Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 02

Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 02 The Old Clinic
Something broke open in his face. The performance was good enough to win awards.
One of the sprites drifted past with a comment.
“Real talk, some of how he treated her had to be genuine. This one stings.”
That one line snapped something into focus for me.
I lifted my head and looked straight into his eyes.
“Callum, in six years, was there one second where you were actually happy?”
Something tightened behind his eyes. He didn’t answer.
Both sprites went off.
“She knows! She totally knows!”
“Lion, why are you just standing there? Make something up!”
Cold wind came in off the plain.
I picked up my pack, turned, and walked into the dark.
No footsteps followed me. Only the countdown kept ticking behind my eyes.
It read 9 days, 17 hours, 59 minutes.
The game wasn’t over. The player had just stopped following the rules.
I crossed the cool grass of the Barrens one step at a time, moving away from the pride, and my hands would not stop shaking.
It wasn’t fear. It was something closer to excitement.
Six years of pretending came off me, and it felt like taking a full breath for the first time.
The countdown blinked in front of me, cold and steady.
It had dropped to 9 days, 17 hours, 10 minutes.
I had less than ten days left to live.
All of it came down to a man who was never going to love me. Nothing about that made sense.
I remembered a clinic tucked away at the edge of the Barrens.
Back when I first landed in the Beastlands, before Callum closed his hand around my life, I used to go there all the time.
He always said the place drew a rough crowd.
After that, he stopped letting me go at all.
The two sprites darted back and forth beside me.
“Where’s she going? Shouldn’t she be running?”
“That last look the lion gave her was terrifying.”
“Am I the only one who thinks she looks incredible right now?”
The night wind came at me green and sweet, and it carried voices and laughter from the settlements and the smoke of meat cooking over a fire.
It was so real it made my eyes sting.
The clinic by the water still stood where it always had.
I pushed the door open, and the bone chimes hanging over it rang bright and clean.
Gideon Marsh was behind the counter, white in the hair and beard, a wandering healer I had met in my first months on the plain.
He knew the herb medicine of every clan, and there were not many clear heads like his left in the Barrens.
He saw me and stopped short.
“Wren?”
“Gideon. It’s been a while,” I said quietly.
He wiped his hands off on a cloth and came around the counter. “Five, six years now, has to be. You used to sit right there by that window with your herb journals and lose whole afternoons in them. Nobody around here had a gift like yours.”
Something in me went still, and memories I had packed away years ago came flooding back.
Medicine had always been the thing I loved. I was good at it, and all I ever wanted was to figure out the injuries nobody else could treat and keep more people alive.
When I first came to the Barrens, I held onto that, and I studied every herb the plain would give me.
I wanted to get better at it, treat more people, and make a place for myself on my own skill.
And then what?
Then Callum said it. “All that healing work wears you out. Let me take care of you. That’s all you need.
“The Barrens are always at each other’s throats. Healers make enemies fast. It’s too dangerous, and it isn’t for you.
“Wren, I’m enough. You don’t need anything else.”
And I believed him.
I packed away every journal I owned and threw out the one thing that had ever let me stand on my own.
“Sit down. I’ll get something hot into you.”
Gideon went into the back room, and I could hear him working the mortar and moving jars around.
I sat down at the old wooden table by the window.
Night air poured in through the window, and the lights of the settlement across the water broke apart on the surface into shifting gold.
Gideon set a bowl down in front of me, took the seat across from mine, and didn’t rush to say anything.
I cupped the clay bowl in both hands and drank it in small mouthfuls. The bitterness came first and a faint sweetness came after, and the heat spread out from my stomach into my arms and legs.
“Those journals you packed away. Do you still have them?” Gideon asked.
I took a second before I answered. “They’re at the bottom of my pack.”
He nodded. “Good. A skill goes in a drawer just as easy as it comes back out. Sit as long as you want. I’ve got a wolf cub in the back with a bad leg.”
I pulled the journals out of my pack and sat there reading them.
The two sprites went quiet for a moment, then started up again, slower this time.
“She’s really reading those.”
“Ten days left, and all she wants is to be who she used to be.”
“You really think the lion’s going to let her walk? I don’t buy it.”
I didn’t buy it either.
Sure enough, the bone chimes at the door rang a second time.
I didn’t need to look up to know who had come in.
Callum stood in the doorway with every trace of menace tucked away, showing just enough exhaustion and heartache.
The cold, high-handed face he usually wore had gone soft at the edges. The performance was still flawless.
He crossed the room to my table. “Wren, what are you doing all the way out here? I’ve been looking for you for hours. I was worried.”
“Visiting Gideon,” I said.
He let his shoulders drop and softened his voice. “Come home with me, Wren. Let’s both cool off. I promise I won’t bother you tonight, and tomorrow we’ll sit down and talk it out. Okay?”
I knew that tone by heart.
Six years, and every time I got upset, he did exactly this.