The Healer Bride: Awakening the Ruined Dragon King novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Again

Her first healing draws the ash from his chest into her own hands; a black vein retreats and he whispers for more.

The king's chamber was at the top of the east tower, and it had no curtains and no rugs.

It had a bed, a table with a lamp, and a window cut so deep into the wall that the night wind sat inside it.

Sorrel put her satchel on the table and took out her bowls and her linen.

"Take off your shirt, Your Grace."

"It's the first night of our marriage."

"It's the first night of your treatment. Take it off, please."

The king looked at her for a long moment from the edge of the bed.

Then he pulled the shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor.

The left side of his chest was grey from collarbone to ribs, scaled and ridged and cracked in lines that went down into the skin.

On the right the skin was a man's, with old white scars and a good deal of muscle.

Under the grey, a thin black vein ran from the center of his breastbone up toward his throat.

"That's the worst of it," he said. "The vein. It grows an inch every winter."

"Does it hurt?"

"All the time."

"Where is it worst?"

"Here." He put two fingers on the middle of his breastbone and took them away again fast.

She knelt on the floor in front of him, which put her face level with his chest.

Up close he smelled of woodsmoke and hot stone, and under that of something thin and green.

She noted it.

She did not know yet what she was noting.

"I'm going to put both hands flat on you," she said. "Tell me if it's too much."

"It will be too much."

"Then tell me when."

She laid her palms on the grey skin, one on each side of the black vein.

It was hot, the dry heat of a stone left in a fire all night.

She felt the hurt rise toward her hands.

She had done this a thousand times, with broken legs and burst lungs and a child's scalded arm, and it always came the same way.

It came up through the skin into her palms, and then up her wrists.

This was thicker.

It was slow and black and heavy, and it did not want to leave.

She pushed.

Her palms began to blister, and the pain came all at once.

"Sorrel."

"Don't move."

"You're burning."

"I know."

The skin on the heels of her hands rose in white bubbles and split, and she could smell it.

She kept her palms where they were and breathed through her teeth.

A thread of grey ash lifted from his chest and sank into her skin.

The king made a noise she had not heard a man make.

His whole body locked, and his hand shot out and caught her wrist.

It was a hard grip, hard enough to grind the bones.

For a moment neither of them breathed.

His eyes were open and gold, with the pupils drawn narrow, and they were fixed on her blistered hands.

Her heart was going fast.

That is the poison in his blood, she told herself. It is passing through me and making me dizzy.

Then she looked down.

The blisters on her palms were flattening.

The split skin drew together and closed, and the raw red went to pink and then to nothing, while the king held her wrist and watched it happen.

"That is not possible," he said.

"It's the only thing I'm good at."

"I have seen a dozen healers. They took one look at that vein and went home. Three of them tried what you just did." His grip had loosened, but he still held her. "I could smell them burn."

"I'm not burning."

"No."

She became aware that her wrist was still in his hand and that his thumb was resting against the inside of it, on her pulse.

He saw her notice.

He let go and put his hand on his own knee, flat and still.

"I broke my word," he said. "I took hold of you without being asked."

"I was kneeling on your floor with my hands on your chest, Your Grace. I think I can overlook a wrist."

"I will not make a habit of it."

"I would not mind if you did," she said, before she could stop herself.

His head came up slowly.

She looked at his chest to keep from looking at his face, and her breath caught for another reason.

The black vein under her palm had moved.

It was a short way, no longer than a fingertip, but it had pulled back from his throat and down toward the breastbone.

The grey ridges around it had gone a shade paler.

The king looked down at his own chest and then up at her.

His voice came out raw.

"Again," he whispered.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend