Chapter 6

Sleep didn't stay dreamless for long.

The darkness shifted, turning cold and biting. Eve was back in the Frostbound Abyss. The blizzard howled around her, the wind tearing at her skin like broken glass. She couldn't see two feet in front of her face.

"Eve! Fall back!" a voice screamed from the snow. She recognized it as belonging to a member of her squad, but the face was a blur of white and red.

A suffocating pressure clamped down on her chest. Something was watching her from the storm. An ancient, malevolent gaze that made her soul shrivel.

She reached for "Rebellion," but the hilt was coated in a thick layer of black frost. It was so heavy she couldn't lift it. A wet, tearing sound cut through the wind, followed by a spray of hot blood that hit her face.

She tried to scream, but the cold stole her voice. A figure stepped out of the blizzard. The build was familiar-broad shoulders, a commanding stance. Bernardo Rowe? The figure leaned in, its mouth moving, but the words were swallowed by the wind. Then, a hand, cold as a corpse, pressed against her chest, right over her heart.

Eve convulsed in her sleep, a strangled cry tearing from her throat.

Cato felt the sudden spike in her temperature. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. She was burning up. He gently shifted her off his chest and laid her back on the bed. He grabbed a rag, soaked it in the bucket of cold water by the door, and began wiping down her face, her neck, and her arms, trying to draw the fever out.

The next few days were a feverish haze. Eve drifted in and out of consciousness, trapped in a loop of freezing nightmares and burning reality. Every time she surfaced, she saw him. He was always there, sitting on the stool, grinding herbs, or feeding her bitter, foul-tasting medicine that coated her tongue and made her gag.

He moved her limbs for her, bending her knees and elbows, massaging the muscles to keep them from wasting away. His hands were relentless, professional, and completely impersonal.

On the fifth day, the fever broke.

Eve opened her eyes. The light from the cracks in the roof no longer stabbed into her brain. She took a deep breath, and while her ribs ached, they didn't scream. She wiggled her fingers. They obeyed. She tried her toes. They moved.

A strange sensation emanated from her legs and arms-a deep, intense itch beneath the skin. It was the feeling of bone knitting back together. She knew what that felt like. But this was too fast. Even for a Paladin with a full reservoir of Aether, recovering from shattered bones took weeks, if not months. Without Aether, it should have been impossible. This wasn't healing; it was regeneration.

It had been five days. Not weeks. Not months. She lay there, watching him, feeling her body rebuild itself at a rate that defied all natural law. A faint, earthy warmth pulsed from the herbal poultices on her limbs, a feeling she didn't recognize as simple medicine. It felt like... life. Raw, potent life force being poured directly into her broken flesh.

She slowly turned her head. Cato was sitting in the corner, a whetstone in one hand and a rusted, broken dagger in the other. He was dragging the stone along the blade with slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes focused entirely on the metal.

He wasn't a healer. He was a menial laborer. But the herbs he used had worked a miracle. His medical knowledge was flawless. The questions piled up in her mind, heavy and sharp, but her throat was too dry to ask them.

She lay there, watching him, feeling the impossible mend of her own skeleton. The fever was gone, the nightmares had retreated, and she was wide awake.

Cato stood up, putting the dagger aside. He walked to the hearth and ladled some broth into a bowl. When he turned around and saw her staring at him, clear-eyed and focused, he paused for a fraction of a second.

He walked over and held out the bowl.

Eve looked at the broth, then up at his face. "How long was I out?" she asked. Her voice was hoarse, but it was steady.

Cato didn't answer right away. He set the bowl on the stool and looked at her, his dark eyes assessing her condition. Finally, he spoke, his voice a low, rough rumble, like rocks grinding together.

"Five days."