“I dreamed of you,” he said suddenly, softly. He continued to gaze out into the main room and not at her, but his hand again brushed back, this time along her shoulder. “I dreamed much. Awake and asleep.”

Amber pressed her palms over her eyes and made herself take deep, slow breaths until she finally quit leaking. The maggots rolled and wriggled and dug themselves around under the compress; knowing what they were, she could no longer feel them as anything so benign as a tickle. She’d probably never feel a real tickle again quite the same way, either. She had god-fucking-damn larvae crawling around inside her and he was talking about his dreams!

“They’re in me, Meoraq,” she said shakily. “They’re eating me like I’m already dead.”

He sighed. “I know. And I suppose it is terrible. Yet you live, Soft-Skin. You live and will be well.”

“For how long? God! Why are you trying so hard to save me?”

She meant her outburst for him, but he apparently took it for a prayer, because after a respectful silence, he grunted and said, “What does He tell you?”

“He? What, you mean God?” Momentarily unpinned, Amber erupted into giggles just as fantastically inappropriate as her hysterics had been. “He tells me I’m going to need saving for the rest of my stupid life, that’s what He tells me!”

And Meoraq nodded, either oblivious to her sarcasm or pretending to be. “Then I will always be there to save you.”

“Oh for—Leave me alone, lizardman! Let me die already! I’ve done nothing but get hurt from the moment we got here. This isn’t fair!” she burst out, once more on the brink of hateful tears. “I don’t get hurt! I’m the strong one!”

“Yes,” he said, with no trace of irony.

The dam was good and broken now. It all came flooding out of her—not tears, but words—in a hot sluice of emotion as bitter as bile: “I hate this! I hate lying here day after goddamn day staring at the top of this goddamn cupboard! I hate riding around in your stupid sled and watching you have to carry me! I hate that every single fucking creature on this planet wants to eat me and half of them have tried! And I hate you telling me it’s all God’s will!”

“His will is great, Soft-Skin. There is room for all things in His eye.”

“If God actually wants me to lie here with maggots in my guts, I want no part of him. I hate your God!”

It was the worst thing she could think of to say to him—the most vicious, blasphemous, mean thing to say—and she did it half-hoping he would walk out and give the tears struggling inside her an easy way out. Instead, he snorted, as if she’d told a joke that was perhaps in poor taste but still very funny.

She stared at his back for a long time as anger was replaced by exhaustion. The itch in her side just grew and grew with every passing helpless second.

“And I hate you,” she whispered.

“Lies.”

“What can I say?” Amber asked at last, her voice raw and shaking. “What can I say to make you leave me?”

“Try insulting my father,” he suggested.

“Stop making fun of me! I can’t do this, Meoraq! I can’t spend the rest of my life being your God-given burden!”

“Your trials are mine, Soft-Skin. As you learn from them, so do I.”

“Bullshit.”

“Truth.”

“What are you learning right this second?” she demanded.

“Patience.” He glanced upwards. “I learn that a lot when I’m with you.”

Amber clapped her hands over her face again. “You’re a zealot.”

“And you hate me,” he prompted.

Again, he waited. She did not reply, but her hand went to the bandage at her side, wanting to scratch but tortured by the image of crushing their disgusting little bodies into slurry right inside her.

He did not look at her, but must have been able to track her hand regardless, because he said, “It will heal.”

“But there’ll always be something else. Something worse.”

“Such is life.”

“I don’t want to live like this.” Her hand went to her side again, rubbing sickly at the skin around the bandage since she didn’t dare touch the actual site. Her stomach cramped; she might survive the maggots, but honesty had turned toxic and there was nothing she could do but keep on puking it up. “And don’t feed me that what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger bullshit! What doesn’t kill me just makes me worse! I don’t want to be ugly like this!” She scratched miserably at the places that didn’t itch, scratched until she felt blood wet beneath her fingernails, until he reached back his hand and stopped her.

“No warrior should be ashamed of the scars he carries. Each one is proof of courage. Even this one.” He touched the pink marks of his teeth he’d left her with on the night they’d first been together. “Perhaps particularly this one.” His eyes shifted to meet hers. “You are mine.”

“Because God gave me to you.” She tried to say it in her old tough-Amber voice, but it came out in a lost crybaby-girlie way instead, all the sarcasm lost in a quaver. “Thanks a lot, huh?”

He grunted, gazed at her for a long moment of silent thought, and just when she thought he was about to speak, he bent down and kissed her.

His rough mouth scoured across her lips as gently as she supposed he could do it, considering he couldn’t feel what he was doing. His breath, warm and dry and tasting faintly stale, blew in to mingle with hers. His tongue, hard and smooth as wax, nudged into her, inviting at first and then demanding.

She felt nothing at all for a second or two, and then something inside her seemed to erupt and she was kissing him back the way a drowning woman drinks air. Her hands dug at the back of his neck, pulling him closer even as their mouths mashed painfully together, and closer was never close enough. She sucked and bit and ground at him, making all the semi-mute, unlovely sounds of carnal desperation, and for God’s sake, Nicci was still sitting right over there, but as soon as his hand skimmed beneath the blanket to grip her bare breast, she didn’t care and wouldn’t have cared if they’d been center-stage in front of thirty thousand people.

“You are my—” He snapped his bone-hilted knife out of its sheath and stabbed it down over the head of the bed. “—insufferable—” His mouth scraped at hers, licked away a bead of blood, and came back for another kiss. “—senseless—” The hand at her breast rasped over her skin in a sudden, urgent journey to delve between her ready thighs. “—faithful wife.”

“Don’t!” she moaned, even as she bucked up against his questing hand. “I wasn’t! You know I wasn’t and you don’t want me anymore!”

“Shall I swear it before God?” His hand moved, stroking steadily and with embarrassing ease in and out. He looked down at it, his eyes smoked and hungry. “Upon this altar, all vows are surely made sacred. Let Him hear me. Let you hear me.”

She cried, clutching at him.

“You are always for me, Soft-Skin. Though your nearness and infirmity are a terrible trial upon my years of discipline, I will stand fast with the aid of God against my natural lusts. And when you are whole again, I will fill you. Between those hours, and for every other hour from now until the end of Time, you are for me.” He paused to watch with grimacing, lizard-like satisfaction as she came to a swift, violent climax. His hand stilled, but stayed where it was, cupping and not quite caressing her. “This day will end,” he said, softly. “You and I will go on.”

She caught his hand as he withdrew it, clutching it in both of hers and holding it to her heaving chest. He waited, but she couldn’t find the words to fit the storm of thoughts howling through her, and at last he pulled from her grip.

“Rest now, Soft-Skin,” he told her, standing up and away from the cupboard. The first thing he did was to cinch his belt even tighter, which she guessed meant he was concerned about protruding. The thought made her smile, and he ducked back inside to claim that smile with another of his harsh kisses. “When you wake, I will have tea for you. It will be bitter and unpleasant and you will drink it all.”