章 31: These Deep Wounds
The wound was deeper than she had expected. Only now did she actually feel any pain at all, and even that was more than bearable with him treating her so tenderly.
It was just like that one time they had been heavily fired at by a Sennite Navy ship, and he had been so sure that he was going to lose her. This memory formed a stark contrast with her other memories of him, to the point where she didn't know what part of her own heart was right and what was completely delusional.
She swam into the scenery inside her mind and let herself act out everything that had happened on that day.
///
"GET DOWN!"
The screams almost drowned out the command of the pirate king. All those cries had the same message, though.
Mariana ducked.
When she dared to try to peek above the gunwale again, her lower belly felt so bad that she couldn't even get on her feet.
The cannons were silent for a moment, and so was Daniel. He looked at her with such utter horror on his face that for a moment, Mariana thought that it was him who had been grievously wounded.
But no, he simply ignored the pain he had to feel from the shot that had grazed his elbow, perhaps that was the reason his other sleeve was red. He felt her pain as if it had been his own flesh pierced by the splinter of wood.
"Mariana…no, no, no."
The words spilled out of his mouth as an uneven and bubbling stream of consciousness.
Mariana wondered why she didn't have it in her to moan or gasp. The splinter was half an inch into her, it was a downright miracle that she wasn't feeling more pain, or that she had not collapsed yet. It seemed like her vital organs were still intact.
Mostly.
"GET THEM! BOYS! GET THE SCOUNDRELS!"
The pirate king yelled a few orders that would ensure the destruction of the enemy vessel. He was rather good at warfare on the seas, she knew it.
What she had not known about him was that he was one of the few captains who could also moonlight as the doctors of their own vessels.
He didn't pull the splinter out, that would have been unwise. Daniel seemed to be aware of that.
No, that would have been bad, she could have bled out. Instead, he wrapped the wound so that the splinter did not move at all, and as he wrapped her up into his own shirt, he cleaned what he could clean with rum.
"Ow," Mariana said.
She felt the pain from the burning of the alcohol, it was stinging her so bad that she wanted to ask him to stop.
She didn't say anything.
"She is SINKING!" one of their men screamed. "WE GOT HER! WE SANK HER!"
So, that other danger was gone, while the other, arguably even more urgent danger persisted.
Daniel carried her into his cabin like a man could have carried his bride, and she felt light on his arms, like she had no weight at all. She also felt light-headed, like she was going to pass out any minute now.
///
That was where she always lost track of that memory, and she tried to join it with the next image of her past, but the sting of the rum burning into her flesh woke her up.
"You are deep in thought," Daniel remarked, demonstrating an eerily intricate knowledge of the way her mind worked.
"Not anymore," she said quietly. "It isn't that bad, is it?"
"No, but I have to take care of it. You know how badly these things get infected in the hot, northern climate…like it did when you were…"
The words trailed into silence, leaving Mariana with nothing to help her in the exploration that was her trying to read Daniel's mind.
"I don't think it will get infected," she said softly, trying to break the invisible barrier between them.
"No, I don't think so, either. Put on your dress."
And here he was, all cold and rugged again, only looking at her with his eyes full of empty hunger, like some sort of a woman-eating partially albino tiger. The blue in his eyes met the light peeking through the ruined roof of the temple, and this in turn formed a stark contrast with the dark color of his eyes.
"GUARDS!" he yelled.
Mariana was sort of glad that he had shifted his focus. Salty water burned in her tear ducts, the delicate plumbings inside her skull telling her that it was time to cry, time to be a woman.
As if she had not felt herself to be at the peak of her femininity when he had touched her.
The one man who had burned his ugly face and sweaty hands into Mariana's memory and his blade into her skin came from a secret room inside the temple. He didn't seem to understand that he was in deep trouble.
SMACK!
The slap from the hand of the pirate king echoed from the walls, its impact sending the man flying towards the pillars.
Mariana gasped. The man was two times as heavy as Daniel! How could her pirate king have developed such powers? Amazed, she didn't even have it in her to beg for mercy on behalf of the burly man.
"You WILL NOT TOUCH HER. You have WOUNDED her. HER."
Daniel was not shouting as much as he was speaking loudly, accentuating a different syllable every time. Mariana had to wonder if this was due to his own, icy anger, or due to the fact that the man was probably a complete dimwit, as some guards tended to be.
"Fetch the whip," Daniel said. "Rinse it in rum, and give it to me. I will not get my hands dirty today, so, keep the handle clean."
The wrath in his voice snapped Mariana out of her trance.
She realized that Daniel planned to deal a lot of damage and cause a lot of pain, more than the guard could be expected to take. If she was going to pretend to be a moral person, she had to do something about it.
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