Page 32 of Remmen

I didn’t. Because Anne would never forgive me for it, and because a man who’d say that out loud in the square was a man announcing exactly what she was to him. I put the animal back in its corner and made my voice a mayor’s.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hesk. He got hurt a few days back and it’s gone bad on him. He’s burning up, out of his head with it, and he won’t let Otho near him. Won’t let any of us near him either.” Rauf swallowed. “He might let her. She’s the only one out there any of them trust.”

I’d put Hesk down in the dirt for putting his filthy hands on my Anne. I wanted to curse Rauf and send him away. The Butchers had no right to Anne, to her time. She was so far above them that they didn’t deserve to kiss her feet.

And if she found out that Rauf had come and I’d sent him away, she’d never forgive me.

She wasn’t mine to forbid. Nor mine to protect. She wasn’t mine. It was a knife to the gut, but I had to hide it. Rauf was more perceptive than people gave him credit for and I didn’t need him seeing anything.

“I’ll get her,” I said.

And I did. I told myself the whole walk to her office that I was only fetching the doctor’s aide, that this was Otho’s errand and Anne was his hands past the ridge, that it changed nothing. I did not believe a word of it.

I knew she’d go whether I liked it or not, and the only say I had left was whether she went alone.

I drove her myself.

She sat beside me on the bench with her kit on her knees and her jaw set, ready to be furious if I tried to turn the truck around.

“You’ve got your jaw set,” she said, not looking at me. “You look like you want to say something.”

“I’m driving.”

“You’re grinding your teeth to powder is what you’re doing.” She shifted the kit on her knees. “I’ve been out to that ranch a dozen times. I’ll dress the wound, I’ll leave, you’ll have me home before dark. It’s a house call.”

Her home, not mine.

I didn’t say it.

I’d sent Korfas out to the ranch to make sure the Butchers did what they’d promised and they wouldn’t open the gate. Forcing the issue would only make things worse, so I had to hope they’d killed the beast.

I wondered, with my hands tight on the wheel and Anne warm and stubborn beside me, whether Hesk had been opened up by another Butcher’s temper.

Or by an animal they’d sworn to me, in that same yard, they’d already put down.

CHAPTER 14

ANNE

It was late when we got back from the Butchers.

No, the farm. I refused to think of them by that awful name.

But butchery had certainly been done to Hesk. He’d been hiding a knife wound for a week and, shocker, it had gone sour. The growing kit I had from Otho had some antibiotics, but Rauf had instructions to drag Hesk into town kicking and screaming if things took a turn.

I wasn’t a doctor. I wasn’t supposed to be treating infections. But it was the only help I could offer. After more than a month, I still didn’t have any real clients to speak of, and Nezara had told me, gently but seriously, that a review was coming.

Soon.

I slumped on my couch and wished the pillows would swallow me. Everything was going wrong now. My job was a mess. My love life was a disaster in a new and interesting and even more self-destructive way than usual.

The thing between Remmen and me had to stop. But I didn’t even pretend to lie to myself about stopping it. I’d tried that and it hadn’t taken. And if I was going to be sent away soon, why accept more suffering?

Because your future career depends on a good reference.

Oh, right. Yeah, that.