Defy (22 page)

“Move out of the way.” Suddenly, Lisbet was there, pushing

Rylan and me aside. She held her hand above the wound and closed

her eyes, concentrating. Finally, she looked up at us. “After we

remove the arrow, I will need some time to work on her. But she

should live.”

Relief poured through me. Though I wasn’t sure how I felt

about Tanoori anymore, I didn’t want her to die.

“Here, take this to stop the bleeding once we pull it out.”

Rylan yanked his tunic over his head, and handed it to Lisbet.

He knelt back down beside us and I forced myself to look

away from his lean, muscular torso. I helped Lisbet roll Tanoori

onto her side, to make sure the arrow hadn’t passed all the way

through her body.

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“We can’t pull it out here; she’ll bleed to death. We’ll have

to break the shaft and then remove the arrow when I have time to

work on her,” Lisbet said.

We held her while Rylan got a grip on the arrow shaft. He

exhaled and then snapped it off as close to her body as he could.

Lisbet immediately took the shirt Rylan had given her and

pressed it around the wound.

The storm that had been hanging over us all day finally broke.

Raindrops made little dots of darker soil all around us. Slowly at

first, then it began to pick up speed as Lisbet hunched over

Tanoori, one hand pressing the shirt into her chest and the other

hovering above her body, shaking.

“We have to leave now, before they come back with reinforce-

ments. There isn’t time to do anything for her.”

I looked up to see Eljin standing above us, staring down at

Tanoori, his expression inscrutable.

“If she can’t walk, she gets left behind.” Eljin turned on his

heel and walked away, leaving us crouched around Tanoori, staring

at him in disbelief.

“We can’t leave her here to die.” I looked at Rylan, but his

expression was grim.

“He’s right. We do need to leave, or else we might
all
die.”

“They were terrified of Eljin. They won’t dare come back,” I

argued.

“He’s obviously not willing to take that chance.”

“How quickly can you heal her?” I turned to Lisbet.

“Not fast enough. The wound is bad — and we haven’t even

removed the arrow yet.”

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My chest ached with anger and desperation. Was that it, then?

She escaped the hangman’s noose, only to be shot down in the

jungle by her own country’s arrow?

“I’m not leaving her here. I’ll carry her on my back if I have to.”

I bent down and began to tear the bottom edge of her tunic off.

“Alex, what are you doing?” I heard Damian’s voice but

ignored him, continuing to tear the fabric until I had a long strip

to bind her wound with. “What is she doing?”

“She’s apparently going to single-handedly save the girl who

tried to kill you, my lord,” Rylan responded.

“She also tried to kill Alex the other night, if I’m not

mistaken.”

One of them sighed, but I didn’t look up to see who. Instead,

I took the strip of cloth and tied it over her shoulder and across the wound, with Rylan’s ruined tunic underneath it, pressed against

her chest. Lisbet watched me silently, her expression indecipherable.

When I finished the makeshift bandage, I gently pulled

Tanoori up off the ground. She was dead weight, and I grunted

with the effort of holding her up. The rain fell harder and harder,

making everything that much more difficult.

“We can’t carry her on our backs,” Rylan said as he crouched

down to help me prop her up.

“Then what should we do?” I cried. “Leave her here to die? To

be eaten by an animal?”

“If we could make some sort of sling or stretcher, then we

could all carry her together,” Damian said.

I looked up at him in surprise. His expression was guarded. I

couldn’t imagine what he thought as he stared down at us, trying

to help the girl who’d attempted to murder him.

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“If you want her to live, she needs to be kept as still as possible,

so she doesn’t lose more blood than she has to. Even if you are able

to transport her to the next stopping place, she may not make it

long enough for me to heal her.” Lisbet looked at me as she spoke.

“We have to at least try,” I responded.

Lisbet nodded and then stood up. “Give me one of your bed-

rolls. If we use the poles from a tent, we could make a stretcher to

transport her.”

Damian shrugged the pack that held his bedroll off his shoul-

ders and handed the bedroll to her. Rylan found his pack, which

held our rolled-up tent and the broken-down poles in it. The poles

were lightweight and made to pull apart into pieces for traveling. I

hoped they’d be able to sustain Tanoori’s weight.

“What are you
doing
?” someone shouted. I glanced up to see

Eljin storming back over to us, his eyes furious above his ever-

present mask. “I told you we had to leave! If you don’t come right

now, I will kill you all and leave you with her.”

Lisbet ignored him and kept working, deftly tying the bedroll

to the poles we’d laid out in a rectangle.

“No one else will be dying today,” Damian said, his voice

cold. “Either help us, or go. We’ll catch up if we have to.”

“You expect me to leave you here?” Eljin’s eyebrows lifted

above his mask. “To assume you’ll come find us, rather than turn

around and head back?”

“We have no supplies, no map. We would most likely die if we

tried to return to the palace on our own.” Damian stood up and

folded his arms across his chest.

While they argued, we finished attaching the bedroll to the

tent poles, and Rylan and I moved over to Tanoori.

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“Move her on three,” he said.

I nodded.

“One. Two.
Three.
”

We both heaved, and lifted her onto the stretcher.

“There, you see? It’s done.” Damian gestured to where she

now lay on the bedroll, deadly pale and soaked. The rain running

off her body was crimson from her blood.

“If she slows you down, I will have no choice but to make you

leave her.”

“She won’t,” I replied, meeting Eljin’s gaze from where I

crouched on the ground.

He shook his head and turned away.

We each took a side of the stretcher and hefted her up into the

air. Rylan was across from me and Damian was in front. Lisbet

tried to help across from Damian, but she wasn’t nearly as strong

as me, let alone the two men. I was afraid she’d tire soon, leaving

Damian to shoulder half the stretcher alone.

