Nirah spent the rest of the night in a daze. Ahsan lay sprawled across the bed, head in Nirah’s lap at her insistence, just as he had when the medic stitched the gouge on his arm shut. Nirah watched the bone needle dip in and out of his flesh until Ahsan had exhausted every curse known to man. A sheen of sweat had dappled Ahsan’s forehead, under those same loose curls she now brushed back.
Whether from the pain, the strain of the past few days, or sheer exhaustion, his glassy eyes warned he would fall asleep any moment. She smoothed her fingers across the locks that flopped over his forehead. Right now, tired and wounded, he looked no more threatening than a wet kitten. How different he had been in the garden. She had seen it, that glimmer of rage that had transformed his face, the primal
