The Warrior's Forbidden Cure

He shouldn’t have been able to find the grove.

I stood at the edge of the pool, the water stilling under my hands as if even it held its breath. The scent hit me first—iron and smoke, human and wrong in a place that knew neither. Then the whispering hum in the air sharpened into something that pushed against my skin. I followed it, heart pounding, and saw him crumpled beneath the arch of elder roots where I sometimes slept on hot nights.

He was big, built for war, the kind of body my people summarized in a single word—brute—and dismissed as simple. But the instant my gaze landed on him, the judgment snagged. He lay on his side, curled around something, his arms hard-locked even in unconsciousness. Blood had soaked through the worn leather at his shoulder and trickled down along his ribs, pooling darkly beneath him. The cut running from collarbone to back looked rough, as if someone had dragged a blade and left it to fester. He was too still. His skin, beneath the grime, was pale, lips parted in shallow, uneven breaths.

I knelt, ignoring the way the grove’s magic recoiled from him like a body arching away from heat. My palm hovered over his brow; a flicker of magic met resistance, like mist striking glass. A shield. Subtle and stout, threaded through his mind. The air around him hummed again, deeper this time, and I realized it wasn’t him but the object locked in his hands.

The scroll. Iron bands circling a tube of dark wood etched with runes I didn’t recognize. The metal had an ugly shine, the kind that eats softness. It thrummed against my senses, low and steady, an unwelcome heart in the grove. When I reached toward it the hum sharpened, prickling my palm. He clutched it tighter even as his breath faltered.

“You’re killing yourself holding this,” I murmured, though he couldn’t hear me. The law was clear: no human body in the sacred grove, no iron in living wood, no mercy for those who brought either. I had been taught to send intruders back out, whole if possible, broken if not.

But his pulse stuttered beneath my fingers, a failing drum. And I was a healer before I was anything.

I slid my arms under him, careful not to jostle the scroll. He was heavy—hot and dense with fever—and he groaned, the sound rough and low. His head lolled against my shoulder, stubble scraping my cheek. His scent was copper and ash and something underneath that was just him. I pulled him into the hollow of my tree, a chamber carved by generations of my kin, lined with moss and small light-giving fungi that responded to my presence, blooming brighter when I whispered for them. The door in the bark sealed at a thought, muffling the forest.

“Stay with me,” I whispered as I eased him onto the bed of woven grasses. He shuddered. His hands didn’t release the scroll. I took a steadying breath and brought water from the basin to the wound with a tilt of my fingers; it rose obediently, caught in the thread of my will, and washed the blood away in careful rivulets. When the flow touched the iron, it hissed faintly, and he flinched in sleep, forearms bulging as he kept the scroll close to his chest.

“Stubborn,” I said, despite the knot of worry lodged in my throat.

I unbuckled the straps of his chest piece, fingers brushing the hard slab of his pectoral beneath sweat and leather. Heat rolled off him. I peeled the material aside, exposing skin mapped in old fights: keloids crossing over his right shoulder, a long, pale streak curving over his ribs. The fresh wound was angry, reddened at the edges. I pressed clean cloth to it, and he gasped, trying to turn away. I placed my hand to his sternum, firm. His heart hammered under my palm—fast, unsteady.

“It’s going to sting.” I poured the tincture. He arched, breath punching out of him, his throat flexing as a groan tore free. The sound went through me, low and unwilling.

“Easy,” I soothed, leaning closer, pinning the cloth in place with one hand while damping his thrashing with my body. His skin was hot against my belly and hips through my thin dress. His forearm brushed the underside of my breast when he jerked, and a shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with magic. I ignored it, breath steady. The scroll was a cold cylinder pressed between us, iron’s wrongness spreading in tiny needles through the fabric.

“You can’t keep holding this,” I whispered near his ear. The shell of it was scarred, a notch taken out where something had grazed him hard. I brought my lips close, desperate to reach whatever part of him could still hear. “Let me protect it. Let me protect you.”

His jaw clenched. The cords in his neck stood out. His lips moved without sound, the barest shape of a word. No.

Frustration and a wild streak of admiration tangled in my chest. I slid lower, straddling his thighs to pin him, careful not to put weight on the wound. I took his wrist in both hands, thumbs stroking over the tendons, feeling the strength there. “Then trust me,” I breathed, coaxing, my voice low and even. “Just enough to loosen your grip.”

