Then he slumped. The whole fight hadn’t even taken a minute, the Atherins were so fast. Distantly he was aware of Urenya by his side, helping him sit. He smiled. She was safe. That was good. Only that was important.
“Narath,” he heard her whisper frantically. “Narath. You have to stay conscious. Don’t die, don’t die now.”
Die? He had no intention of dying.
“I won’t die,” he promised her, feeling his eyes grow heavy. The blood loss must have been more dire than he’d thought. “I want to see you again, gesha…”
The last things he saw before it all went black were Urenya’s big, wide, impossibly beautiful eyes.
CHAPTER FIVE
Urenya
Oh no. No, no, no.
To be completely honest, Urenya didn’t know what she was saying no to. To Narath dying in her arms? Or had she started the fighting part of a binding already since it was traditional for the gesha to resist the binding at first?
Possibly both. Probably both. She had never dared to believe she would be bound again. Hoped, yes, of course. She couldn’t afford to hope now, not when her mind needed to be clear.
More pressing issues first. The shuttle was rocking around them, under attack from the Atherins, but Urenya had been relentless. The look on Diego’s face would have been amusing on any other day, given it was very likely no one had demanded anything from him in many years. But to her, it had simply been a matter of time. Narath was definitely one of those she would have nodded to, signaling it was better to think of a dignified way to die, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go of him.
It was unfair, perhaps. But if what Narath said was true, she didn’t have to be rational about it. A gesha would do much worse to save her fated.
Her hands worked frantically while her mind was just as busy trying to completely shut down. So there was an answer to all the questions, the unexplainable desire, the thread that had seemed odd to her when they’d only ever met twice. The way his eyes had lit up when he’d looked at her. Perfectly clear now.
She didn’t know what to feel. Emotions were spiraling in her, tumbling over each other. The most obvious, most instant was fear. Her gerion or not, Narath was dying right in front of her eyes, dying because of her.
The image of him fighting was still before her eyes. He’d crashed into the Atherins like sky falling down on them, the call of the valor squares sending out their battle cry nearly deafening. His roars, which she’d found exciting in their growl form, had terrified even her. Urenya didn’t know if he’d even noticed, but the Atherins – who they thought had no sense of fear as such – had shrunk back from his terrible fury. All of that was compatible with the gesha thing, of course. If she truly was his, it made perfect sense for him to act like that. It must have been terrible for him to see her in danger, in all likelihood worse than it was for her, though there had been a long, horrible minute where she’d been completely sure she would die.
Her scream had made Narath turn at just the right moment, but she didn’t know how much good it did. The monstrous hand-blade had still cut through organs, and it was frankly a miracle in Urenya’s opinion that Narath was still alive.
In the back of her mind, the idea that the reason Narath was still drawing breath was because of her didn’t want to go away. He was simply refusing to die now that he’d found her. That fit perfectly into her wildly clashing emotions.
Because there, underneath all the fear and concern and frantically trying to remember everything she could about organ regrowth – not a precise science and certainly one without guarantees – there was the core of all of them. Happiness, completely unfit for a situation like that but happiness nonetheless. If only she could stop her fated from bleeding to death, she could even smile.
Thirteen hours later, Urenya allowed herself a small smile, although in truth it felt as though she’d gone insane and not realized it. Narath was lying before her on one of the med bay tables, one of the reinforced ones because she’d honestly feared he wouldn’t fit on a regular one being big even for a Brion.
She was looking at him with the sort of mindless hope that only the Brion fated were capable of. He’d made it. Or she’d made it. The surgery had been mind-numbing. Seleya had taught them all that if possible, a fated should never be responsible for their other half in any sort of life-or-death situation. They simply could not be expected to act rationally, nor would they be responsible for how well they adapted to that kind of pressure.#p#分页标题#e#
It had happened to both of them minutes after Narath’s moment – if he’d had that, Urenya’s healer mind provided. She truly had to send Seleya a thank-you note, Urenya thought bitterly. The old healer had warned them that it wasn’t nice to know all the things they kept most of the Brions in the dark about. It took away from the certainty the bindings were supposed to have. Not from the certainty that when it was right, it worked, but it instilled doubts she couldn’t banish. Her other fears were worse, though. She’d never even consummated her bond with Patren, and now she was very close to never getting to do that with Narath either.
