outside. He despised that cowardly emotion, so he forced himself to watch the man walk down to the dock where his boat was moored, not looking away once. It wasn’t until the man pushed away from the dock that Magnus breathed a sigh of relief. Only when the boat disappeared did he take his first step out of the forest in a sennight and make his way down the slope to the edge of the village. The pain on his left side tried to slow him, but he ignored it. There was no telling how long he had, so he must make the most of it.
Still...he hesitated when he reached the door of the house, afraid of what he might find inside. His small hand was shaking when he reached out to push the door open and his heart was pounding in his ears.
Magnus awoke abruptly to the sound of muffled voices. The strange dream along with his pain had kept him from finding a peaceful sleep. He was certain it must be a memory from his childhood, but on his life he couldn’t figure it out. As soon as he opened his eyes, it began to dissipate.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the low light in the room. A fire flickered somewhere near his feet, but pain throbbed through his temple if he attempted to look at it, so he kept his eyes looking forward. A few moments later he realised that he was looking upward, staring at the underside of a thatched roof. A tapestry hung to his left, separating the area where he slept from the rest of the house. Just past his feet, a hearth glowed with a low burning fire and on the other side of that hearth was a crudely built table pushed up against the wall with cooking implements on top of it. The voices from the front of the house had stopped, but he could hear shuffling sounds.
Before he could even begin to fathom where he was or who could be with him, he became aware of an aching pain in his shoulders. It wasn’t the ache of his ribs, which had been hurt in that mysterious battle, but a new ache. A throb that sent pinpricks of pain through his arms when he tried to move them. When they wouldn’t move, he looked over to see that his wrists were tied to an unfinished, rudimentary headboard. A wave of panic chilled him to the bone and he pulled in earnest, only to realise that his ankles were somehow tied to the foot of the bed. Anxiety tightened in his body and made his heart pound.
His body twisted and heaved as he tried to jerk himself free, no doubt drawing the attention of his captor, but he didn’t care. He needed to get free.
‘Foreigner?’
He turned his head at the sound of her voice and just the sight of her was enough to soothe him. It was her. The side of his body where he’d pressed her against him as he walked warmed at the memory. She wore a different dress, this one a green that made him think of her eyes, with a wide apron tied double around her waist. Standing with her arms slightly raised in front of her as if she was afraid she would scare him, she spoke again, but the words were a rush that he couldn’t distinguish.
He opened his mouth to demand an explanation for the restraints, but the words wouldn’t come right away. Finally, after turning them over a few times, he asked, ‘Why am I bound?’ He had a suspicion that the words didn’t sound as harsh as he intended them, though, because she smiled at him and he couldn’t hold on to even a shred of anger when she did that.
‘They wouldn’t allow you to stay here without restraints. I’m sorry.’ She walked closer and kneeled down beside the low bed. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Let me go.’ He made sure his voice was firm. She flinched back and he regretted it immediately. He tried again, this time keeping his voice even. ‘You know I won’t hurt you, fair one. Untie me so that I can leave.’
‘I know. I don’t think you’ll hurt me. But it was a condition of them allowing you to stay here.’ Her brow furrowed as she leaned forward, her small hands resting on the bed beside him.
‘Them?’ It was a pointless question. Obviously he was in her village and the leaders didn’t trust a stranger, a foreigner as she’d called him. The fact that he was even alive and hadn’t been run through beneath the fir where he’d fallen was a testament to their feelings. Though it was possible they were only waiting to verify his identity before taking that step.
‘The elders. Cuthbert is our chieftain. After you fell asleep, I couldn’t wake you and worried that you wouldn’t wake at all. I had no choice but to tell him that I’d found you. He came and a few others carried you here.’ Magnus couldn’t take his eyes from her face as she spoke. She was so vivid, so vibrant, so alive, that he only wanted to watch her, causing his concentration on her words to falter. It took all the determination he could muster to focus again and make sense of what she said. ‘They wanted to take you to the hall, but I didn’t think that would be the best place for you. I wanted to watch over you myself, so I asked them to bring you here. They did, but only on the condition that I keep you tied down. I only meant to tie your arms, but you were thrashing in your sleep and I was afraid you’d hurt yourself, so I tied your ankles.’
Confusion must have shown on his face, because she gave him a shy smile and blushed. ‘My apologies. I ramble on and on sometimes.’
Blotches of pink swept across her cheeks, drawing his attention to the bit of hair tucked beneath her headrail at her temple. Streaks of russet, or perhaps a darker red, were visible in the low firelight. He wanted to push the atrocity from her head and see it all for himself. An enticing thought that had no right to exist. Pulling himself away from her allure, he shifted and almost grimaced at the pain sparking through his arms from the unnatural position. It had nearly begun to match the throbbing in his skull.
‘How is your head?’ She reached up towards his temple, her fingers pressing lightly against the edges of a poultice and following the line of a strip of linen that held it in place around his head. Satisfied the binding was tight enough, she pressed her palm to his uninjured temple.
‘It aches,’ he admitted.
‘I’ve a draught for you if you’d like to drink it. Edyth, the healer who made your poultice, said it’s to help with the ache.’
He nodded, a brief move because he was loath to do anything that would make her stop touching him. Her soft palm stroked back through his hair and he had to fight the urge to close his eyes in pleasure. ‘You awoke in a sweat last night. I think your fever left. You only feel slightly warm now.’
The words of her unfamiliar language were coming back to him now, but it hardly mattered. He’d listen to her soft voice with its hint of a husky rasp for as long as she wanted to speak to him, whether he understood her words or not. ‘Thank you. You saved my life.’ Though the villagers might yet see to his death.
‘You saved me.’ Their eyes met and the moment stopped. All he could hear was her breath, all he could see was her face and all he could feel were her fingertips as they slid down his face and across his jaw.
‘I put your life in danger and for that I apologise. How can I repay you for your care?’
She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling and her cheeks turning pink again, as she dropped her hand back to the bed. ‘I think you have more recovering to do yet before we should speak of such things.’ She didn’t step back and her close proximity was starting to affect him. The heat from her body warmed his and her scent filled his breath as he drew it in. She smelled fresh and somehow sweet like flowers. It was a vaguely familiar scent, but his memories were too tangled and confused to draw each of them out separately for examination. Just attempting to extract one from the others caused them all to tumble into a tangled ball of impenetrable threads.
‘I shouldn’t linger.’ No matter how he might want to spend more time with her. He didn’t once consider that he might not convince her to untie him. Then he realised what she’d said and the implications of the fact that she’d changed
