Chapter 297: Trade her pain

"What is wrong?" Viktor’s voice was soft. He had moved from the chair to the edge of the bed. He did not touch her. He only sat close, with his hands on his knees, and his eyes on her face.

"Did you find something?" he said. "Tell me. How are you feeling?"

"I am okay." It came out too quickly. It was thin and flat, and they both heard it. She folded the pages and pressed them against her stomach, and she looked at the round window. The sea outside was heaving, with a fringe of white along every wave.

"I wish I had my needles," she said. Her voice shook, just a little.

Her hands were shaking too. She looked down at them, and then she tucked them under her arms, as if she could hide the trembling. Her heart was beating very fast. It fluttered and caught and ran, and she could feel it in her throat.

She could not tell him.

She tried. She sat there with her mouth half open and the words sitting on her tongue. Viktor, I think I am... But when she looked at his face, tired and bruised and full of such frightened love, the sentence died.

She knew him. She knew exactly how it would go. He would sit on the edge of this bed, white to the lips, and he would say it was his fault. He would think of every night, every choice, every second he had held her. He would carry it like a stone for the rest of his life.

She was not ready to hand him that. Just a little longer. Until I know what to do. She looked at him. His eyes were dark and steady. He knew she was holding something back. He did not push.

"Wait here," he said. He stood up and left the cabin. The door closed. She heard his footsteps on the metal stairs, quick and heavy, fading away overhead.

She sat alone with the rocking and the creak of the ropes. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders. She laid her palm flat against the front of the gray sweater, low, where nobody could see. She did not move it.

I am sorry, she thought. She did not know to whom. He came back in fifteen minutes.

He had a small black case in his hand. It was the size of a book, scuffed at the corners, with a brass catch. He set it on the blanket and opened it.

Inside, in rows of soft gray foam, lay a set of long, thin needles.

They were silver and very fine. Each one was no thicker than a hair, and they were laid in neat lines, from the shortest to the longest. Beside them was a small roll of cloth, a bottle of clear spirit, and a flat tool made of dark metal, with tiny studded wheels.

"I asked Marcus," Viktor said. His voice was quiet.

"I told him just in case. He sent someone at dawn to a clinic in the town." He swallowed. "It is not your set. I could not get your set. But it is the closest they had."

Sienna stared at the case.

Her throat closed. She did not trust her voice. She looked at him, at the tired line of his shoulders and the little strips of tape on his brow, and she smiled. It was small and crooked and real.

"Thank you," she said. She sat up against the wall, with the blanket in her lap.

She took the spirit and wet a cloth and wiped her wrists. Her fingers were still shaking, and she waited until the worst of it passed. Then she picked up the first needle.

She held it up to the light.

It was very thin, and it trembled in her hand. She took a breath and let it out slowly, the shaking eased.

She set the point against the inside of her left wrist, just under the bone, in the place where her pulse beat hardest.

She pressed. It went in with a small bright sting. She did not flinch. She only closed her eyes for a moment and let the sensation spread, like a drop of cold water on a hot stone.

Then she took up another.

One by one, she placed them. A second in the same wrist, a little higher. A third on the inside of her arm. A fourth on the other side. Her hands knew where to go without being told. She did not look at the pages or the case. She only followed the map in her fingers, from point to point, along the channels that she could not see.

She worked in silence.

It was a quiet, careful kind of work. Each needle was a small door she was opening, and every door let a little more blood through. It was not a solution. She knew that. It was not a cure, or even a treatment. It could not mend the thing that was broken, or undo what had been done.

But it cleared the way.

It let the blood run a little more freely, so that her heart did not have to fight so hard to push it through. It gave the poor stubborn muscle enough to hold on. That was all. It was only a bridge.

Just enough to keep me on my feet, she thought. Until something better comes along. She laid the last needle near her breastbone, very lightly, and let her hand fall.

Viktor sat on the edge of the bed and watched. He did not speak. He did not move. He had seen men take bullets without a sound. He had seen them cut and burned and beaten. But he had never seen anything like this.

She sat with her back straight and her eyes closed. A row of silver pins glinted along her arms and wrists. A bead of sweat ran down her temple. Her face was gray and still, and her lips moved a little as she counted.

He knew she knew what she was doing. He could see it in the steady line of her hands and the calm of her breath. She was good at this. She was far better at it than he would ever be at anything.

It did not help. His hands were clenched on his knees so tightly that the knuckles ached. He wanted to take them out and put them over hers, to lift the needles one by one and throw them out of the window. He wanted to scream. He wanted, more than anything, to be the one sitting there.

Let it be me. The thought rose in him quiet and fierce, and it did not leave. Let me hurt. Let it be my heart that fails. Let it be my blood. Give her the quiet, and give me the pain.

He would have traded every year he had. He did not say it. He only sat and watched the color creep very slowly back into her lips.