“No, it’s not. It’s worse than I thought,” he says, touching the area around the wound gently as he inspects it.
She abruptly pulls back, away from his hands.
“It would help if you stopped yanking yourself around like that,” he chides.
She rolls her eyes a little but allows him to continue his examination. He gingerly cradles her arm in his lap and tries to assess the damage by the glow of the flames.
“Mage blood,” he says, noting the blue-black color.
She nods, trying to be modest about it. Blue blood is prized in the kingdom.
“The gash was deep. It may feel better but that doesn’t mean you have full use of your arm yet. And you’ll need it for us to survive these woods. So we need to stop and let this heal before we go any farther. No matter how long it takes.”
She pulls her arm from him again, but slowly this time. “I told you, it’s just a scratch. I’ve had worse.”
“Take it from someone who knows, Shadow. It’s more than a scratch. Listen, I don’t want to have to cut that thing off for you if it rots. I’ve done it before and it is not pleasant. The flesh is one thing—I can get through it easy enough—but the bone is another. I’ll have to use a sword to cut it off. I’d prefer very much that you keep your arm instead. I’m sure you do too.”
Shadow suddenly looks ill, and Cal wonders if maybe he overdid it. “We won’t let that happen,” he assures her. “But you do need to let it heal.”
She nods. “Fine—but we can’t afford to sit around. The longer we wait, the more likely someone catches up to us.”
Cal is glad he’s persuaded her to agree to his plan—even as he makes new plans of his own. The queen should have known better than to send him such a novice. Once they get to Montrice, he intends to part ways with her. He has never taken on an apprentice before. The work he does, he does alone. He can’t keep worrying about her recklessness—not to mention her injuries; it will only distract him.
He gathers some herbs, clay, and fresh water from a mountain spring near the cave and brings it back to set Shadow’s wound. The salve always worked for him; every scrape and cut his father treated with it healed seemingly overnight. It should do the same for Shadow.
Once he mixes it, with Shadow looking on curiously, he has her sit, leaning against the rocky wall. He kneels next to her.
She winces when he touches her arm this time, proving that it does hurt much more than she admits. He’s glad they didn’t try to push on through the night. As soon as he applies the paste, she exhales. “Better already, isn’t it?” he asks her. She nods, eyes closed.
He wraps her arm with some large gunnera leaves and tells her they’ll see how it looks in the morning. She nods again and he takes a seat next to her, leaning his head against the wall. It may be the toll of such a harrowing day, but with the soft moonlight on Shadow’s face, he notices how elegant her features are, the length of her neck, the delicate slope of her cheek; suddenly he’s not sure how he ever thought she was a boy.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he blurts out.
She frowns a bit but keeps her eyes closed. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Accompany me to Montrice.” He thinks maybe he can convince her that leaving is her idea. That would make all of this much easier.
She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at him. “I don’t just want to; I have to. Like I told you, the queen herself ordered me to come with you.”
“Right, I’m to take you on as my apprentice. It’s just . . . I’m not sure you fully comprehend what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Of course I do,” she scoffs.
“Do you? Because it requires quite a sacrifice.” He shifts his body weight and adjusts his legs.
She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “What sacrifice?”
“You say you want to train as an assassin. Well, this is who I am. It’s all I have.” He stops talking and looks down at his hands. “I don’t have a home or a family. When I’m not working at the smithy as a cover for being in Serrone, I spend most of my time on the road, sleeping outside in the wilderness. To get the work done, I must always pretend to be someone else and sometimes I wonder if I’m getting too good at it. Because there are days when I don’t even remember who I really am. And yet, I know what I am. I am an assassin, a death dealer. I don’t know if I would choose this life if it hadn’t already been chosen for me.”
Shadow is silenced by his sincere tone and sobering words.
“You’d choose to live a life devoted to killing whoever you’re ordered to kill?” He thinks back to how she’d stayed his hand when he’d held a dagger to that soldier’s throat. “A life where your own could end at any moment?”
“I think that’s been established,” Shadow says, motioning around her. “I do, I choose this.” When her gaze meets his, Cal sees the challenge in her eyes.
“What about . . . marriage? Children?”
She shakes her head and looks away from him, crossing her arms across her chest. She shrugs. “Your father had both, didn’t he?”
“And it was a mistake,” Cal says. “One I won’t repeat. Your mother is part of the Guild. Tell me, how often was she around?”
There’s an awkward silence after that. The fire crackles outside the mouth of the cave.
“I don’t intend to get married or have children either,” Shadow says. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to escape.”
Cal turns to her, but she refuses to meet his eyes. There’s a determination in her expression that he’s quickly grown to recognize. “I understand,” he says.
They don’t talk about it any more after that.
* * *
IT ISN’T LONG BEFORE Shadow falls asleep, the events of the day—the past few days—obviously wearing hard on her. Cal spreads his legs out by the dwindling fire. He tries to close his eyes and sleep some himself, but he can’t. His mind is racing.
He’s worried about what will happen when they get to Montrice. It’s not going to be so easy to get rid of Shadow after all. But they need to get there in one piece first. Then he’ll make his final decision.
He’s about to stand when Shadow’s head falls onto his shoulder. He’s still for a moment, wondering what to do. He should get out of the way, move her so she can lie down. He pulls his arm from where it’s stuck between them and places it around her. This way, he can shift to the side and lower her to the floor slowly. But as he begins to move, he finds he’s drawn to her warmth, and a thought occurs to him, unbidden: When was the last time he let someone so close to him? When was the last time he fell asleep next to someone else? And there’s Shadow’s arm to consider too. Maybe it would be best to leave her be and let her lie on him.