Remnants: Season of Wonder (A Remnants Novel) by Lisa Tawn Bergren

Author:Lisa Tawn Bergren
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Blink
Published: 2014-04-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

16

I slept soon after supper, exhausted from my trials as well as the relief in our rescue.

I awakened in the deep of night to the sound of the falls, the crackle of the nearby fire. I reached down and felt the stones from the fire they’d set around me, and they were still lukewarm. All around, the Hoodites and Ailith were asleep, reminding me of the cave full of Drifters last night, and yet so different. So very different.

The feel, the spirit of true Community. For the first time, I began to believe all I’d been taught from childhood on. That it wasn’t just a time to come, a dream held for generations. I was living it, right here. I wasn’t just a part of seeing the Maker’s vision come to pass. I was a vital aspect of it.

A movement over by a pool of water that drifted inside the cave drew my eye, and I noticed Raniero. He was naked to the waist. Unwinding the bandages, washing the blood from his torso. I sat up and then gingerly stood, feeling every ache and pain of the battles and abuse I’d endured, and yet I also felt alive, so alive and free. Was it my escape? Or this place?

I carefully moved past Ronan, sleeping at my head, and between Tressa and Killian’s mats, making my way to Raniero. He was trying to reach his back with a sponge, to wash away the dried blood there, and looked up at me when I neared, then away. Was I intruding? Was it too private? And yet, did he not need assistance?

I remembered the moment the Drifter’s bullet struck him. How I had the sensation that he was broadening, stretching, to protect me. I’d felt the impact of the bullet as it struck him. The wave of his body, slamming against me, shuddering from the pain . . .

I crouched behind him. “Here. Let me,” I said, reaching my hand out for the sponge.

“No, I’m fine, Andriana. Go back to sleep.”

“I had to let you go, Niero,” I said miserably. “Drop you off the bike. That moment . . . It was terrible. Please, let me. It will make me . . . feel better. To help.”

He sighed and handed me the sponge. I rubbed it over the wide breadth of his bronze skin, frowning as the water illuminated scars across his back. A hundred battle scars, faint but present. Some of them were massive. I frowned. He wasn’t that old. Only a few seasons older than we. How had he gathered so many wounds? Healed so many times? And in what battles?

I knelt by the pool and rinsed out the sponge, glancing over at him. “You want to tell me how you received all those scars on your back?” My eyes flicked down to his broad, sculpted, naked chest. I could see more there too, faint, raised, pale lines

“No,” he said softly.

“Will you tell me anyway?”

“No.” He stared back at me as I searched him, trying to get a read on his emotions.

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