His fingers flexed. The hum of the scroll pulsed, answering my touch with a flare that made my skin pebble. I guided his hand to his chest, easing the cylinder so it rested against him, not crushing the injury. I wrapped fabric around it, binding it to him, separating iron from flesh. He sighed, the sound ragged, and his grip slackened. A tiny win.

I cleaned the blood from his side, each pass slow and careful. His abdomen clenched under my hand, muscles tightening and release rippling beneath my fingertips. My own breathing went shallow, my focus narrowed to touch and response, the fragile thread of his breath. I mixed salve and spread it with two fingers along the edges of the cut. He hissed through his teeth, and I soothed him with the broad of my palm over his heart, the steady rub of skin to skin. His nipple grazed my thumb; it peaked. His chest rose against my hand, unsteady.

“I’ve got you,” I murmured into the space between us.

He exhaled a wordless sound, tension loosening. A sheen of sweat beaded at his temple. I leaned in and licked it away without thinking, tasting salt and heat. My lips hovered at his hairline. He smelled like thunder.

The grove’s hum pressed at the edges of my senses, wary and restless. The iron would poison everything if I let it. I worked quickly, wrapping bandages snug, knotting them tight. Beneath my hands his heartbeat evened, still fast but less erratic. He turned his head, and his mouth brushed my wrist. Heat flared low in my belly. I didn’t pull away.

When it was done, I sat back on my heels and finally let myself look. His face, now that the strain eased, was younger than I first thought. Strong nose, a mouth that looked harsh in sleep but would be beautiful softened. Brown stubble shadowing his jaw and a faint scar cutting through his left eyebrow, a pale line that made his gaze look more dangerous even with his eyes closed.

The scroll hummed through the bandage like a heartbeat inside a heartbeat. It didn’t belong here. He didn’t, either. Ancient law rose up in my mind like a wall.

And yet. My hands still tingled from touching him. My magic still pressed uselessly at the shield around his mind, refusing to breach what it wasn’t invited to. Trained. Not a brute, then. Someone who had learned to lock away what others could take.

I placed my palm flat over the scroll, feeling the thrum and the faint vibration of his breath beneath it. “Who are you?” I whispered to a man who couldn’t answer and to an object that wouldn’t.

Outside, the night deepened, and the grove held its breath with me.

I guided a glow-mote down to hover over his face and slid my fingers into his hair. It was coarse at the ends and soft near the scalp, damp from fever. The cut on his shoulder needed sealing, but if I didn’t lower his temperature, the wound would fight me. I let my magic pool in my fingertips and pressed my palm to his temple, seeking the rhythms beneath skin and bone the way I always did, the familiar meeting of breath and thought.

I met a wall. Not a crude barrier, but a weave—threads crossing and anchoring, a lattice tempered with intention. At my touch, it flexed and held, repelling me without harm. My breath caught. No villager did this. No raider passing through the wilds. This was taught.

“Who trained you?” I whispered, as if the barrier might answer. My thumb stroked the ridge of his brow, felt the faint rasp of the scar there. He flinched away from the probe but turned into the stroke, like a man starved for gentleness who didn’t know how to take it.

I changed tactics. If his mind was guarded, I would soothe the body. I drew coolness from the water bowl and pressed it into the cloth on his chest, into my palm on his forehead. He sighed, the sound caught between pain and relief. His lips parted, breath touching my wrist. I watched his throat move as he swallowed, the column of muscle and tendon working under stubble, and a very different kind of hunger stirred low inside me.

“I need to stitch you,” I told him, even though he was sleeping. “It has to be clean.”

I slid my hand under his neck and lifted, cradling his skull in my palm. His hair tickled my skin, and the weight of his head settled trust there, undeserved and heavy. With my other hand I traced the edges of the wound, checking for debris. He tensed. I smoothed my hand over his chest again, slow and steady. His nipple tightened under my palm. My breath shortened to match his.

The needle was bone, the thread spun from the silk of grove-spiders and steeped in antiseptic sap. I pressed the first stitch and felt his abdomen go rigid. His hand shot up, fingers closing around my wrist in a tight band. Not crushing. Protective, even in pain, as if his body couldn’t help but temper force. His eyes stayed closed, but his jaw flexed, canine teeth bared for an instant. I covered his hand with my free one and leaned down until my mouth was at his ear.

