were supposed to be the nice one.” Her body jerked again as heat flooded her.
“Relax, Brea.” Lochlan’s hard eyes landed on her. “It’ll be over soon.”
“Relax?” she screamed as another jolt of pain struck her. “Relax! You relax!” A tear slipped from her eye, and she squeezed her eyelids shut, picturing something, anything other than the crowded tent where the Eldur soldiers tortured her.
The heat abated, but the pain remained.
“Lady Brea,” a hard voice said.
She shook her head, unwilling to look at the men and women surrounding her.
“Brea,” Finn called, his voice softer than Lochlan’s. “You can open your eyes. We’re through.”
Her eyes slid open, and she viewed the soldiers crowding her bed. The man with the hot blade sat back on his heels. Two women hung back, blood splattered across their armor.
Finn withdrew his hands from her shoulders.
Lochlan crossed his arms, looking as uncomfortable as he should feel.
“Why were you torturing me?” She could barely muster the energy to speak.
Finn and Lochlan shared a look before Lochlan spoke. “We do not torture. You were injured and dying. Now you’re not.” He turned on his heel and pushed through the tent flap without another word. The rest of the soldiers followed him, save for Finn who moved to sit beside her.
“I really need to stop losing consciousness and waking up in strange places.” She lifted her head, trying to see her shoulder. They’d cut her shirt away from the wound, but she couldn’t get a look.
Finn grinned at her. “I don’t know, Brea. It probably makes the travel easier if you’re unconscious for much of it.”
She laughed, wincing at the pain it caused. “What did they do to me?”
“Lewis is our unit’s unofficial healer. He’s quite adept at cauterization.”
“Cauterization?” She gulped.
Finn nodded. “There was no way for us to stitch up your wound before returning to the palace, and by then you may have been as dead as those Iskalt warriors we fought. So, Lewis used his magic to heat the blade and sear your wound.”
The odor of burnt flesh hung in the air, and nausea welled up in Brea. She tried to roll onto her side as her chest heaved.
Finn jumped forward, helping her up.
“Get me out of this tent,” she wheezed.
He lifted her into his arms and ran out into the fresh desert air.
“Down,” she pleaded.
As soon as Finn set her feet on the rocky ground, she fell to her knees and the meager contents of her stomach exploded from her mouth. Her entire body shook as it emptied itself.
She lifted her arm to try to wipe her mouth, but pain paralyzed her at the movement. “Other arm, you doofus,” she whispered to herself, as she lifted the arm attached to her non-injured shoulder to wipe the remaining vomit from her face.
“Feel better?” Finn asked.
She’d forgotten he was there, but she was in too much pain to feel embarrassed. Imploring him with her eyes, she begged for assistance to stand so she didn’t make a bigger fool of herself than she already had.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and lent her his strength.
“No,” she protested when he tried to lead her back into the tent. She couldn’t stand the thought of the rancid smell for one minute longer. “Not there.”
Finn pursed his lips. “You mean you’re going to make me sleep in there all alone tonight?”
She gaped at him. “That’s your tent? What happened to Lochlan claiming he wouldn’t let me out of his sight?”
“Our dear Loch wanted some peace after that battle, and you, my dear, give him very little peace.” He helped her down onto the ground outside the tent, and she leaned back against a smooth boulder.
“He’s angry at me for getting injured, isn’t he?”
“No.” Finn chuckled as he sat beside her. “He’s angry at himself that you got injured at all.”
“But if I hadn’t stepped in, he’d be dead.”
“That would be preferable to him than having to tell Queen Faolan that you died under his watch.”
She eyed the stoic man across camp. “And probably that he had to be saved by little old Lady Brea.”
“Brea, you are an odd one.”
“How is it that Lochlan knows Game of Thrones and Harry Potter, yet no one in this fracking world understands anything I say?”
“Fracking?” He grinned. “Is that a human world for f—”
“Stop! I have delicate ears.”
He laughed. “There is nothing delicate about you. We all just watched Lewis burn your shoulder purposefully, and now you lay here under the desert sun making jokes.”
She grimaced