in the creases of his knuckles, beneath his fingernails, and in faint streaks across his skin. Did that foul blood infect her wounds, she might soon be muttering in feverish delirium next to Toric.