“Breathe with me,” I whispered. “In. Out.”

My breath fanned his skin. His grip on my wrist loosened and tightened again, not to restrain but to anchor. He followed the rhythm. I stitched. His body trembled under mine, subtle tremors that made the band of my dress brush my nipples against his forearm. The contact sent arrows of sensation through me. I bit my lip and kept working, keeping my hands steady as heat coiled low in my belly. The scent of him—male, exhausted, stubborn—filled my hollow. The magic of the grove pressed and recoiled and pressed again around the iron at his chest, and I held everything together with will and fingers.

When the last stitch was tied, I let the thread lie along his skin and blew cool breath over the row to ease the sting. He shuddered. His fingers flexed again on my wrist, then slid, warm and rough, to curl around my hand instead. Not prying. Holding.

I could feel his shield even then, humming faintly beneath the surface of him like the scroll did beneath the bandage. The two pulses weren’t in time. His was faster, erratic, human. The scroll’s was low and relentless. I wanted to get between them, to fit my will there and buffer the iron from whatever breath of power he carried. I laid my hand over the bound cylinder and pressed my other palm flat over his heart, letting my magic spill into the spaces blood traveled, the way a steady rain finds a thirsty root. It wasn’t a breach. It was comfort. A bridge.

“Stay,” I said, not to command but to coax. “Let me keep you.”

His mouth opened. “X…” The sound was more exhale than word, but it tightened something deep inside me. He didn’t know my name and still, my body reacted like he had shaped it perfectly on his tongue. My nipples tightened against the fabric of my dress. Heat pricked between my thighs. I leaned closer without meaning to, drawn by the way his breath warmed my cheek, the way his lips softened now that pain ebbed.

He smelled like smoke clinging to skin after a long night, like iron tang diluted by living heat. I hovered an inch above his mouth and hated myself for wanting to taste him more than I had wanted anything all day. I stole a different taste—the line of his jaw, the rough scrape against my lips. He made a broken sound, and his head tilted, seeking.

“Careful,” I breathed, because I was already not careful. My hand flattened harder over his heart, feeling the thud thud thud against my palm. The shield in his mind shifted, testing back against my awareness. Not a rejection. An acknowledgment. He knew I was there. He let me be there without opening.

“Envoy,” he murmured, shocking clarity splitting the fog in his voice. His lashes lifted. Brown eyes, dark and ringed in pain, locked onto mine. A warrior’s focus, scanning, appraising. His gaze flicked to my hands where they lay on his chest and the scroll, then back to my face. He saw everything and did not panic. His fingers tightened around mine once, not in fear but as if to say: hold.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered, and the admission landed in the small space between our mouths like a secret. “But I think you knew how to find me.”

“Training,” he said. The word was sandpaper and breath. “To get me past wards. To keep… the mind… clean.”

Clean. I swallowed. I felt the edge of a smile pull at my mouth, strange and dangerous in the middle of my fear. “Not a brute,” I said softly, and his gaze sharpened, as if the word hit something old. “You don’t belong to any simple story.”

“Neither do you,” he said, and his eyes dipped, not to my wings—hidden—but to my lips, still dangerously close to his. Heat flared between us, quick and honest. He was still fever-warm under my hands, a furnace in my bed. I had to draw back. I didn’t.

“Rest,” I whispered, giving into the impulse to press my mouth to his forehead instead of his lips. His skin was hot, damp, and he sighed into the kiss, as if some strand of him recognized the comfort of it. I lingered a heartbeat, then leaned away and tucked the blanket higher over his hips, careful of the bandages and the iron.

His eyes slid shut again, the tension at the corners smoothing. The shield in his mind resettled, a wary animal standing down by inches but not sleeping. He was trained. He was dangerous. He was in my care.

I sat beside him, one hand still on the scroll, one on his sternum, the steady rise and fall a reassurance to both of us. Outside, the grove shifted its weight around my hollow, displeased and vigilant. I ignored the law edging like a blade at the base of my skull and watched the man on my bed breathe, the shape of his mouth softening into something that made my chest ache.

