dressed, do you?” I said to him under my breath. I reached forward, brushing some of his dark fringe away from his eyes. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Rio’s footsteps announced his rapid return and I snatched my hand back just as he opened the door, a bucket of water sloshing in his hands. He flicked open a cabinet on the wall and produced a towel. I hung over it over my shoulder.
“Here you are, m’lady,” he said, slightly out of breath. He set the bucketdown beside me, and I thanked him though he could not hear it over the engines. “Need me for anything else?”
I looked at the kin, seriously wondering if I would be able to get that cloak off of him in order to access the wound, let alone his shirt. Both were no doubt ruined now.
“My knife?” I asked, smiling shyly.
“It’s a dagger,” he corrected. Digging into my bag, he pulled out the small scabbard and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, louder this time. He nodded and excused himself through the door. As it fell shut, I looked down at the kin. For some reason my stomach was even more turbulent than the winds outside.
I took a deep breath to steady myself, and then leaned over the kin to start cutting away his cloak. The thick fabric took several minutes to carve through before I could pull it away from the wound and out of the way. All that was left was his shirt, now, and I was getting increasingly nervous.
“Sorry about this,” I said as I peeled the blood-soaked fabric away from his skin and brought the dagger to it.
“Sorry about what?”
I jumped violently, nearly stabbing myself with the dagger as I pulled it away. Levent looked up at me through one eye, looking sleepy and slightly bemused.
“I uh- I-I,” I stuttered as I pointed at the dagger in some sort of failed explanation of my actions. I had to take another deep breath and swallowed before I could say properly, “I-I need to get the cloth away in order to heal-“
His eye widened and I could see his uninjured arm attempt to lift him off the floor, but only succeeded in making him grit his teeth and fall back onto his stomach.
“Listen to me,” I said just loud enough for him to hear. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and if you want to survive this without having to lose your arm, you’re going to