Veiled Eyes

Chapter 18

Weakness – noun: the state or condition of lacking strength.

The weight of him was crushing, every step a fight to keep us both upright. His arm hung across my shoulders, the heat of his body already leeching away into the cold tunnel air. The sting in my palms was relentless—sharp, burning pulses where his blood had soaked into my skin—but I forced myself to ignore it. Dropping him wasn’t an option.

The stone floor was slick beneath my boots, each step echoing in the dark. “You’re heavy, you know that?” I said, trying for casual but coming out breathless. “Next time you decide to fight something twice your size, you can carry yourself back.”

A faint sound—half a grunt, half a laugh—escaped him. It was enough to make me keep talking. “Bet you’ve got some kind of ridiculous story about how this is nothing. Probably the third time this week you’ve been mauled by something with too many teeth.”

His head shifted slightly, his breath grazing my ear. “You… talk too much.”

“Good,” I said, tightening my grip around his waist. “Means you’re still alive to complain about it.”

We turned down the narrow trail that would take us back toward the den. My arms ached, my palms screamed with every shift of his weight, but I kept my pace steady. The silence pressed in, heavy and strange—like the tunnel was holding its breath with us.

I glanced at him again, catching the faint flicker of brown still clinging to his eyes. “Almost there,” I murmured, less for him and more for myself.

By the time the jagged split in the stone came into view, my arms felt like they’d been pried out of their sockets. The tunnel air was so cold it burned in my lungs, but the sight of our den—our fragile scrap of safety—was enough to push me the last few steps.

“Almost there,” I muttered again, not sure if I was speaking to him or myself.

Kael’s weight sagged harder against me as we slipped inside. The air shifted instantly—quieter, warmer, though the faint crackle of yesterday’s fire had long since died. I steered us toward the bedroll, half-hauling, half-dragging him until I could lower him down.

That’s when I saw it properly.

In the thin light spilling through the stone, the gash across his chest was a ruin—deep, jagged, the skin torn back to expose dark muscle slick with black blood. The sight turned my stomach. My palms throbbed violently where his blood clung to my skin, angry welts rising along the burns.

He blinked up at me, his breathing shallow, but there was a flicker of that stubborn, unshakable glint in his eyes. “Told you… not to touch it.”

“Yeah,” I said, forcing my voice steady. “And when do I ever listen to you?”

He gave a faint huff—barely a sound—before his eyes slipped shut.

“Talk to me,” I said softly, trying to urge him to get speaking. My hands moved quickly, rifling through the bags lined up along the den walls. “Anything. Tell me I’m annoying you. Tell me you hate my voice. Just… say something.”

He made a low sound in his throat—half cough, half laugh—but didn’t answer.

I found what I was looking for, the rough gauze clenched tight in my hand, and hurried back to his side. My fingers were clumsy as I tugged at what was left of his torn shirt, easing it carefully over his head. He hissed softly when the fabric caught on the gash, but didn’t fight me.

The sight of him stole my breath for a moment. His skin was tanned, a deep bronze that stood in stark contrast to the dim, stone-gray light of the den. His chest and stomach were a landscape of lean, defined muscle—abs ridged under my fingertips as I steadied him. Across them, thin silver scars crisscrossed like constellations, some faded, others newer. Each one was a story I didn’t know yet, a battle he’d fought before I ever crossed his path.

“You’re staring,” he murmured, voice raw but with a faint edge of something that might have been amusement.

“I’m assessing the damage,” I said, forcing my eyes to stay on the wound and not wander, though the heat creeping up my neck betrayed me.

“Sure,” he breathed, and despite everything—his bleeding, my burning hands—there was the faintest twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

A shaky laugh slipped out of me—thinner, more fragile than I’d meant it to be.

“There you go,” I said softly. “That’s better. Keep going. Tell me something… Tell me what you don’t like about me.”

I shifted closer, the stale air thick with the metallic tang of blood. The gauze in my hand was already sodden, drinking in the black ichor that seeped sluggishly from the wound. Peeling it away, I reached for a fresh square and splashed it with alcohol.

He coughed—wet, raw—and winced as the movement tugged at the gash. Even as I pressed the new gauze to his side, the torn flesh began to knit beneath my fingers. A fresh reminder he wasn’t human.

“This is going to sting,” I murmured—not as a warning, but a fact—before pressing the soaked cloth firmly into place. His breath hissed through clenched teeth, muscles bunching tight beneath my palm.

“You’re… reckless,” he rasped after a moment. “Stubborn.”

“Mm, true. But stubborn people survive.” My voice cracked despite my attempt at levity. “And you’re one of the most stubborn people I know, Kael. So keep talking.”

The skin around the gash was smeared with grime and dried blood, so I worked methodically, wiping outward in slow, deliberate strokes until the tanned flesh was clean. Each pass made the wound look a little less like devastation, a little more like something that could heal.

His breathing hitched—uneven, shallow—but his voice came again, quieter now, as though each word cost him something he didn’t have to spare. “Brave… even when you shouldn’t be.”

The words snagged in my chest, sharp in a way I couldn’t name. “That sounds dangerously close to a compliment,” I murmured, though my hands didn’t stop moving.

One corner of his mouth twitched, the ghost of a smirk. “You… make it hard not to.”

Heat flared up my neck, sharp and disarming, twisting my stomach in ways I didn’t want to acknowledge. “Kael—”

“You’re not like them,” he murmured, his voice fraying at the edges. “You saw me…” His head sagged back, eyes drifting shut. “And you stayed… when you could’ve run.”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I focused on cleaning the wound, letting the silence wrap around us. Once the bleeding slowed to a sluggish seep, I reached for the salve he’d used on my leg, scooping a generous smear onto my fingers. The herbal tang cut through the metallic bite of his blood as I spread it carefully over the torn flesh, my touch as steady as I could make it.

When the ointment was in place, I tore a length of clean bandage and wrapped it snug around his side. My fingers moved with practiced ease—tight enough to hold, loose enough not to choke the breath from him. I tied off the end with a neat knot and tucked the fabric so it wouldn’t catch.

His eyes fluttered, half-lidded, as his hand slid from the bedroll’s edge, fingers brushing faintly against my side. Whether it was gratitude or instinct, I couldn’t tell—and for once, I didn’t try to.

I let him rest now, the panic of him slipping away finally loosening its hold on me. The wound would heal. He would heal.

The words he’d spoken still lodged deep in my chest, heavy and unyielding. I lowered my voice, barely more than a breath. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I stayed.”