His next breath changed. It deepened and then caught, like a blade sliding free. His eyes opened with a clarity that made my spine go rigid. Not fevered now. Present. Assessing. His fingers tightened around mine so quickly I didn’t have time to pull back, and his other hand went straight to his chest, to the iron-bound cylinder beneath the bandage.

The scroll thrummed, sensing him. The grove hissed in the rafters of my hollow.

He levered himself up on his elbows with a controlled jerk that made the fresh sutures strain. Pain flashed across his face, gone just as fast. He looked me over, fast and methodical—my hands, the room, the exit, the bowl and needle. His gaze stuck on the scroll for a breath. When he saw it still wrapped to him, untouched, something in his posture dropped a fraction. Not all the way. Enough that I could breathe.

“Don’t,” I said quietly, my palm firm over his sternum to keep him from tearing the stitches. “You’ll open it.”

He flicked his eyes to my hand. He could have broken my wrist. He didn’t. He let me hold him down. Heat spread where we touched, a slow diffusion that forgot we were strangers.

“You didn’t take it,” he said. His voice was rough, but not just from thirst. He weighed the words, offering them like a test.

“You were holding it like it was the only thing keeping you alive.” I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “And the grove doesn’t like it. Or you.”

“The grove is wise,” he said, the corner of his mouth just barely shifting—humor that cost him. “Water?”

I reached for the cup and brought it to his lips, bracing the back of his head with my palm. His mouth was hot against the rim. He drank, careful even in need, tongue flicking once against the edge. The sight hit me low, a coil tightening. I steadied him with my fingers in his hair. When he had enough, he turned his face away slightly, breath ghosting over my wrist.

“Where am I?” he asked, softer.

“My hollow,” I said. “In the central grove.”

He grimaced, eyes going distant for a heartbeat as if charting hazards. His attention snapped back to me. “You could have taken it.” His hand flattened over the cylinder, not stroking, just a protective spread of fingers. “You didn’t.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“It changes the map.” He studied my face. His gaze was not kind, but it wasn’t cruel either. It felt like being seen down to the bones of my intentions. “You’re a healer.”

I nodded. “And you’re trained.”

His eyes darkened, almost a flinch masked by the steadiness of his mouth. “Caleb,” he said. “If we’re trading truths.”

“Xena.” My name sounded different in his voice, like he was memorizing it.

He eased back against the bedding, breath controlled. The tightness around his eyes told me the effort it cost him. He shifted once, testing his limbs, then went still again, as if recognizing that stillness was the best defense for now. His thumb began to move against my palm, a small stroke. Not seduction. Grounding. It sent a clear line of sensation up my arm anyway.

“What is it?” I asked, glancing at the iron-bound scroll. “It hums.”

“Old magic. Not ours. Not yours. A lock and a bait.” He watched me take that in. “It’s sealed to me. If anyone else tries to open it, it releases a charge that feels like an attack from my people.”

“And then you’re blamed whether it’s true or not.” My stomach tightened. The grove’s unease vibrated in the walls like a low drum.

“Exactly.” He drew in a breath, winced, let it out slowly. “I’m an envoy. Officially. Unofficially…” He grimaced again, then laughed once, a dry sound. “Unpopular. I was sent to deliver a message that says our council wants peace. The seal is meant to frame you when you take it.”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“I can see that.” He searched my face again, and then something inside him eased another notch. “The message that matters isn’t the one bound to iron. There’s more.” His eyes flicked toward the bandage. “They hid the truth in the coffin.”

My fingers tightened around his. “And you’re carrying it to whom?”

“Your elders,” he said, low. “If I can get it there. The real message would stop what’s being set in motion. Names. Routes. Proof that the raids were staged to light a fuse. If I bring it to the wrong hands—on either side—it’s tinder.”

The grove seemed to listen. My pulse beat hard against my tongue. “You think I can get you to the right ones.”

“I think you already made a choice when you didn’t take this.” His thumb traced my lifeline once more, and my breath skipped. “And when you put your hand on my heart.”

Heat flushed my face. I didn’t move my palm. “Ancient law says I should have dragged you to the border and left you for the patrol.”

“You didn’t,” he said again, not a gloat. An acknowledgment. His gaze dipped to my mouth and rose, unhurried, like he was resisting the pull and letting me see him resist it. “I don’t want a war. There are those who do. They sent men behind me to make sure I failed. I lost them in your wilds. I didn’t expect to lose to a tree.”

