Chapter 70 70
Annabeth's POV:
The second healing session happened after lunch. If you could call it lunch. Campbell's chicken noodle from a can that Kaelen heated on the stove, which was one of those ancient gas things with a burner that took three tries to light. He brought it to me in a mug because there were no clean bowls, just the mug and a chipped plate and two forks that didn't match. Safe house dining at its finest.
I ate sitting on the bed because my legs still felt like they were made of wet sand. Kaelen sat on the chair with his mug and we ate in silence, the only sounds being the scrape of metal against ceramic and that same damn cardinal outside who apparently had no other trees in all of November to sit in.
He'd changed clothes. Marcus must've brought him something because the ripped bloody shirt was gone, replaced by a plain black long-sleeve that was a little too tight across the shoulders. His hair was still damp from a shower, darker when wet, and he smelled like whatever cheap soap Marcus had stocked in the bathroom. Not his usual smell. I noticed, which annoyed me.
"You want more?" he asked, nodding at my half-empty mug.
"I'm good."
"You barely ate."
"I said I'm good."
He didn't push it. Just took my mug and his to the kitchen, and I heard water running while he washed them. He washed the dishes. In a safe house where we were hiding from a shadow organization that wanted to drain my blood, he was washing the dishes like we were playing house.
I pressed my palms against my eyes and tried to feel my fire. Nothing. Same blank empty space, same drawer with nothing in it. Marcus had said forty-eight to seventy-two hours. This was hour... what, twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Still a long way to go.
"Ready?" Kaelen was back in the doorway, drying his hands on his jeans. That same careful distance, leaning against the frame instead of coming in. Waiting for permission.
"Yeah."
He sat on the bed. Closer this time than this morning, maybe because we'd already done this once and the ice was cracked, or maybe because I'd scooted toward the middle without realizing it. Our knees touched through the blanket and neither of us moved away.
He held out his hands, palms up. I stared at them. Clean now, no blood, no ash, just Kaelen's hands that I used to hold whenever I wanted. Big, warm, with those long fingers that had cupped my face this morning and almost made me forget every reason I had to be angry.
Almost.
I put my hands in his.
The warmth came faster this time. Like his body had learned the route and didn't need directions anymore, the heat flowing from his palms into mine and up my arms, spreading through my chest. Those cold dead spots where my fire should've been, I could feel them responding, not lighting up exactly but... thawing. A little. Like frost on a window when you press your hand to the glass.
"Tell me if it's too much," he said.
"It's not too much."
It was too much. Not the heat, that was fine, that was actually the only thing that felt good right now. It was everything else.
The way his thumbs rested against the inside of my wrists, right over my pulse points, and I knew he could feel how fast my heart was going. The way his knee pressed against mine and sent this stupid electric thing up my thigh. The way he was looking at our hands with such intense concentration, like he was doing advanced calculus in his head instead of just sitting there being warm.
I studied him because I couldn't help it. The line of his jaw, sharper than I remembered, like he'd lost weight in the weeks we'd been apart. The shadows under his eyes that matched mine. The way his mouth was set in this tight line, not quite a frown, more like he was physically holding back words.
"You lost weight," I said.
He looked up, surprised. "What?"
"Your face is thinner. And your shirt's loose at the waist." It wasn't that loose, but I could tell. I'd spent enough time looking at his body before everything went to shit that I had it basically memorized, which was a pathetic thing to admit even to myself.
"Haven't been eating much," he said. "Marlen's been on my case about it. She made me eat a whole pizza last week just by standing in the kitchen staring at me until I finished every slice."
I almost smiled. "That sounds like Marlen."
"She learned it from our mom. The stare."
He said it casually but something flickered across his face. His mother, the one who'd taught him golden dragons protect, don't destroy, the one the Order had taken. The one he'd contradicted in that hotel room when he burned three, maybe four men to save me.
The warmth between our hands pulsed and I felt something shift in the bond. His grief, bleeding through. Not the sharp kind, the old kind, the kind that lives in your bones and becomes part of how you breathe.
"Sorry," he said, pulling back slightly. "I can feel it leaking through. I'm trying to—"
"Don't." I tightened my grip on his hands before I could think about it. "Don't block it. It's okay."
He stared at me. I stared back, which might have been a mistake because his eyes were doing that thing where the blue-green got brighter near the center and I could almost, almost see the gold underneath.
"It's part of the healing," I said, which was total bullshit and we both knew it. "The bond being open. It probably helps."
"Probably," he agreed, which meant he knew it was bullshit too but was willing to go along with it.
We sat there for another forty minutes. My hands in his, the warmth circulating, the bond open enough that I could feel his emotions mixing with mine in a way that should have been uncomfortable but wasn't. At some point my eyes got heavy and I started drifting, not sleeping, just floating in this warm place that smelled like cheap soap and Kaelen and canned soup.
His thumb moved. Just barely, a small stroke across the back of my hand. Unconscious maybe, or maybe not, and my whole body went tight for a second before relaxing again.
I didn't say anything about it.
He didn't do it again.
When the session ended he pulled his hands away and the cold rushed back in so fast I almost gasped. Like stepping out of a hot shower into a freezing bathroom, that shock of temperature difference. My hands felt empty. Hollow.
"I'm going to check the perimeter with Marcus," he said, standing up. "Call if you need anything."
"Okay."
He left. I sat on the bed staring at my empty hands and hating myself for wanting them full again.