Page 74 of Stealing Tink
That’s what I’ll be soon.
A dream.
The truth is on the tip of my tongue. I visited the healer again today. The bleeding I’ve suffered over the past few months has only worsened. He says I have a few weeks left at best. And that’s him being generous.
A chill of fear moves through me. I’m less terrified of dying than I am of dying alone. Not telling him my name—well, it had begun as a flirtation. And then it grew into a secret joke we shared. But now I’m dying, and he doesn’t know my name. And suddenly that feels important—a grave mistake, and I’m wondering why a man would bother to stay and watch the death of a woman whose name he doesn’t even know.
“When are you ever going to trust me, my love?” he asks, his voice suddenly quiet. “When are you going to tell me your name? Have I not earned at least that?”
Trust. If that’s what he wants, it won’t be my name that fulfills that desire.
“I’m dying,” I say.
He blinks, and I find I’m surprised as he is. We both lie there for a moment under the assumption that we must have heard wrong.
But I’ve wanted to trust this man since the moment I laid eyes on him. And now that the truth is out there, I can’t seem to stop myself.
“I’m dying.” This time it’s less a whisper and more an easy admission, as if I’m accusing my body itself.
“Dying?” he echoes. He lays the word out slowly, as if reminding himself how to sound it out. “What of?”
“The physician’s not sure,” I say. Unable to look at him, I stare at the sky. “But he says I only have a few weeks.”
The man next to me goes still. Quiet.
His silence is unbearable, so I say, “I just found out today—that I’m dying, I mean. I’ve known for months, of course, that something was wrong.”
“You should have told me,” he says, his voice clipped.
I turn back toward him, surprised to find anger on his face. Not just surprised at him—surprised at myself for expecting anything different.
“I know,” I say. “But I just wanted…” I trail off, because I don’t know what I wanted. I wanted, this entire time, to have someone who would cry over me. But I feared that if I told him, he would leave. And now that we’re close enough that I’m fairly sure he won’t, well, it seems silly to have kept it from him.
Except there’s that anger again, burning in his eyes.
“I should have told you, I know,” I say. “It wasn’t fair of me.” I trail off, because he’s not looking at me anymore, but at the sky.
“You’re sure you only have a few weeks?”
“The healer said that was a generous estimate.”
This time, when he looks at me, the anger is gone, replaced by something more desperate. He rolls toward me and cups the back of my neck with his hand, using it to pull me into him. When he brushes a kiss to my lips, it fills me up.
He’s going to stay. He’s going to stay these next few weeks.
He presses another kiss to my lips.
And his fingers to my throat.
CHAPTER 32
It’s dawn before I glimpse the signal from the rendezvous point—light in the form of a campfire flickers from the cave across the valley. At the sight of it, I bolt upright and flip over.
I don’t know why, but I expected the Nomad to be asleep farther from me. Instead, he’s close enough to reach out and touch. A chill snakes through me, considering how deeply I slept with him next to me. I touch my throat, feeling the ghost of his fingers on my skin as the dream from last night washes over me, blanketing my true feelings with those from the dream. There’s a tug in my chest when I watch the Nomad sleeping, an aching longing that doesn’t belong to me. But I feel it just as keenly, and the betrayal even keener.
I shake it off with a silent shudder. There’s no reason to let it have a hold over me. That dream’s a repeat. One I first had when I was still caged at the circus. My parents had named me Elena, which means light, as a girl. Tink had been a nickname my father often called me. When I left home, I abandoned the name Elena, figuring it was easier to trace. Our conversation about light last night must have jogged my subconscious.
I jab the Nomad in the shoulder with a nearby stick.
