Page 77 of Silk & Sand

An arcane light bloomed and a face came into his field of view. Seth, frowning.

Seth dabbed at Raider’s face with a cloth. “Raider? Can you hear me?”

Help me.

Seth’s brow furrowed. “It’s all right. Just relax. I’m right here.”

The blackness was creeping in from the edges. Raider didn’t want to relax, didn’t want it to take him down into its cold grip again.

He tried to lift his hand, but it was trapped. Bound?

No. Please no.

A blanket tugged free of his side. A hand found his beneath and held it. Relief swept through Raider, but it wasn’t enough to keep him there. He spun down into the dark again.

***

Raider lay under the blankets, his body entwined with another’s. It should have felt good, but it didn’t. Something was wrong.

Raider tried to draw away, but the other’s limbs trapped him with dead weight. Raider opened his eyes to see Seth’s green eyes staring emptily at him. Blood trickled down Seth’s forehead.

Raider yanked back, but he was caught—and it wasn’t because Seth was trapping him.

Spears of quicksilver had struck from Raider’s body into Seth’s. Blood poured out around the shining impalements, soaking the bed, bathing them both in red.

Why, Shashem? Seth’s dead lips asked. I thought you loved me.

Raider screamed.

CHAPTER 26

VENOM WAS THE ONLY explanation for such a quick onset of fever and delirium. The slash to Raider’s thigh suggested a graze from one of the sand serpent’s spines. A bite would have cost Raider his leg. It would have cost him his life.

But surely even a graze from a venomous serpent that size would kill any man.

But then, Raider wasn’t just any man, was he?

The quicksilver in his body had clearly altered it on a fundamental level. It was almost like he wasn’t even quite human.

Yet, in the ways that mattered, he was.

“Easy,” Seth murmured, rubbing Raider’s chest through the blanket as he twitched again, his eyes darting back and forth under his closed lids. Another nightmare. He’d been having them almost constantly, mixed in with a half-waking delirium, through the day and now into the night.

Please, Raider had begged. Don’t.

Help me, he’d mouthed, more than once.

Seth kept rubbing Raider’s chest in a soothing, circular motion until he settled. Then, keeping his hand over Raider’s heart, Seth lay down to rest. With the storm still raging, with Raider hurt, there wasn’t much else he could do.

There had been no further sign of the sand serpent. The fallen rock blocking the way into the passage from the cavern seemed to have discouraged it. It had likely gone hunting for more accessible prey. The bandits were here somewhere, after all.

Seth left the lamp glowing on its lowest setting, just in case Raider woke again. In his confused state, waking in the blackness had frightened him. He hadn’t known where he was. He hadn’t known that it was Seth’s hands on him, trying to help. Raider had thought …

Fuck, he’d thought that Seth—or whoever he’d imagined Seth to be—was hurting him. Deliberately.

Please, Raider had begged. Don’t.

Seth closed his eyes, trying to shut that out, trying not to think about what that might mean. He needed to rest so he could take care of Raider again. And so he could figure what the hell he was going to do in the morning.