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“You need more.”
“So do you.”
“I haven’t been chained in a dungeon for two days.”
“But you ran down a mountain like your hair was on fire.”
Her brows drew together. “That was different.”
“It usually is when you’re the one being unreasonable.”
Isabella gave me a tired version of the expression she used when she thought I was particularly difficult, but she drank.
When she lowered the bottle, I took the cloth from the backpack and poured a little water over one corner.
“What are you doing?”
“Just hold still.”
“We don’t have enough water to waste.”
“I’m not wasting it.”
Blood had dried along one side of her face and in the creases of both hands.
I started with her cheek.
Isabella sat quietly while I wiped the dried blood from her skin. When I reached for her right hand, she placed it in mine and let me clean around her knuckles and up her forearms.
My hands were a little shaky now that we had stopped moving.
She noticed.
“You’re shaking.”
“The adrenaline’s wearing off. It’ll settle.”
Her attention dropped to the electrical burns scattered along my side. Her free hand lifted as though she meant to touch them, but she stopped before her fingers reached my skin.
“Those are new.”
“Aye. She liked making me smell my skin frying.”
I resumed cleaning the blood from her palm.
“I heard you screaming…until you didn’t anymore.”
My hand went still around hers.
“I passed out.”
“I thought she had killed you,” she whispered. “Everyone in the compound heard you. I was going to set the kitchen on fire using Fa—Ciro’s rum, but Rafael stopped me.”
I stared at her.
“You were going to burn the house down?”
“I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”