Chapter 4.

NORA POKED HER head into the room the servants had put their visitor in. Short-statured Betsy, who served as both cook and healer, held a candle close to the man’s wound to inspect it better. “I have ordered bandages for his shoulder, my lady. They should be up shortly.”

Nora fully entered the room with Ben behind her. “Thank you, Betsy, you have done beautifully. I can finish from here and see to closing the wound. Would you mind seeing to some broth for our guest? He’ll be hungry as a bear when he wakes up.”

“If he wakes up,” Betsy murmured, a worried look creas-ing her face. “I don’t like the look of him.”

Nora looked down and studied the man as Betsy left the room. He didn’t look promising. His skin had a gray pallor to it, no doubt from all the blood he’d lost. He was sweating profuse-ly, and if that wasn’t a positive sign for fever, Nora didn’t know what was. When she leaned over and pressed her hand to his forehead, his skin was burning hot.

“He’ll need to be bathed down again,” she said to Ben. “They cut his clothes away to tend to his wound and bathe him. He had another change of clothing in his saddle bags.”

“If he lives,” Ben whispered. “Betsy was right. Your sav-ior has the look of death.”

“He is not my anything, Ben,” Nora countered. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a glass vial. “But he will live.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed when he saw what she was holding. “Do you not think you should save that for your Warrior? You said yourself you were not convinced this man was he.”

“I’m not going to allow him to ingest it,” Nora said, sit-ting down on the bed next to the unconscious man. “But he saved me—someone he had never met before, not knowing who I was, what my crime might have been if I had one—and he sus-tained a grave injury for it. He shouldn’t have to die for it. His act of compassion should be returned.”

“And how will you explain it?” Ben asked. “He’ll re-member his injury. When he wakes up healed, what will you tell him?”

“That his injury wasn’t as serious as he thought,” Nora shrugged. “Does it matter if he is suspicious? He’ll be alive. We could tell him the truth, and he would never believe it.”

“This is your quest,” Ben conceded. “If you believe you will have enough for this man and your Warrior when you meet him, then we will figure out what we tell him together. I will go see to the soup.”

Ben left the room and Nora turned back to her patient. Now that he was cleaned of the blood, dirt, and the generally dusty appearance he’d had earlier in the forest, she

could see his face: honey-brown skin darkened from the sun paired with a chiseled jaw and strong facial features. She leaned over to push a lock of his dark, wavy hair away from his face, and he never stirred.

Her gaze traveled lower, and she noted his strong mus-cles. Whatever he did, he was lean. She frowned when her eyes fell on odd markings that covered his chest and arms.

She attempted to brush them away, but they were some form of ink, and seemed permanently etched onto his skin.

How strange, she thought. What were they? What could they mean? Perhaps they were the marks of a man who had been in prison. She had thought prisoners were branded and not drawn upon, though. Fox’s vision had said that the Warrior would bear marks. Nora had always assumed he meant scars up-on his person from injuries sustained in battles. This man cer-tainly had those, as well.

No matter. Once again, Nora put his status with the law aside and pulled the stopper out of the vial. Whatever theoretical crimes he may have committed, whatever the punishment for them were, he did not deserve to die for his act of compassion toward her. She doubted Rogan’s thugs would have killed her, but she could not have said the same for Rogan once they had brought her back to him. Lord Rogan was a hard and bitter man, prone to swift action. If he killed her, the stone would be his. But on the other hand, he’d had opportunities to kill her before-hand and had spared her. While Nora hadn’t encountered him or his men in the Colonies until now, she’d had near misses along the way since the night she had first run from him all those years ago.

Putting that aside for now, she returned her focus back to her mysterious savior. She didn’t have much time, but she could at least see this man on the road to recovery.

Carefully, she leaned forward and held the small vial above the wound. The clear liquid slowly made its way down the spout. All it took was a drop, so she held her hand steady, unwilling to let even a second drop spill out. This was all the elixir that was left, and she didn’t know how to extract any more. She had to save the rest for her Warrior.

And if she were willing to admit it to herself, while she was far from convinced this man was her Warrior, she couldn’t deny the possibility, and he couldn’t help her if he was dead. The time was right, and he had proved his fighting skills easily enough. Because of that inkling, she needed to save him. This small amount of liquid would only prolong his life insofar as it cured him of his wound now. In order to prolong his life longer, he would have to ingest everything in the vial.

The clear drop hit the wound with a small sizzle, and Nora quickly put the stopper back in the vial and returned it to her pocket. She couldn’t be sure when the servants would return with the bandages, and she couldn’t risk them seeing what she was doing. She hoped that Ben would intercept his staff and re-turn himself with supplies and the soup.

But it was better to be safe than called out for some kind of witch.

Not that too many people held with those theories any longer.

Satisfied any damning evidence was properly concealed, she pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat back to monitor the healing process. The wound had already begun to close around the edges. There was nothing more to do but watch and wait.