Chapter 8: Adrenaline

"Sit still," Thora said, "or I'll sew your mouth shut too."

Joren Vask sat on a folded tarp in the dark of the commander's tent with his shirt in his lap.

A hound had opened a gash along his ribs, and he had not told anyone until the blood soaked his belt.

Thora had found it when he stood up from the fire and swayed.

Her own arm was already wrapped, tight and clean, in a strip of the tarp.

She had done it one-handed, with her teeth, while the others took the watch.

Now she knelt in front of Joren with the sewing kit open on her knee.

The tent was small and lit by one hanging lamp.

Outside, Ansel and Keir argued softly about who would sleep.

Stella's pod sat dark on the far side of the clearing.

"You're good with a needle," Joren said.

"I've had practice."

"On who?"

"On myself, mostly."

She poured iodine over the gash and he hissed through his teeth.

"Hold the lamp," she said.

He held it.

The light shook a little in his hand.

Thora set the needle against his skin and felt him go rigid.

"Breathe," she said.

"I am."

"You're not."

His shoulders lowered, and she pushed the needle through.

Up close he smelled of smoke and blood and cold air.

His ribs rose and fell under her fingers, long and hard-muscled, and warm in the lamplight.

She had touched dying men before.

She had never touched a man who was this alive.

She pulled the thread through and tied it off and began the second stitch.

His eyes were on her.

She did not need to look up to know it.

"Why did you do it?" he said again.

"You asked me that already."

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