Chapter : 739

“I see,” she said softly, her voice filled with a new, deep, and genuine understanding. “I am sorry. I did not mean to pry into old wounds.”

“They are scars, not wounds,” he corrected gently, the line so perfectly delivered it even impressed himself. “They remind us of battles won, and of the terrible, necessary cost of victory.”

A new, comfortable silence fell between them. The jungle, as if sensing the danger, both physical and emotional, had truly passed, slowly began to reclaim its voice. The incessant, high-pitched buzzing of insects started their chorus again. A brightly colored, parrot-like bird landed on a branch overhead, letting out a series of curious, bell-like notes, tilting its head as it observed the two strange, quiet creatures below. The world, in all its wild, indifferent beauty, was returning to normal.

Sumaiya finally stood up, brushing the damp earth from her leather trousers. “We should rest here for a while longer,” she said, her tone practical again, the professional returning, but the new, softer emotional undertone remained. “You have lost a lot of blood. Your energy is low. You need to regain your strength. I will take the first watch.”

Lloyd, whose ingrained instinct as a commander was to never, ever show weakness or cede control, started to protest. “I am fine. I can…”

“You will rest,” she interrupted, her voice firm, gentle, and leaving absolutely no room for argument. She walked to the edge of the clearing and retrieved her long, wicked-looking knife, its blade gleaming in the dappled, emerald twilight. She found a defensible spot with her back to a thick, moss-covered tree, her gaze sweeping the surrounding jungle with a newfound, fiercely protective intensity. “You saved my life, Doctor. The least I can do is let you rest without worrying that some glowing, carnivorous fungus will try to eat you in your sleep. Close your eyes. I am your shield now.”

Lloyd watched her, a complex, almost dizzying, mixture of emotions churning within him. He was a lord of a great house, a general who had commanded armies, a being who controlled gods. And he was being ordered to take a nap by a mysterious, beautiful, and impossibly stubborn woman with a knife. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the situation was almost comical.

But he was also genuinely, bone-deeply, and profoundly exhausted. The pain in his shoulder was a constant, throbbing drumbeat against his stamina, and his spiritual and physical energy reserves were dangerously, critically low. To force himself to stand watch now would not be an act of strength; it would be an act of pure, foolish, and potentially fatal pride.

With a quiet, internal sigh of complete and utter surrender, he leaned his head back against the rough, solid wood of the banyan root and closed his eyes. The Major General was officially off duty. The Lord of Ferrum was on medical leave. For now, he was just Zayn, a wounded man under the fierce, and surprisingly comforting, protection of his enigmatic companion. And as he drifted into a shallow, pain-filled, and blessedly welcome sleep, he found that he was, strangely, content with that. The seeds of admiration had been planted, and they were beginning to grow into the tangled, complicated, and deeply, deeply interesting vines of trust.

---

The sleep that claimed Lloyd was not restful. It was a shallow, feverish state, a gray twilight between consciousness and oblivion, haunted by the phantom pains in his shoulder and the lingering, metallic taste of adrenaline from the fight. He drifted through a chaotic montage of fractured dreams—the screech of obsidian claws on magma-plate armor, the furious, amber glare of the Sabercat’s eyes, the cold, empty silence of his ducal suite back at the estate. He felt untethered, a ghost floating between his many lives, anchored to nothing.

He was awoken by a gentle, hesitant touch on his uninjured arm. His eyes snapped open in an instant, his entire body tensing, the soldier’s deep-wired instinct screaming of a threat, his hand instinctively reaching for a sword that was not there.

His vision cleared, the fuzzy, dream-like edges sharpening into the dim, bioluminescent reality of the jungle floor. He saw Sumaiya kneeling beside him, her face a mask of profound concern in the strange, ethereal glow of the glowing moss and fungi that surrounded them.

“Easy, warrior,” she murmured, her voice a soothing balm on the raw, frayed nerves of his sudden awakening. “It’s just me. You were shivering. Your fever is rising.”

Chapter : 740

She was right. He could feel it now. A cold, clammy sweat had broken out across his brow, and a deep, penetrating chill had settled into his bones, a classic, textbook sign of his body fighting off the inevitable infection from the deep, unclean wounds. Even with his advanced, supernaturally enhanced physiology, the filthy claws of a high-level magical beast were a potent, and very dangerous, vector for disease.

“I am fine,” he lied, his voice a hoarse, unfamiliar croak. He tried to push himself into a sitting position, but a wave of dizzying vertigo washed over him, and the entire, glowing jungle tilted violently on its axis. He collapsed back against the tree root with a groan.

“You are not fine,” she countered, her tone firm but gentle, the voice of a healer who would not be placated by a patient’s stubborn pride. She placed a hand on his forehead, and her touch was surprisingly cool, a small, welcome island of relief in the rising sea of his fever. “You are burning up. Here.”

She held a small, carved wooden cup to his lips. It was filled with water, cool, clean, and tasting faintly of moss and stone. He drank gratefully, the water a blessed relief to his parched, dry throat.

“I found a clean spring while you were sleeping,” she explained, her voice a low, steady murmur. “The water is pure. And I added a pinch of the fever-reducing herbs from your satchel. The willow bark you mentioned during our travels.”

He looked at her then, truly looked at her, past the haze of his own pain and fever. And he saw the profound exhaustion in her own face. There were dark, bruised-looking circles under her eyes, and her usual, vibrant energy was muted, banked like a fire that has been burning for too long. She had stood watch all night, a silent, solitary guardian in a world of monsters and shadows, while he had been lost in his own, painful, and useless dreams.

“You should have woken me,” he said, the words a mild, almost automatic, rebuke from the commander who was never supposed to show weakness. “You need rest as well. A single watch-stander is a vulnerability.”

She gave a small, wry, and utterly exhausted smile. “And let the fearsome, secret protector of the innocent be devoured by a particularly aggressive patch of glowing fungus? I think not. It would be terribly bad for morale.” Her attempt at humor was a fragile, delicate thing, but it was a gift, an offering of normalcy in the heart of their insane, dangerous situation.

He managed a weak, cracked smile in return. “My carefully cultivated reputation as a saint would indeed be tarnished.”

She helped him to sit up, propping his aching body carefully against the unyielding wood of the tree root. She then took a clean strip of linen from her own pack, soaked it in the cool, clean spring water, and began to gently, methodically wipe the grime and the cold sweat from his face. Her touch was impersonal, the practiced efficiency of a healer, and yet there was an underlying tenderness to it, a profound and gentle care that he could not ignore.

“You never cease to surprise me, Zayn,” she said quietly, her eyes focused on her task, her voice a low, almost intimate murmur in the quiet of the jungle. “When I first met you, in that dusty little clinic, I thought you were a fraud. A quiet, sad-eyed man playing at being a savior, perhaps to atone for some past sin. Then, I thought you were a true saint, a man of impossible, almost divine, goodness. In the fight… I saw a demon, a god of fire and rage, a being of terrible, magnificent power. And now…” She paused, her gaze finally, and bravely, meeting his. “Now, I just see a man. A very brave, very foolish, and very, very tired man.”

Her assessment was so brutally, perfectly, and completely accurate that it stripped him of all his defenses. It left him with nothing to say. She had peeled back the layers of his deception—the saint, the warrior, the god—and had found the simple, vulnerable, and undeniable truth at the very core of his being. He was just a man, wounded, feverish, and very, very far from home.

“The wounds…” he started to say, a desperate, reflexive attempt to change the subject, to rebuild his walls, to retreat back into the safe, impersonal world of medicine. “They need to be checked. The risk of infection…”