Page 31 of Fallen to Thievery
Gods, my mind was in utter disarray. His fingers were gentle while he threatened to take my life. He confessed that he wanted to torture a man to his end and then ended the conversation with an unexpected tender touch. Mom was always adamant that actions spoke louder than words, but I didn’t think it applied to this man. I knew what he was capable of, and he had just told me himself; yet, he had saved me. He had carried me and taken care of me. The way he had held on to me last night…
Jeez, Ava!
He was also holding on to that bloody bunny.
“Are you coming?” He peered over his shoulder at me; seemingly intrigued and entertained by the chaos of emotions going through me.
“Do I have a choice?” I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway, just in the off chance…
“Not really, Princess.”
Bastard.
We continued on in silence. There would be no more questions coming from me. He was right. I shouldn’t ask if I couldn’t handle the answers. And every word he uttered had the tendency of making my skin crawl.
I listed the plants in my head as we walked. My mind kept wandering to dark places I wasn’t ready to face. So, I let nature pacify my thoughts. The treetops danced with the wind, and I admired the late-blooming flowers, rebelling against the late autumn air.
I wasn’t paying attention and had almost stumbled right over her. In the underbrush, laid a doe on her side. Her breathing was ragged. She stared up at me. Her lack of fear meant only one thing; she was already close to death. I looked her over. She had no obvious wounds, and she was still young. Something was wrong internally. There wasn’t much I could do. She was already too far gone. But I placed the walking sticks down and slowly lowered myself to the ground.
“What are you doing?” Grayson shot at me.
I carefully lifted her head onto my lap, making her more comfortable. “She needs a friend. No one should die alone.” I didn’t look at him to see his reaction. I didn’t care. My fingers gingerly stroked over the doe’s neck. She stared up into my eyes the whole time.
When it was time, I whispered my blessing to her. “You have completed the circle, child of Gaia. May your spirit find solace in the peace and beautyof our Great Mother, until your next life.” I watched as her soul left her eyes. Tears welled, and I didn’t bother to stop them. Life was beautiful, but brutal. It could be so unkind.
I picked three blue flowers and placed them around her head.
Grayson watched me intently. His eyes were soft. He had let me sit with the doe for upwards of half an hour.
When I stood, he handed me the walking sticks and wiped a tear from my cheek. Again, his sudden tenderness struck me. I could almost pretend he was a normal man. We walked in silence. I wasn’t in the mood for talking. Especially not to him. Seeing the doe die reminded me of my own impending death. And just like hers, it could still come too fast, too soon.
After a while of brutal slopes and dense underbrush, Grayson stopped at a clearing, a man-made camping site, and shrugged the bags off his back. It surprised me. We still had a lot of daylight left. When I asked, he said, “We’re not making it to the cabin today, anyway. And your foot must hurt like hell. You’re getting slower. And I’m starving. I need real food.”
For the first time, he sounded like a human being. Hunger gnawed at my insides too. We hadn’t eaten anything yet. And gods, he was right. The pain in my foot had turned excruciating.
I sat down on one of the stumps that was placed in a circle, admiring the nearby stream that gurgled past the campsite. It was astounding to me that there were people who willingly came this deep into the forest.
It was good to be off my foot. The relief was instant. Grayson kneeled before me and gently took my boot off. He shook his head at me, like I was a child who had done something wrong. My foot was even more swollenthan the previous night. It hurt more too. Again, the strangeness of the situation struck me. He seemed to…care.
“I don’t have anything for inflammation. There was only enough for one application.” His brows were knitted.
“I can make a paste from pine needles, if you can get me some.” I wasn’t about to get up again. “It’s anti-inflammatory and helps with pain.” There were a few other plants that would’ve worked better, but he wouldn’t be keen on going foraging.
He eyed me suspiciously but didn’t say anything as he got up and picked a handful of pine needles off the nearest tree. My hands fumbled nervously while I rubbed the pine needles between two stones to create a paste. Grayson’s eyes bored into me through the whole process, and I wished he would just look away for two seconds so I could breathe again. He took the stone and applied the paste to my foot and ankle. I watched as he got another bandage from the first aid kit and started wrapping it tightly around my foot.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
He frowned but didn’t look up. “I don’t know.Nice...” he said the word as if it was an abomination, “is not in my nature.”
“Are you not nice to Gemma and Hunter then?” He had to be. Or maybe he was overestimating their feelings for him. Maybe they weren’t so much his friends but only tolerated him for the money.
“It’s different. They’re family.”
Okay then. “Is Hunter your brother?” They didn’t look alike at all.
“Something like that.”
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. He was so cryptic. His answers left me with more questions. But what else could I expect from a thief? “Why do you insist on being so mysterious? You’re killing me soon anyway.”
