DarkFyre Ch. 16

At last, her hunger appeased, Silmaria went to Rael. With tired but capable hands Silmaria lifted his head up to her lap and went through the slow, necessary process of feeding him the broth. He managed this easier than the food she'd given him earlier, but his response was still minimal at best, his body automatically swallowing and consuming rather than any conscious effort on his part.

With a soft frown she watched him. The Knight was clammy. Sweat beaded his strong brow, and his lips were colorless. As she fed him the broth, Silmaria felt his forehead.

"Damnation," she muttered worriedly; his forehead was near scalding to the touch, his temperature burning hotter than any she'd ever felt. She forced her hands to be steady as she got as much water into him as she could, then placed everything aside with a rising sense of dread.

Peeling the layers of clothes back off, Silmaria's stomach lurched at what she revealed.

He was absolutely feverish, his body burning up and covered in sweat so heavily in ran off his sallow skin in little glistening streams. Worse, his wounds looked awful. They were puffy and swollen and a vibrant, angry, ugly red around the edges.

"Don't do this to me," Silmaria said aloud as she began to clean his wounds, wiping away blood and sweat and praying she wasn't making a bad situation worse. Infection had been her worst fear, the surest way he would succumb.

"Come on, my Lord, you have to fight this," she said to him, praying he could hear, fearing not a single word would reach him. She stared down at him as her hands tended his flesh, willing strength into him. Willing strength into them both.

"Don't you give up. Don't you leave me. You are stronger than this. Do you hear me? You are stronger than anyone I've known. Stronger than these paltry wounds. You are a good, strong man, a Knight of the realm and the finest sword hand I've ever seen. Men couldn't stop you. You faced down a bear without flinching. My warrior Lord wouldn't let himself succumb to some pathetic fever and infection! It's not the end you deserve, and I won't let it happen. I won't!"

Brave words. Brave, rash words, and Silmaria believed them.

Almost.

***

"I wonder what the south is like. Mother said she and Father came from the southlands. I'm sure she told me where, but I don't remember. She didn't speak much of our homeland, or our people. But she said they were warm, and green, except where there were badlands and wastelands and deserts, but even those places were warm, and nothing like the Dale. Mother said I was born in the south, but they had already started their journey by then, and I was only a few months old by the time they made their way to DarkFyre.

"The Dale is all I remember," Silmaria said. She huddled into the thick bear skin she had draped around her and stared at Rael, and her eyes were far away. "I wonder if I will remember the south when we get there. In some part of me that goes deeper than memory, I mean. Someplace in my heart and my flesh and my bones that remembers the sun's warmth unhampered by the cold of the land, and green grass all year round instead of for a few short months in the summer. Summers without end. Winters that feel like spring. A desert. A skyline without mountains. I've heard of these things. But I don't know them, except maybe in that core deep within, buried and silenced by memories."

Part of Silmaria wondered if she was going mad. She'd been carrying conversations with Rael all night and day. He'd yet to answer her. Even knowing he wouldn't, she kept on talking with him. She spoke with him about small, inconsequential things, musings and wonderings and maybe's and what-if's until she was jibbering and jabbering about absolutely nothing.

Yet still she spoke. Madness or no, she felt certain that in some way, on some level, he could hear her. And if there was even the slightest, smallest chance that something as simple and cheap and precious as words could keep him clinging to life, fighting and persevering, then she would speak until her throat closed and the words became ash on her tongue.

***

"If you could smell yourself, you'd gag, too," Silmaria said with dark humor. It brought up that question of madness again, but she couldn't help but to smile grimly or she'd put all her focus on just how queasy she was becoming.

Rael's wounds were festering, the infection grown much worse. Puss and foul smelling blood oozed, viscous and purulent, from the Noble's ragged flesh. He was not healing well. Not healing at all. By the day, by the hour even, the wounds worsened in one of the most aggressively fast infections she'd ever witnessed.

That very morning in a fit of desperation, Silmaria had ventured out of the cave. The blizzard had relented, but only barely. The storm was still too savage to risk going far. And even if it hadn't been, where would she have gone? Rael said they had about a day's journey through the pass to go yet, and even after that, there was yet more distance before they would find any sort of civilization in the southlands.

