Chapter 16: Tending the Wounded
The stench of the infirmary was a living thing. It coiled in the back of Lyria’s throat—clove oil and crushed yarrow fighting a losing battle against the coppery tang of blood and the sweet, putrid ghost of gangrene. Her hands moved automatically, winding a linen bandage around a young man’s splintered forearm. His screams had subsided into whimpers, his face slick with sweat and tears.
“Tighter,” Serena’s voice came from over her shoulder, calm as still water. “The bone’s set, but if it shifts, he’ll lose the hand.”
Lyria pulled the bandage, her fingers cramping. She knotted it off. The man passed out, blessedly silent.
Around them, the tent was a study in controlled chaos. Palettes held the broken and bleeding, refugees from a skirmish at the eastern pass. The lantern swung, casting monstrous, undulating shadows that made the wounded seem to writhe even in their sleep. Every moan was a hook in Lyria’s nerves.
She stood, her knees popping, and turned to the next palette. An older woman with a deep gash across her scalp. Lyria reached for the cleansing solution.
“I’ll take her.” Serena was there, her hand covering Lyria’s, stilling its faint tremor. “Your shift ended an hour ago. You’re seeing double.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not. You’ve been pouring distilled wine on open wounds and singing lullabies for twelve hours. You’re running on fumes and goodwill.” Serena’s blue-green eyes held hers, no room for argument. “Clean up. Get some air. That’s an order.”
The familiar, warm authority in her voice unspooled something tight in Lyria’s chest. She nodded, too tired to pretend. She washed her hands in the basin, the water turning a murky pink. The cool night air outside the tent felt like a slap. She gulped it down, leaning against a supply cart, her head tipped back to the starless sky.
The flap rustled. Serena emerged, wiping her hands on a rag already stained beyond saving. She came to lean beside Lyria, their shoulders not quite touching.
“Hard day,” Serena said, stating the simple, unbearable truth.
“That child with the fever. The one who kept calling for her mother.” Lyria’s voice was flat. “She stopped calling.”
“I know.” Serena didn’t offer empty comfort. She just stood there, a solid presence in the suffocating dark. “You did good work in there. You have a healer’s hands. Gentle, but steady.”
Lyria looked at her own hands, the calluses from her lute strings now layered with cuts from bandage clasps and the indelible stain of blood under her nails. “They don’t feel gentle. They feel useless.”
“That’s the fatigue talking.” Serena turned to face her. The distant firelight caught the honey strands in her hair and the sharp line of her jaw. “I watched you today. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t look away. Most people, even good people, they look away from the worst of it. You never did.”
Lyria met her gaze. The exhaustion was a weight, but underneath it, a different current was flowing, swift and deep. It had been there for weeks, through campfires and shared rations, in the way Serena’s laughter could cut through any gloom, in the deliberate brush of fingers when passing a suturing needle.
“I was watching you,” Lyria admitted, the words leaving her in a soft rush. “Trying to learn. Trying to be… something like you.”
Serena’s lips curved, but her eyes were dark, intense. “Is that all?”
The air between them thickened, the distant sounds of the camp fading into a dull buzz. The smells of sickness were out here, too, but all Lyria could catch was the clean, herbal scent of Serena’s skin, the faint sweetness of the soap she used.
“No,” Lyria whispered.
Serena closed the distance. Her hand came up, not to Lyria’s face, but to her wrist, her thumb tracing the prominent bone. “You’re shaking.”
“Adrenaline. Nowhere left to go.”
“I know a place.” Serena’s voice was low, a private rumble. She tugged gently, leading Lyria not toward the sleeping tents, but back inside the infirmary, around a canvas partition to a small, secluded space used for storing clean linens. Shelves of folded cloth surrounded them, forming a soft, fabric-walled sanctuary. The sounds from the main tent were muffled here, reduced to a faint, rhythmic sighing.
Serena turned, crowding Lyria against a shelf. “Tell me to stop.”
“Don’t you dare stop,” Lyria breathed, and crushed her mouth to Serena’s.
The kiss was a release of every pent-up emotion of the day—the fear, the grief, the desperate, clawing need to feel something besides loss. It was all teeth and searching tongue, a messy, grateful collision. Serena’s hands were in her copper hair, tilting her head back, claiming her mouth with a hunger that mirrored Lyria’s own.
Lyria fumbled with the laces of Serena’s tunic, her fingers clumsy. Serena helped, yanking the garment over her head. The floral tattoos down her side seemed to bloom in the dim light. Lyria mouthed at the smooth skin of her shoulder, her neck, while her hands pushed down the practical woolen trousers, past strong hips.
“You think about this,” Serena gasped as Lyria’s hand cupped her, finding her wet and hot through the fabric of her smallclothes. “During the long watches. When you’re playing for the troops. You imagine my hands on you.”
“Yes,” Lyria hissed, tugging the cloth aside and sliding two fingers through Serena’s folds, gathering the slickness. “I imagine this cunt. I imagine how fucking wet you get for me.”
Serena groaned, a raw, unfiltered sound. She pushed Lyria back onto a tall, soft stack of linens. The clean, sun-dried smell enveloped them. With ruthless efficiency, Serena stripped Lyria of her trousers and smallclothes, spreading her legs wide. She knelt between them, her eyes raking over Lyria’s body—the toned stomach, the copper-red thatch of hair, already glistening.
