“All right. Thank you.” He nodded to the side table. “It’s easier if you do it one stitch at a time, cutting the thread. Here—”
He picked up the pair of scissors.
“Don’t tie the knot until after you’ve gotten through the skin on both sides of the cut. And don’t tie it too tight, or else the scar will be hideous.”
“Oh yes, pretty scars, of course,” said Ren dryly, threading the needle without any difficulty. The thread had been stiffened with wax.
“Women love scars,” he said.
“We both know you like monsters better.”
“I do,” he said quietly.
This time, the blush didn’t make it all the way to her face. But Ren could still feel it dangerously close to her throat. She concentrated on keeping the blush at bay, focused on the task at hand: each cut started above his shoulder blade and wrapped down over his collarbone. The last twisted around his arm, at the very point of his shoulder.
“I’ll try.” She bit her lip and nervously steadied herself with her left hand flat against his chest. He settled back with his eyes closed, teeth gritted. “All right, I’m going to do this.”
“It’ll be fine— OW! You’re not supposed to stab me again!”
Applause from the hands in the kitchen.
“That’s why I didn’t want to do this!” snapped Ren.
On the next try, she wasn’t quite as terrible. He didn’t yelp, at any rate. It turned her stomach, advancing the needle on either side of the wound, then tugging the cut edges together and tying the black thread in a careful knot. She placed the knots as he had instructed her, starting in the very center of each wound, continuously dividing each stretch in half with a new stitch. Segmenting them into the smallest possible sections. She repeated her stitch-and-knot process over and over, falling into a rhythm. Three cuts. Too many stitches to count. A seemingly endless supply of thread. A second needle when the first got too dull. And then a third. His hand fell back over his eyes as she stitched. He had angled his chin away from her, and his jaw spasmed, almost imperceptibly, with every entry of the needle.
“Sorry,” Ren said, and for some reason, she found herself hoping that he knew that she was sorry for everything.
“Just keep going,” he replied. It sounded like his teeth were gritted.
It was an age before she finished. He hadn’t made a sound, but Ren could see sweat beading on his neck. She took the cloth from the water and carefully wiped off a week’s worth of dried, poisonous blood. Realizing she was finished, he heaved a sigh of relief and turned back to her, his hand falling away from his face.
Their eyes met for a moment. He was still a little gray-looking, still a little sunken. But he looked like himself. A little wild. Trying not to smile. That single piece of hair, uncurling in its stubborn perfect way, falling slowly over one arched eyebrow.
She still had the needle and thread in her hand, and all at once, she was seized by the urgent need to set them down on the table. She wasn’t sure why. Probably because her heart had suddenly sped up. Because she was acutely aware of her leg next to his. Because the cabin had abruptly gotten warm, and she was deaf to the sound of the hands working in the kitchen. Blind to everything but him.
Ren had to lean past Lukasz to put back the needle and thread.
He didn’t move out of her way, and for a moment, they were very close. So close that she knew her hair brushed across his unwounded shoulder. She could feel his breath on her cheekbone. Her heart pounded.
He spoke, quietly, a hair’s breadth away, near her ear.
“Ren,” he said. “I’ve only ever loved nine people.”
He shifted against her leg, sat up. They were even closer, and Ren was finding it hard to breathe. Then he added: “You’re the tenth.”
“I am not people,” she whispered.
He laughed.
“True,” he said. “You’re better than we are.”
Her eyes met his. She felt them changing, felt her vision clearing, dimming. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t care that her eyes were changing from human to lynx and back again. She might have lived the rest of her life as a lynx, had it not been for him. Hard to believe she might never have met him. She might not have met him, without dragons to kill and brothers to avenge—