Escape was not her goal anyway; Silmaria searched and foraged, to disappointing results, for any sign of herbs or plants that could help treat his wounds or bring down his fever, anything that would make a difference for him. Her hopes of any good coming of the effort had been slim, and her efforts were ultimately fruitless.

She was at least able to come upon a felled tree along the path. It was a young tree and just small enough that with near an hour's work and a great wealth of effort, straining, and a plethora of creative curses, she was able to drag it back to their cave.

The fire was crackling now, which was a blessing since she'd run out of wood last night and they'd had to spend the night without the flame's comforting warmth.

Silmaria wrung the excess water from a much abused scrap of cloth, and wiped Rael's sweating face. He was so hot she could feel the burning inside him radiating from his flesh clear through the rag.

"How long can a man burn so hotly before he has nothing left?" Silmaria mused, aloud, as she had begun to speak near any thought in her head aloud by this point just to keep talking to him.

"How long have you been on fire this way? Two days? Three? A dozen? I can't even remember anymore, my Lord. It's starting to blur. How can I be losing my grip on time when you're the one who's sick? Am I so lost without you, already?"

He didn't have to answer her. She already knew.

***

"I think that this is my fault."

She had cleaned his wounds yet again. They were no better and no worse than before. Any heart she took from seeing no further decline in his condition was sobered by the fact that neither was he getting any better. He seemed to be stuck, unchanging, and while it was better than any further deterioration, how long could he really hang on like that?

His wounds were cleaned and tended, but his fever raged like the most potent fire in the world. He burned like the sun. The infection may be at a standstill, but the fever was going to kill him just as sure.

With little recourse, Silmaria put one of his blankets over him and hauled snow into the cave to pack all around him, mounding the cool powder onto him. This took some time; at first, every time she put new snow onto his covered body, it would immediately melt, so great was his heat. At last, though, she piled more and more onto him, until it was molded to him so thickly its own abundant cold sustained for a time.

She sat close to him and felt his brow. His fever was ebbing somewhat, but he was still warm enough to chase the chill from hands frozen from handling the snow.

"I think that this is my fault, because I started to love you. I don't have good luck with love, you know. The people I love die. Or go away. They never last."

Silmaria sat, hands folded in her lap. She felt like a little girl again, with Master Edwin. Dumping the contents of her head and her heart out to let someone wiser shift through the pile and make some sense of the senseless jumble. Would that she had tried to let Rael do so before now, when he couldn't shift through anything.

"I'm so very afraid of being alone," Silmaria went on, her voice soft, too soft to be heard, but he probably couldn't hear her anyway so it didn't really matter. "I'm afraid that everyone I love, everyone I care about, will be forever doomed to pain and death. It's happened time after time. My mother. Master Rael. All my friends at House IronWing. Now, you. When I love someone, it's the surest sign that eventually they'll be gone, too.

"I think that's why I wanted so desperately not to love you, if I'm honest," she went on as she pulled the bearskin closer and clutched at her knees. "Everything I thought about you before I knew you turned out to be wrong. I thought you a selfish, irresponsible, uncaring Noble prick. And I was wrong. So wrong. You're a good man, a Noble in the true sense of the word. You saw a wrong that you'd inadvertently caused, even though you were rightly being brave and valorous serving your duty on the warfront. And even struggling with your own fears about some terrible and unknown force trying to assassinate you, you still did everything you could to turn life around for us at the House.

"You didn't have to. Hell, most Nobles couldn't give two loose shits about their servants. But you did it anyway. Because you're honest. And kind. And strong. Like your Father."

Tears slipped down her cheeks, silent and only a precious few of them, because that was all she had left, and all she would allow herself. "Now, I've killed your honesty, and your kindness, and your strength and everything else, because I let myself love all of them and all of you."

***

Rael's fever was unrelenting. He'd seemed to rally for a few short hours earlier that morning. Silmaria had taken heart and her spirits soared. Though his wounds still seeped some puss, it was minor indeed compared to before, and the angry redness at the edges of his gashes was diminished. He breathed and slept easier, and his fever had at last dipped.