“You’re so ready,” Serena murmured, then lowered her head.
Her mouth was not gentle. It was demanding. She licked a broad, flat stripe from Lyria’s entrance to her clit, then sucked the hard bud between her lips, flicking it with her tongue. Lyria cried out, her hips jerking off the linen. Serena held her down with a firm arm across her stomach.
“Stay still. Let me taste you. All of you.”
She dove in again, her tongue spear-fucking Lyria’s hole, lapping at her own juices before zeroing back in on her clit, sucking it deep, worrying it with a relentless rhythm. The dual sensation—the soft, wet penetration and the sharp, focused pull—drove Lyria wild. She tangled her hands in Serena’s blonde hair, not guiding, just holding on.
“Fuck, Serena, right there… don’t stop, please don’t stop…”
Serena growled against her, the vibration shooting straight to Lyria’s core. She added two fingers, curling them up hard, pumping in time with her mouth. The stretch was perfect, the pressure unerring. Lyria could feel her orgasm gathering, a coiling spring in her gut.
Serena pulled off, her lips swollen and gleaming. “Look at me. Look at me when you come.”
She drove her fingers deep, her thumb painting tight, insistent circles on Lyria’s clit. Lyria held her gaze, those blue-green eyes now black with desire, fixed on hers as if she were the only thing left in the world to heal. The spring snapped.
Her climax tore through her with a silent, breathless intensity for a second before the sound followed—a shattered, gasping cry as her back arched and she ground herself against Serena’s hand, her cunt pulsing around the thrusting fingers. Wave after wave of blinding release burned through her, leaving her trembling and spent.
Serena slowly withdrew her fingers, brought them to her own mouth, and sucked them clean, her eyes never leaving Lyria’s. Then she stood, unbuckled her belt, and pulled out the oiled leather harness and the thick, realistic cock strapped to it. She’d put it on before her shift, Lyria realized. She’d been planning this.
The thought sent a fresh, hungry thrill through her.
Serena slicked the shaft with a vial of oil from a shelf. The smell of almonds joined the scent of linen and sex. She positioned herself between Lyria’s thighs, the broad head nudging at her sensitive entrance.
“This is what you need,” Serena stated, her voice husky. “Something to fill up all that empty space the day left inside you.”
She pushed forward.
The invasion was slow, inexorable, stretching Lyria gloriously wide. She was still fluttering from her first orgasm, hypersensitive, every inch of the strap-on’s progress a sublime fusion of pleasure and deep, filling pressure. Serena seated herself fully, their hips flush, and let out a shaky breath.
“Gods, you’re tight,” she muttered. “Perfect.”
Then she began to move. Long, slow, dragging pulls that made Lyria feel every ridge, followed by deep, grinding thrusts that stole her breath. The linen stack rustled beneath them, a rhythmic accompaniment to the wet, slapping sound of their bodies joining.
Serena leaned down, capturing Lyria’s mouth in a kiss, fucking her tongue in time with her hips. “Whose perfect cunt is this?” she breathed into her mouth.
“Yours,” Lyria moaned, wrapping her legs around Serena’s waist, pulling her deeper. “Fuck, it’s always been yours.”
“Say it again.”
“Yours! Serena, please…”
Serena’s pace quickened, became punishing, her thrusts sharp and deep. The harness slapped against Lyria’s clit with every drive, building a second, sharper peak. Lyria clawed at Serena’s back, her cries growing louder, unchecked.
“Come on this cock,” Serena commanded, her own control fraying. “Come for me, Lyria. Let me feel you.”
Lyria shattered. This climax was different—deeper, a full-body convulsion that clenched around the hard length inside her, milking it in rhythmic pulses. She screamed, a raw sound of pure release, as the world dissolved into white-hot sensation.
Serena fucked her through it, her own movements becoming ragged, seeking her own pleasure in the friction of the harness, in the clenching heat of Lyria’s body. With a final, choked gasp, she pressed deep and held, her forehead dropping to Lyria’s shoulder as she trembled through her own simulated finish.
For long minutes, they lay entangled in the quiet dark, the only sounds their slowing breaths and the distant, anonymous suffering from the other side of the canvas.
Serena finally pulled out gently, set the harness aside, and gathered Lyria against her, pulling a clean sheet over them both. She kissed Lyria’s temple, her lips soft now, tender.
“Sleep,” she whispered. “I’ve got the next watch.”
Lyria, drifting on a tide of exhaustion and sated bliss, nuzzled into the crook of Serena’s neck. As her eyes grew heavy, she heard a new sound filtering through from the infirmary—not a moan of pain, but the low, urgent voices of two soldiers brought in just as she’d left.
“...not just raiders,” one was whispering, voice tight with a different kind of fear. “Their armor… it was old. Antique. And their eyes… their eyes were wrong. Like they weren’t all there.”
“Shut up,” the other hissed. “They’ll say you’re seeing things.”
“I know what I saw. They came from the east. From the dead mountains.”
Lyria’s eyes snapped open in the dark, meeting Serena’s. The warmth of moments ago was still there, but under it, a new chill settled. The dead mountains. That’s where the map in the temple led.
The larger war hadn’t stopped for their grief, or their tenderness. It was coming closer.