Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,20

sigh of relief at the loss of his weight.

“Do you need my help getting him patched?” Milo asked.

She shook her head. “I can handle it from here.”

“In that case, I’m going.” Lila waved and left, Milo at her heels.

Gorri remained behind, removing the rope. “Are you sure you want him in your room?”

“It’s best if I keep a close eye on him until we know why he’s here.”

“It won’t stop the kids from talking.”

She shrugged. “Let them. This is the most exciting thing that’s happened in a while.” The most hopeful, too, because it implied all might not be lost.

Rather than put the rope back at his waist, Gorri wound it around the man’s wrists in a different set of loops.

“What are you doing?”

“Securing him.”

“You can’t tie him up.”

“I can and will. What if he wakes and tries to kill you or worse?”

What could be worse than death? “It seems unnecessarily cruel given his injuries.”

“I won’t have you risking yourself because you’re too kind.”

Too kind? That was kind of a funny thing to say given the harsh things she’d had to do in order to survive. “We need him to trust us.”

“Ayuh. And for that he’ll have to prove we can trust him. You don’t know what kind of man he is.”

Didn’t she? She looked at his face and didn’t see cruelty etched in his features. When he’d spoken to her by the river, while acerbic, he hadn’t been mean.

When Gorri left, she stood over the stranger and wondered if she should take Milo up on his offer of help. The stranger was awfully huge. Big enough he dangled off the edge of her bed. It should be noted her bed wasn’t big and barely accommodated her.

She pulled her worn washcloth from the peg she hung it on to dry and filled a basin with water. One thing they at least had plenty of. She dabbed at his face, cleaning the dirt and blood from the skin, avoiding the wounds because it would involve removing his clothes.

She couldn’t have said why she hesitated. She’d seen naked people before. Tended many of them, too. Yet she knew those people. It was different somehow with the stranger.

And she was being foolish. He needed medical assistance, not her acting like some kind of flustered novice. Prying him out of his things proved challenging because of the ropes at his wrists.

He remained unconscious. She ignored Gorri’s warning and untied the tethers, stripped the man of the suit he wore, and found him in another outfit underneath. Real fabric, and not patches of it cobbled together. She stroked it. It was the finest she’d seen in a while.

The pants came off with no issue, as did his vest, but the shirt took some work given his injuries and the weight of his upper body. A fine sweat coated her by the time she’d stripped him. Maneuvering a limp body proved more strenuous than expected. But for some reason, she didn’t call for help.

She tossed a strip of cloth over his man parts, keeping her gaze averted, more for her modesty than his. Only then could she assess the damage.

She looked, and looked again, trying to make sense of what she saw. His clothes bore huge rents from claws, and those marks were matched to his skin, but where she’d have expected them to be bleeding and oozing with infection, they were actually scabbing over. The flesh had knitted itself together, the edges of the seams an angry red but no sign of pus. How was this possible? She could have sworn she’d seen muscle and bone.

His breathing had also gotten better since she found him, no longer a ragged exhalation. Surprising given the air in Diamond was poison for most, even in the tunnel networks where some of it managed to infiltrate despite their best attempts. Not that it mattered much anymore. Those that couldn’t survive breathing the air had died a long time ago. Only those that could adapt remained.

Despite his odd healing, she cleaned him, wiping the dried blood, baffled at this enigma.

Who are you?

She startled as she realized she spoke aloud, especially since the stranger replied.

“Cam.” The man blinked, long dark lashes framing almost black eyes without the hint of the blue present in his hair. “Who are you?” he asked, his timbre low and slightly raspy.

“Kayda.” There was no harm in giving her name. After all, if he lived, he’d find out easily enough, as there wasn’t anywhere for him to