Silmaria kept him clean and dry and covered, and worked hard at anything that could keep her busy. She'd gotten about all the meat she safely could from the bear by that point. Even the meat she'd salted and smoked wouldn't keep much longer without actually going into a salt barrel, but for now, it was edible. She instead ventured out into the storm once more to scrounge for a bit more fire wood, restocked their water satchels, made more broth, fed it to Rael and gave him water, filled their water supplies yet again, and scrubbed out some of the rags and makeshift bandages and whatever other clothing was in bad need of some cleaning, wetting them down in the snow and then scrubbing them on some nearby flat rocks before setting it all in front of the fire to dry. The Gnari had even removed the claws and fangs of the dead bear, thinking they could either be sold once they got back to a town, or at least fit some purpose later on as they made their way through the wilderness.

By evening, or at least what Silmaria figured was evening with the blizzard still raging outside, Rael worsened once more. His fever returned with a vengeance. It burned through Rael until he was hotter than ever, as if all the fires of the hells collected within one man. Holding his hand and wiping his brow was nearly painful.

"Come on," Silmaria said in a voice of resolution. "You were there. You were almost there. You were getting better. Don't let it win now."

Rael thrashed and jerked, moaning. His eyes fluttered and twitched under his eyelids, and he would not be still. His face was a mask of pain, grimacing and scrunching, with deep lines etched into his brow. The Gnari clutched the warrior's hand, squeezing, willing every last ounce of her strength into him.

He could take it all, have it all, if only he would live.

His grip on her hand was fierce, yet it was wavering. His strength was fading, even as he fought that terrible battle.

"Fight, my love. my warrior Lord," Silmaria said to him. He writhed and bucked and thrashed in an ever-growing frenzy. He came close to ripping his hand from her grasp, but she clung to it stubbornly, refusing to let that contact go.

"Please, Master. Come back to me."

***

"Aahhh!" Rael screamed, and then screamed again, louder this time. His thrashing grew frantic, his face a red, sweating mask of agony. With a sharp jerk he yanked his hand from the Gnari's grasp.

His hands clawed and pulled at his clothes, ripping them, desperately wrenching them aside until his upper body was bare. Silmaria tried to stop him, but he was in a frenzy and even feverish unto death he was just too strong. The Nobleman's huge hands grabbed at his wounds, clutched at nothing in a desperate fit.

"Ah! Ahhh!" Rael screamed, and screamed in unbearable suffering.

"I don't understand, my Lord!" Silmaria gasped in rising panic. "What's wrong? What is going on?"

She lifted a hand to his sweat drenched brow and then jerked it back, the heat of him truly scalding to the touch now. "Gods, what is happening to you?" she said with wide eyes.

A deep, roaring scream came charging from Rael's ragged throat. His back bowed up off the cave floor as every muscle contracted and went rigid.

With a tremendous flare of light and heat that sent Silmaria scooting backward on her ass, a great fire came flaring to life. It surged and swirled as it came from within Rael's body and spread over the length of his wounds in crackling, popping gouts of flame, as if he were hemorrhaging fire instead of blood. The flames were a silvery white light, spreading to cover every inch of damaged tissue along those fearsomely cruel gashes.

The flames licked at the ruined gouges, bursting and spouting in rolling fiery waves and crescendo's from every bit of the raw meat that was the Nobleman's flesh as if to cook every last bit of it. The heat of it was so intense she could feel it beating against her even as far back as she'd scooted. The light was resplendently shining, a surge of brilliance that left her eyes dazzled, as if Rael held some silvery sun within his body and its rays had come peeking through.

The man screamed on, wildly, a long, agonized wail as the fire poured from his side. Silmaria squinted against the radiance pouring from him and scrunched her nose, nauseated by the distinct odor of cooking flesh. Rael was suddenly up, leaping to his feet and shaking off the last vestiges of his clothing to stand naked and burning.

Silmaria's eyes lifted from the gouts of silver flames bursting from his side to his face, which was a fierce mask of agony. And something else. Rage, perhaps. His teeth were bared and clenched, his features drawn into an animalistic snarl. His eyes were full of the pain of the burning. And something else. Something more. Something, or someone very different from the Rael she knew.

