point of caring whether anyone sees me naked.”
“Good thing there’s just me around.”
I sucked in a breath, my lids pulling up higher.
“What is it?”
“Before I passed out, I saw someone . . . in a tree.”
He frowned, but then his forehead smoothed out. “You lost a lot of blood.”
“I didn’t hallucinate it. I really did see someone.”
“I carried you through the entire jungle and then I’ve been sitting here for some time, and I’ve seen no one. I haven’t even seen an animal. Haven’t even heard any.”
Which could’ve been because the crashing waterfall camouflaged all other sounds. Or maybe it was because his ears were still ringing from the explosion. Mine certainly were.
He gripped the zipper nestled in the hollow of my collarbone and gently tugged on it. A groove appeared between his eyebrows as though undressing me required extreme concentration. I would’ve smiled had I not felt so pitiful. He drew it all the way down, but before peeling the compressive fabric open, he shifted me off his lap. Although he handled my body with great care, it still felt as though I were being whipped by a hundred scourges.
He took off his top, which made my pain take a backseat to my surprise. “If you’re trying to distract me from the pain . . . it’s working.”
A bigger smile brightened his face but faded when his eyes fell to the water lapping at my body. I followed his line of sight, noticing the red tint.
He raised my head, fitting it into his tunic, and then he pulled it all the way down to my navel before his hands slid under and climbed to my shoulders. He stretched the fabric down my arms, then lowered it delicately down my ribcage. Sweat salted my lips. I licked them, a pathetic whimper falling from my mouth when the compressive fabric brushed against my open wound.
Placing a firm palm on my spine, Remo jimmied my back off the wet sand and rolled me onto my side. And then he pushed the fabric of his tunic up, bunching it beneath my breasts. I kept my gaze on the golden stretch of skin connecting his shoulder to his neck. When it tensed, I surmised the damage was worse than anticipated. I neither asked whether I would live, nor begged to die. I just stared quietly at the frothing iridescence behind him.
If I hadn’t been injured, I’d be swimming. But how different it would feel to swim without being able to stay under. I focused on that instead of on the fingertips prodding the skin around the deep cut.
“It looks clean, Amara. No metal seems to have stayed inside.”
“My blood,” I murmured. “Be careful.”
A faint smile drew up his lips. “I know how your blood works.”
I raised my gaze back to his. “Bagwa.”
His smile firmed up. “I deserve that.” He smoothed the tunic back over my abdomen, then washed his hands.
“Too bad we didn’t end up in a hospital or a haberdashery. A needle and some thread would’ve been convenient right about now.”
He contemplated my tattooed palm.
“No,” I said before he could suggest I make both with my dust. “I won’t be able to use it if it’s stitched into my skin. What if we need it for something else?”
“We’ll use what’s around us.”
“No.”
“Amara, you’re bleeding out.”
“If I were bleeding out, I’d be dead already.” Or would I? How long did it take for a body to empty itself of blood? “Besides, it’s not my dust. What if it poisons my blood? I might not resuscitate from death by wita, Remo.”
His jaw seemed sharper. All of him seemed sharper. Even his gaze as it cycled around the dense copse of twisted gray trunks topped with palm-shaped blue leaves, set against taller, tawny trunks with midnight-blue fronds draped in lianas, and shorter tufts of a curly yellow specimen. When he brought his eyes back to mine, resolve hardened him some more.
He latched on to the sleeve of my suit, the one which had ripped in Deception Central, and tore it clean off the bodice. “Make some scissors then.”
I crafted the tool and handed it to him. He sliced up the sleeve until he had two lengths, which he tied together, building a rope of sorts. He handed me back the scissors, then cupped some water to rinse out the wound, soaked the strip to divest it of sand, and slid it underneath me. After positioning it around my waist, he knotted it so tightly it rid