Warrior's Touch (Deadly Touch book 2)

“They’re killing her!”

The iron door swung into the wall, jolting Jonas awake. It took him a moment to register what Samsi had said. But once he did, he was on his feet.

She ran to his door, fumbling with the keys.

“Samsi!” One of the other guards, a younger one Jonas didn’t know, gripped Samsi’s wrist before she could get the key in the lock.

Samsi brought her other hand around, catching him under the jaw and throwing him back. She returned to her mission; jaw set in determination.

“I heard something. Wasn’t right,” Samsi was saying while she sorted through the keys again. “Aris. The Syakaran woman.” She shook her head. “Hisham said she’s alright. For an Aenuk. It ain’t right.”

The third guard didn’t seem to know what to do. He hovered over Samsi’s shoulder, apprehensive, but he wasn’t stopping her.

Samsi found the key and swung the door open.

Stepping from the cell, Jonas pulled two knives from Samsi’s vest and ran up the dark corridor. Not Syakaran blades but, against Aris and Karlani, just as effective.

He flung the door to Llew’s chamber wide, catching it on the ricochet and flinging it back again.

“Aris...?”

“Jonas,” Aris croaked out before sucking in his breath as purple lightning shot from Llew and into him.

None of it made sense. Aris straddled Llew, his hand gripping the handle of a knife in her belly. The scene before him was so bizarre, Jonas couldn’t grasp a single coherent thought. Aris. Llew. Knife. Llew’s belly. Their child...

Jonas lunged forward. He was still dazed by what he saw, but anger didn’t need to understand.

Karlani moved to block him. Jonas went to brush her aside, but she dug in her heels and shoved him back. Damn woman! And damn Aris! The old man had always said he loved Jonas as a son. But a father wouldn’t do this. He lashed out, flinging Karlani aside, rage providing him a strength starvation had sapped. She landed in a heap on the floor, but was up again in an instant, dragging on Jonas’s forearm, slowing but not stopping his advance. He twisted, trying to shake her off, but she held on, slowing him enough for Aris to keep harvesting the lightning.

Aris’s knuckles whitened around his knife handle. He growled through his teeth as more lightning shot into him, then chuckled as it fizzed up his blade and across his skin as if it tickled. Finally, he released the knife and sat back, hands resting on thighs like he was taking a break from a job well done.

Hisham arrived in the doorway, a small contingent of soldiers with him. Taking little time to assess the situation, he ran in, knocking Karlani aside, freeing Jonas to go after Aris.

Aris started to stand, but not before Jonas got to him, sinking both blades into him, one in his chest, one in his gut.

Aris coughed. “Ow.”

Jonas released the handles and stepped back, shaken by what he’d done. He looked from the knives to Aris’s paling face, struggling to believe the knives were really there, in Aris, and he’d been the one to put them there.

Karlani roared as she ran at him again, but Jonas was struggling to pull his eyes from his captain. Luckily Hisham was there, and Samsi rushed in to help. No one else seemed to know what to do. Probably for the best. In the moment, the right thing to do would be to arrest Jonas.

Jonas had seen the shock of realization as a life ended enough to know it when he saw it, and he wasn’t seeing it now. Aris frowned down at the knife handles, reached up and pulled one and then the other free. As the wounds began to heal, he looked at Jonas, then he looked back down at Llew. Jonas felt sick. Aris was healing and Jonas was disarmed.

“Looks just like how we found Kierra.” Aris studied Llew as if she were a curiosity, or perhaps a piece of art, seemingly ignorant of his wound. “Just like Kierra.”

Aris was healing like a Syaenuk, but he wasn’t draining anyone to do it. Jonas had never seen anything like it. So engrossed in the impossibility before him, he almost missed what Aris had said. But they hadn’t found Kierra. Jonas had returned home to a smoldering mess. There had been no Kierra left to find, or so Aris had told him. Aris had told Jonas not to look, that it would be too painful to see. You don’t want to remember her that way. Aris had told him, and Hisham’s silent nods had assured him it was best. And Aris had presented the knife, giving Jonas something to do with his anger.

Jonas felt the fool. Everything he knew was lies.

Whatever Aris was, he was still an old man. Jonas stepped forward again, but Aris dodged him and was standing in the outer chamber in an instant, the big blade dripping blood by his side. Karlani stood by him, her glare daring anyone to try anything, though her gaze kept flicking to the man beside her, as if she wasn’t sure he was real. In the midst of the confusion, Aris bent his fingers in a wave and dashed through the door at Syakaran speed, knocking surprised soldiers aside, Karlani at his heels.

Everyone remained frozen, dumbfounded for a moment. Jonas was still struggling to reconcile all he’d seen and heard.

“What just happened?” Someone finally voiced what they were all wondering.

“That looked like Captain Aris,” someone else said.

“It was Aris,” said Samsi.

“But—”

But Aris wasn’t Karan, nor Aenuk, and yet what he had done couldn’t otherwise be explained. He was also gone, and Jonas needed to focus on Llew. He let the bemusement fade into the background and turned to her. She was a mess, the entire front of her dark with blood, and a pool spreading on the bricks beneath her. She was bleeding out, fast.