As the Gnari girl wondered if the strange, frightening flame was going to spread and swallow him entirely to burn him to ash, they extinguished. Rael stood, panting, his eyes darting around the cave suspiciously. Tendrils of pale smoke rose from his side. Where the grievous wounds had been was now fully formed, thick scar tissue adding to the multitude that already covered his body.

"M-my Lord," Silmaria said shakily, still gazing at him in a sort of shocked awe. She didn't understand what she just witnessed.

At the sound of her voice, Rael's head swiveled quickly to pin her with his eyes. They were feral. Wild and frightening. Silmaria suddenly had the distinct feeling that she was sharing the cave with a predator.

Rael eyed her, his body still, unwavering, tense. Then he pounced, leaping across the space between them. Silmaria let out a gasp as he dropped atop her, his arms on either side of her, his weight hovering. Gods, he was huge, seemingly every bit as big as the bear in that moment, and every bit as powerfully primal. He pinned her to the floor beneath him, his wild eyes never once leaving her face.

He leaned down, the incredible heat of his body surrounding her. He sniffed her, eyes boring into her as he took in her scent like a beast.

For an agonizing moment, that was all, just his eyes on her as he loomed just above her, pinning her under his muscular bulk. Silmaria swallowed, staring into the fierce silver stare that was and yet was not Rael. Fear laced undeniable fingers through her.

Despite that, and because of it, Silmaria could feel a deep, quivering heat building in her core as a distinct, demanding slickness spread between her supple thighs.

"My Lord...what has happened to you? I don't understand, what's... ah!"

Silmaria's words drew up short in a gasp as Rael's big, capable hands went to her clothes, pulling and yanking at her thick winter garments. He near tore them apart with his insistence, yanking them up and down and aside in whatever way he could until at last she was bared and her generously lush, heavy breasts quivered before his eyes.

Before Silmaria could even form a thought or reaction, he was upon her. Rael wrapped her up in one powerful, taut arm, the other going to her left breast. He cupped the ripe orb of her tit, squeezing with powerful, warm fingers, groping and fondling her pliant soft flesh as those roughened fingers sank into her, kneading and grasping, drawing another gasp of pain from her.

Silmaria's nipples were immediately two thick, throbbing pink tips of hardness, aching from the cold and his rough, demanding touch. His head descended and without a word he drew one puffy, swollen nub into his mouth. He sucked, hard, drawing at it, his tongue working over Silmaria's sensitive nipple, lashing again and again. Then he pulled her nipple with his lips, sucking hard, and finally bit into it with his wicked teeth.

Her body went shock still, her eyes wide and mouth gaping in surprise. Then she squealed, and her back arched sensually, pressing her breasts into his mouth. Gods, oh fuck how blissfully painful that felt! His teeth worried at her fleshy nub and it brought her up on a spear tip of pleasure-pain, sharp and sudden and inescapable. Her cunt exploded, weeping and blossoming as her arousal spiked.

Rael slurped at her heaving, pliant tits, one and then the other, groping at them, cupping them with big, heavy hands as she quivered and writhed beneath him. Her gasping, shuddering moans and whimpers seemed to drive his demanding desire higher and higher still. The Nobleman seemed more beast than man, then, and she didn't care, didn't care as long as he kept touching and tasting her. It was everything she wanted and more.

His hands were no gentler when he jerked her pants down, leaving her completely exposed and vulnerable. She shivered, in cold and anticipation both. Had it not been for the heat of his body surrounding her she would have been frozen to the bone. As it was, she hardly noticed, all her attention focused on him and those cruelly wonderful hands.

At last Rael let her breasts be, leaving them aching painfully and covered in small bites that made her body tingle and her hips shimmy and wiggle. His big hands gripped her waist and her thighs, sinking his fingers into her firmly muscled, taut thighs. Silmaria moaned once more, sure she would bruise where his fingers claimed her. The Gnari girl stared up into her Lord's face and spread her legs widely for him, a clear, wanton invitation to take whatever he wanted from her, to use her for that which she gave fully and freely.