Sheets of water poured down from the roiling black clouds

above as we moved forward, across the stream and into the trees

where the army had come from. No one was there anymore, other

than Eljin and his men and us.

“You’d better appreciate this,” I muttered under my breath as

thunder cracked overhead.

When we finally stopped for the night, the storm had quit, but the

clouds remained, murky and startlingly close to the earth, encas-

ing the tops of the trees in their dark, swirling depths.

My whole body hurt when we set Tanoori on the ground. My

back was one huge knot of pain and my right arm cramped from

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moving out of the same position after hours of holding up the

stretcher. Jax had been farther ahead in line, and he and some of

the other men had already set up Lisbet’s tent. We moved Tanoori

inside, and Lisbet immediately began to hover over her.

Damian, Rylan, and I all stood in a row, watching her work,

until she paused and looked up at us. “This is going to take a long

time, especially since the bloodroot isn’t entirely out of my system.

You’d best go find some food and somewhere to sleep. We’ll know

by morning if she’s going to make it.”

I stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean the blood-

root’s not out of
your
system? What does that have to do with healing her?”

Lisbet ignored me and kept tending to Tanoori.

I turned to Damian. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

He shrugged. His expression was inscrutable in the dim light

as he gazed back at me. “We should go so she can work,” he said.

I glanced down at Tanoori. Her face was so peaceful, she

looked like she could be sleeping, except for the ghostly pallor her

skin had taken.

“Come on, he’s right. Let’s go.” Rylan pressed his hand gently

to my lower back, steering me out of the tent. I could feel the heat

of his fingers through my wet tunic.

“Where will you sleep?” Damian asked, glancing down to

where Rylan’s hand still rested on me, then back up at my face. “I

believe we used your tent poles for the stretcher?”

Rylan dropped his hand and sighed. “I’ve been trying to fig-

ure that out. I’m sorry, Alex, but I think we’re going to be sleeping out in the open from now on.”

“You can share my tent,” Damian said quickly, looking at

177

Rylan, then at me. “It’ll be a bit tight, but better than nothing, I

suppose.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and strode away.

“That was unexpectedly kind of him,” Rylan observed. “It’s

like he’s a completely different person now. I don’t get it.”

I shrugged. “I guess we all have our secrets.”

Rylan gave me a strange look. He was still shirtless, and he

stood close enough that I felt all too aware of his proximity — and

of his nakedness. He was built differently from Damian. Where

the prince was lean and defined, Rylan was more solid, his arms

were thicker and his chest broader. I knew from years of sparring

with him exactly how strong he was. I had never let myself notice

his body like
this
before — at least not for long. However, in all that time, he’d never looked at me as he was now, either.

Fighting a blush, I said, “You should go find a shirt and I’ll see

if I can get us some food. Then I guess we’ll have to figure out

where Damian’s tent is.”

Rylan didn’t say anything; he just stood there, looking at me.

“Do you like him, Alex?” he finally asked, his voice unnaturally

strained.

My heart skipped a beat. “The prince? Well, I don’t hate him

anymore, I guess. He’s different now, like you said. It’s easier to

guard a prince I can respect rather than a useless, spoiled brat,

like before.” I smiled, attempting to be lighthearted, but Rylan

frowned back.

“That’s not what I meant.”

The smile slipped from my face and I shifted uncomfortably.

“I’ve noticed the way you look at him. I don’t want you to get

hurt. He might be acting friendly at the moment, telling us to call

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him by his first name, offering to let us sleep in his tent, but he’s a
prince
, Alex. That will never change.”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m not stupid, Rylan.”

“I didn’t mean that —”

“And it doesn’t matter, because I don’t look at him any differ-

ently than anyone else. I know he’s our prince. I’m in his guard,

remember? Just because you both know I’m a girl now doesn’t

change anything.”

“I promised your brother I’d watch out for you.” Rylan lifted

his hand to brush a stray lock of hair from my cheek. Ignoring the

rush of warmth from his touch, I stepped back.

“You aren’t my brother, so stop trying to act like you are.”

Rylan’s jaw tightened. “I’m not trying to act like your
brother
, Alexa. Has it ever occurred to you that I might care about you?

That maybe I’ve been fighting an attraction to you that I couldn’t

let anyone know about, least of all you, for
years
? I had to make sure I never looked at you too long or reached out to touch you,

even though I wanted to. So many times, I can’t even count.”

The artery in my neck pounded beneath my skin, and I felt

light-headed with shock. Rylan’s eyes were bright, almost fevered

in the darkness as he spoke.

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to keep pretending, to

bury how I really felt, knowing I’d never be able to do anything

about it without endangering you? And now I finally have a chance

to treat you the way you deserve — to cherish you the way a woman

should be when a man loves her. And all you can do is stare at the

prince.”

“Rylan . . .” I looked at him, stricken. My eyes burned and my

throat felt suddenly dry. He was wrong, I didn’t
only
think of 179

Damian. Before I’d found out about this other side to the prince,

there had only been Rylan. But I wasn’t sure how I felt anymore.

Everything was changing so fast, I couldn’t find solid ground. I

felt like I was sliding down a slope, hurtling toward an abyss.

“Forget I said anything,” he said, taking a step back. “I

shouldn’t have told you. It’s just been building up inside of me for

so long, and when you nearly got killed today . . . I couldn’t keep

it in anymore.”

“I nearly got killed?”

“
Prince
Damian saved you, remember? I couldn’t get there fast

enough. Good thing he’s been hiding the fact that he’s an expert

swordsman from all of us until now.”

“Oh. Yes,” I replied lamely. I actually
had
forgotten, with