My Darkening Ember

Chapter Twenty - Two

We packed up and left as soon as I stopped shivering. He had wrapped my leg with the rest of the torn trousers and helped me stand before watching if I could limp alongside him. I convinced him I could, not telling him the pain in my leg had started hurting, badly.

I still didn't understand why he was here. Why he wouldn't just leave me? I tried complaining once we had walked a bit, asking him to leave me in a cave or by a tree, but each time he ignored me, only commenting on my pace. Maybe he was waiting for me to die so he could confirm it to his contractors, or maybe I was just speculating uselessly.

I knew the poison was almost at my heart. The dark veins were growing every hour, inching me closer to death. It wouldn't be long now.

I walked behind him, studying every inch of his frame. He was quite tall, towering a whole head over me and I was already abnormally tall for a woman rooted in the south.

His coat did not show an inch of tear making it look brand new. His shoulders were broad and his hands veined, there was something weirdly attractive about that.

It was as if I tried remembering every detail of the only man I would see before I would die. I wanted to remember him in death when I went before the gods. Maybe I could ask them to have mercy on him and grant him what he so desperately wanted.

I had thought about all the reasons he would be so desperate to trade me. It must have been because he didn't like who he was. He didn't want to kill people. Freedom, I knew that was it, but how could a Mile man abandon his trade, his life? What had made him so desperate to break his chains?

I remembered what he had sneered before when we had fought. You have no idea what people have made me do. He was just fighting for the same thing I was, to have free will and live in peace.

I shook my head. These thoughts were strange. The poison was messing with me. I should be thinking of Lau. But there was nothing there.

I had almost forgotten his face, and his voice was a fading echo in my ears.

It made me sad. I wanted to remember him to the very end but my brain was slowly shutting doors. I didn't remember my father's face or my home in the desert. The memories refused to show themselves.

A tear streamed down my cheek but I quickly wiped it away. I didn't have the energy to cry. My legs were shaking with every step but it wasn't from the cold.

Then one buckled and I ended up on the other knee, grabbing for my chest as an unbearable pain started to ripple through me. It was like knives were trying to carve themselves out from the inside. It felt as if my organs were twisting, making it hard to breathe.

Then my arm started to burn and I wanted to cry out but it was drowned by following coughs as I collapsed onto the ice, spurting blood. Pitch black blood.

"Come on. Get up." He was at my side instantly. Grabbing my arm and lifting me to my legs, he carefully placed his hand around my waist.

"It hurts," I managed through my clenched teeth.

"You have to fight it. Just a little longer. Come on." He took a step but my legs couldn't follow. They went limp. The pain was too much. The poison would torture me from the inside, bleed me dry of my life force. I was overheating, the sweat already pouring down my neck.

We dropped down until we both were on our knees next to each other. The fever was blurring my vision, and it was hard to hear but I think he called on me a few times. Then something cold wiped over my forehead and saw his hand scop ice before being placed on my forehead. A hand wrapped over mine and the dagger disappeared from my grip.