“Llew!” He landed on his knees beside her, took her hand in his. Her skin burned his like hot coals. “Ah!” He flinched back. Of course! She was Aenuk and he could heal her.

“Don’t—” Her protest as ineffective as his touch seemed. “But it wasn’t your knife. It was supposed to be your knife!” She was talking nonsense.

“You’re not dyin’, Llew. Get a doctor!” Jonas called over his shoulder.

Hisham immediately turned to direct soldiers back up the stairs. Jonas was pleased to hear urgency in his voice. With Hisham there, Jonas could focus on Llew.

Hardly thinking, he pulled her shirt up, exposing her lower belly. “Sorry.” He placed his hand on her belly, fighting the urge to snatch his hand back from the pain, and watching the wound intently. But it didn’t matter where he touched her, the wound wouldn’t heal. Aris had used a Syakaran knife.

His eyes rested on her belly where their child grew, had been—

He cut off his thoughts there, the potential destination unbearable.

Llew cried out again and Jonas screwed up his face at his impotence.

He ripped his shirt, pulling it into two parts. One, he wrapped one hand in and clasped hers, willing her to hold on. The other, he pressed to her chest wound, trying to slow the blood.

Shuffled feet and murmuring voices continued behind him; the room filled with Quavens who wouldn’t understand. Hisham crouched beside him.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“Make sure the doc gets through. I don’t wanna hear nothin’ about Aenuks and Turhmos and won’ts and shouldn’ts until Llew’s stable.”

Hisham nodded and stood. The murmurs behind Jonas died down.

It seemed an age before a bedraggled-looking man with a bulky leather satchel stumbled into the room. The man’s loosely curled hair hung over one eye and he still wore pajamas, but as soon as he saw Llew any thoughts of himself and the sleep he was missing vanished, and he and his bag were at her side in an instant.

“What happened?”

“She was stabbed,” said Jonas. “She was... She’s pregnant.”

The doctor surveyed the scene before him. The glance he gave Jonas before turning to fish through his bag held a great deal of doubt.

He came up with a small bottle and passed it and an eyedropper to Jonas. “A few drops of this on her tongue. It’ll help,” he reassured him.

Jonas popped the bottle’s bung and gave it a sniff, his breath catching on the bitter scent. He looked at the doctor dubiously, who nodded. Having no reason to doubt the man and every need to ease Llew’s discomfort, Jonas slid the eyedropper into the bottle and, his hands trembling, put it to Llew’s lips. Everyone waited.

Llew’s eyelids flickered, and her eyes rolled back. Jonas’s breath caught, thinking she might be dying. Idiot. She was dying.

“You have to save her,” he muttered.

The doctor was smart enough not to respond. He reached forward to begin his work but snatched his hands back the instant he came in contact with her.

“She’s Aenuk,” Jonas said.

The doctor’s eyes widened before narrowing. He shook his head and snatched his bag. Jonas gripped the doctor’s arm before he got fully standing.

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere till you’ve fixed her.”

Hisham stepped in close behind the doctor. “You heard the man,” he said by the doctor’s ear.

Reluctantly, the doctor knelt beside Llew again.

“It was a Syakaran knife,” said Jonas, folding and unfolding the fingers on one hand, testing and displaying the result of having touched Llew himself. The skin was pink, raw, blistered in places.

The doctor said nothing, just gave Jonas a dark look. Jonas looked back.

The doctor puffed his thoughts out with a sigh, shaking his head and working his jaw as he reached into his bag and pulled on a pair of rubbery gloves.

“You do realize,” the doctor said, not even trying to disguise his anger, “that open abdominal wounds are almost invariably fatal. It could take minutes, it could take weeks, but I’m afraid it’s the way it is.”

“I hope you realize the day she dies is the day you die.”

Again, Jonas held the doctor’s glare. Jonas had no time for whether or not his terms were fair. What mattered was the doctor not taking shortcuts because Llew was Aenuk.

Jonas leaned close to Llew, murmuring reassurances. She looked like she was out cold, but maybe she might hear him.

He wasn’t disappointed when Hasiph crouched beside Llew, opposite the doctor. Jonas had been to the Turhmos border with the young medic several times over the years and knew him as a competent medical professional. Hasiph returned Jonas’s nod before settling to following every instruction the doctor gave.

They cut and tore her clothes, wiped away what blood they could. Hasiph focused on her chest wound, while the doctor worked at her belly. All Jonas saw was off-white cloth going in and coming out dripping with dark blood. They requested more swabs.

Jonas’s nerves wound tight. He felt sick. So much blood. A Syakaran blade. Was he about to lose Llew and their baby? He didn’t think he could stand it. His parents. Kierra and their child. It was almost enough to make him believe in gods. Could they hate him so much? He was a man who’d made mistakes, but they’d been made in ignorance. His enlightenment had begun the day Llew had lived in Stelt. Was he meant to have atoned for all he’d done already? He needed more time.

“Oh.” The doctor’s muted exclamation brought Jonas back to the cold, dark cell.

“What?”

The doctor murmured something, too quiet to hear. Jonas leaned closer. The doctor lifted the cloth in his hand. In it, lay a perfectly formed, tiny human being, still connected to Llew via a fleshy tube from its belly.