She felt proud, though. They’d both come through the test with perfect scores. Even in the midst of what had to have been a terrifying moment for Narath on TD-17, he’d still managed to keep his wits about him and save both of their lives. And then she had done the operation, because there was simply no one more qualified around. Perhaps if Seleya had been there Urenya might have stepped aside and allowed the experienced Elder to replace her behind the table, but she hadn’t even considered trusting Narath’s life to her own classmates. So it had been she alone for thirteen hours to the point of exhaustion when her mind only worked on some sort of drive that kept her going when all rationale had long given up. It were simple instincts that functioned in the end, no particular output from her mind, when it seemed as though she had to put everything she’d ever learned from the healer Elders to use.
Narath awoke slowly, growling as he did. The sound sent shivers down Urenya’s spine. There was the thing that had become ridiculously endearing to her.
The big warrior opened his eyes, looked around in clear worry, but when he saw her standing there, his whole body settled down and peace returned to his eyes. Only then did Urenya allow herself to burst into tears.
Narath’s reaction was immediate. She saw the twitch of his fingers searching for his spear – such a natural movement for the warriors who spent most of their lives with the spear in their hands even in leisure.
“Who hurt you?” he demanded. “I will make them wish they had never been born.”
Tears still rolling down her cheeks, Urenya couldn’t stop herself from bursting out laughing.
“Gods, no,” she said, touching Narath’s arm gently – pure steel under her fingers – “no one hurt me. I’m just so glad you’re alive. And you’re in no form to go killing anyone, you barely survived the last fight.”
He cut her through at once.
“The Atherin. Are you unharmed?”
The clouds of doubt were slowly starting to dissolve in her mind. It was very like a gerion to worry about his gesha while practically on his deathbed.
“Yes,” she said, giving him a quick spin to let him see she was still in one piece. “Still here. Thanks to you.”
He smiled, though she’d seen the flash in his eyes when she turned. Her own body responded to that look almost immediately, but she couldn’t allow herself to think of that. Yet.
“How did you get away?” he pressed on. “We were in the middle of a field. I should have kept going, gotten you back to the ship.”
Urenya chuckled.
“Oh yes,” she allowed. “The commander was very mad. He said that when he tasked you to keep me safe, you were supposed to do that and dying was not an excuse.”
Narath looked petrified for a second until he saw her grinning.
“Don’t fool me,” he warned her. “I will go and apologize to him myself. Did he come to you?”
“He did,” Urenya confirmed. “And I don’t think he wants you to apologize for anything. In fact, I think he means to praise you. He looked at the Atherins you killed and said he was impressed.”
Narath snorted.
“I doubt that.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Urenya teased him.
Relief was washing over her wave after wave, incomparable to anything else she’d ever felt.
“I don’t doubt he said that,” the big warrior said, looking at her gently. “I just doubt he meant that. Diego…”
He stopped, clearly wondering if he’d been too informal, but Urenya laughed.
“Diego is Diego, yes. He’s almost never impressed with anyone because he compares everyone to himself. But I really think he was this time. There were four of them, and you killed them all.”
Narath’s eyes were suddenly alight with fire.
“I had to,” he said, his voice almost shaking with emotion. “If they’d hurt you… Living without you would be unthinkable.”#p#分页标题#e#
Urenya was left speechless by that. The sudden, brutal honesty took her breath away. Of course she’d learned all about the fated couples, but the words had sounded so hollow to her then. All the absolutes, and promises, and vows never to take a single step without the other. It had seemed… over the top to her. She understood passion and caring about someone, but the way fated couples looked at each other was simply beyond her.