I also remembered the fae healer. Before I started floating away on a cloud of nothing matters, I had heard her talking to others—to him. Concern about infection and scarring, the latter almost making me laugh because I was already scarred. What was a handful—or a couple of hundred—more in the grand scheme of things? Blood had been taken. Words like dehydration and malnutrition were thrown around, as was concern about other things—things I didn’t really want to think about.
Looking back, I thought that it was quite inappropriate that they had allowed him in the room. Then again, he was their King, and they probably allowed him to do just about anything.
My arms felt heavy, glossy with some kind of ointment, and there was a bandage covering the bite mark on my left arm. Oddly, I felt clean as if someone had bathed me, but based on the itchiness of my scalp, I knew my hair hadn’t been washed.
God, I would kill for a shower, one where my skin wasn’t being scrubbed raw, and someone—
Closing my eyes, I cut off that train of thought as I sucked in a sharp breath. No good could come from thinking about that right now, not when there were so many things that would surely haunt me.
The shuffling sound of someone shifting in a chair drew me from my thoughts. I turned my head to the left, my breath catching as the left side of my cheek throbbed.
Ouch.
All right, pain meds only worked to a point. Good to know.
Opening my eyes, a shock rippled through me. Caden was stretched out in a chair next to the bed, his bare feet resting on the footboard, crossed at the ankles. His eyes were closed, his cheek pressed against his fist, his hair hiding half of his face. He was dressed as I recalled. Black shirt and dark denim jeans. He appeared to be sleeping.
How long had he been in here?
How long had I been out?
Better yet, why was he even here at all?
I didn’t know the answers to those questions, and I didn’t want to wake him. Instead, I lay there and I… I stared at him, soaking in the sight.
Caden was…he was as beautiful as I remembered, a visage of otherworldly perfection that bordered on being unreal. I wished for the hundredth time that he wasn’t so nice to look at. Good thing his royal jerkiness attitude dampened some of that attraction.
Yeah, right. Who was I kidding?
I still loved him. I was still in love with him, and even though he was promised to someone else—could already be with someone else—and had failed to mention that on top of all of the other stuff, my feelings for him were still there.
I loved him.
I just didn’t like him.
Strange how one could feel those two conflicting emotions, but love was odd like that.
The moment those thoughts finished, awe flickered through me. I was surprised that after everything I’d gone through, I could still…I could still think about normal things—stuff that was important but also wasn’t compared to being tortured and starved. That I could think about the night we’d spent together, the things he’d done to me, and what I’d done to him, and feel my insides warm. That felt beautifully normal because I…
I honestly never expected to see him again. I hadn’t expected to see sunlight either or breathe in fresh air. In the end, I hadn’t thought I’d survive.
That was a lot to process.
As I lay there, watching the steady rise and fall of Caden’s chest, I realized that it was also a lot to process the fact that there were huge gaps in time where I couldn’t remember what had happened while Aric held me, even though I could still feel the…the fear and the hours of nothing but pain. I remembered what he did to me with the dagger I’d killed him with, and I recalled his fists, but a lot was missing that still carried feelings of panic and humiliation.
I sighed, glancing around the room. I wasn’t in the infirmary but one of the spacious hotel rooms. I had no idea how I had gotten up here.
Caden stirred, his thick lashes lifting. His gaze found mine. Slowly, he lowered his hand and straightened. He didn’t speak, not for several long moments, and then he said, “How long have you been awake?”
“Not—” I cleared my throat, working on getting the painful hoarseness out. “Not very…long.”
“So, in other words, you haven’t been watching me sleep for that long?”
“I wasn’t watching.” My cheeks heated at the blatant lie.
“Uh-huh.” A small grin played at his lips as he pulled his feet off the foot of the bed and placed them on the floor, leaning forward. “How do you feel?”
I thought about the way he’d held me in the car, trying to calm me as I screamed. “A lot better.”
“You look better.”
“I bet I look a mess.”
“No,” he said softly. “You look beautiful.”
I rolled my eyes—well, one eye. “I don’t need…a mirror to know that’s not remotely true.”
“You don’t need a mirror at all.”
Having no idea how to respond to that, though liking the tiny flutter in my chest, I decided it was time to change the subject. “How long have I been out of it?”
“Today is Thursday. We brought you in Monday night. So, about two days,” he said. “You’ve woken up a couple of times.”
Two days? God. “I don’t remember that—the waking up.”
“The healer has kept you on some pretty good pain medication. You were a little…out of it, but able to walk to the bathroom.”
Well, that explained why it didn’t feel like my bladder was about to burst. Wait. “Did you help me to the…bathroom?”
Seriously, if he confirmed it, God hating me would be official.
“No.” He shook his head. “Ivy and Faye helped. They also changed the bandages on your arm and your legs.”
“My legs?” The corners of my lips turned down, tugging at the flesh of my lower lip in a way that told me it was still healing.
“There were some cuts there that were deeper but did not require stitches.” He tucked a strand of hair back from his face.
“Oh.” I shifted my gaze to my hands, finally looking at them. Both bore signs of fading bruises. I blinked slowly. “You…you’ve seen what it…what it all looks like?”
Caden seemed to know what I was asking because he tipped forward even farther. “I’ve seen most of it, Brighton. I’ve seen enough.”
I closed my eyes. A prickly heat crept over me, a flush of shame that I knew I should have no ownership of. What I looked like now shouldn’t matter. For the most part, it didn’t because I was alive, and that mattered. But where my body had been a faint sketch of what had happened to me before, I knew without even seeing it that it was now a roadmap of all the horrors. I’d already known that some of what I’d seen would scar, and I guessed I just hadn’t been all that concerned about it while in the tomb, given that I had more important things to worry about.
I still did.
But knowing that Caden had seen what was left of me still cut as deep as that edge of the dagger.
“It’ll get better.” His voice was quiet, so much so that I had to look at him. “You will heal. All of this will fade. Remember that.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
His gaze searched mine. “Do you think you can drink something? I think food is off the table until the healer sees you.”