“The grove doesn’t like iron,” I said, softer. I licked my lips, and his eyes tracked the movement. “It doesn’t like the scent of blood that isn’t ours. It’s protective.”

“Are you?” His voice dropped a fraction. “Protective?”

“I’m here,” I said. It was the truest answer I had. “I stitched you closed. I cooled your fever. I kept you from opening the wound and the scroll. That counts.”

“It does,” he said. The gratitude wasn’t loud, but it warmed his tone and smoothed something rough inside me. “If I’d woken without it, I would have killed to get it back.”

“I know,” I said, and his eyes narrowed—like he believed me.

We were too close. The space between our mouths was a breath again, charged with want and warning. His hand shifted from the scroll to the sheet, knuckles brushing my thigh through the fabric. The contact snapped through me like a line pulled taut. I didn’t move away. His pupils flared.

“Tell me,” I said, needing more than the heat, needing the thing that had set this all in motion. “Say it straight.”

He nodded once. Warrior’s simplicity. “I’m an envoy. The message I carry is meant to prevent a war.” He held my gaze steady so I knew he wasn’t dressing it up. “Someone in my council wants to use this grove as a spark. If I fail, they get their fire. If I succeed, we buy time to cut out the rot.” He swallowed, and the muscles of his throat moved under stubble. “I need you, Xena. Not to heal me. To help me put this in the right hands.”

Silence folded around us. The grove creaked, old wood shifting. My heart was too loud in my ears.

His fingers turned under mine, interlacing. The press of his skin was sure and warm. “If you hand me over now, you follow the law,” he said. “If you don’t… you become part of this.”

I breathed in, the scent of him filling me again. I shouldn’t have felt steadier. I did. I pressed my hand harder over his heart and felt the answering thud, fast but steadying beneath my palm. His eyes fell shut for a beat at the pressure, and his mouth parted, a sigh escaping that felt like trust.

I leaned in because I couldn’t not, and let my lips brush the edge of his jaw—one soft, dangerous touch. “You always were part of this,” I murmured against his skin. “You brought it to my door.”

He inhaled, slow and careful, the rasp of it brushing my cheek. His stubble scraped my lips when I drew back. The sound in my head of Lorian reciting the law was as clear as if he stood in my doorway. No sanctuary for human trespassers. No harbor for iron. Report. Expel. Cleanse.

Caleb’s hand tightened around mine, sensing the shift. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said quietly. “If you turn me over, I won’t fight you.”

The fact that he meant it hurt more than if he’d begged. I looked at the iron-bound cylinder strapped against the taut plane of his chest. The hum of it prickled along my palm. The grove’s roots pressed harder around my hollow, a warning I could taste at the back of my throat.

“My people will smell you in the air,” I said. “They will taste iron on the wind. If Lorian finds you here, he’ll call me traitor before you can explain anything.”

“Then don’t let him find me,” he said, not flippant, simply putting the next step in front of both of us. “You’ve hidden worse wounds.”

I swallowed. The law had been the bones of my life, even when its weight made it hard to lift my head. Breaking it wasn’t a single act. It was a series of small ones, each one cutting a thin line in my skin until I was bleeding by inches.

“Sit up,” I said, my voice too soft for the choices inside it. “Slowly.”

He obeyed, bracing on his forearms. The muscles of his abdomen tightened under the bandage. The sheet slipped to his waist. Heat flushed through me at the broad spread of his shoulders, the healed scars that marked him. His skin was hot, fever-break warmth, his scent thicker now that he was awake, sharper at the edges. His gaze searched my face like he was memorizing what I looked like as I changed my life.

I slid my hands under the blanket and found the buckles of the band around the scroll. The iron bit at my fingertips, a sting that made my pulse stutter. He caught my wrist, gentle but firm.

“It burns you,” he said.

“It knows I’m not you.” I breathed out through my nose and met his eyes. “We have to mask it. The iron will call them like blood calls flies.”

He released me and lifted his head, mouth close to my cheek as he tried not to strain the sutures. “Tell me what to do.”

“Trust me,” I said, and felt the truth of it in my chest like a door opening.

I moved to the chest by my bed and pulled out a soft wrap woven with ash-thorn and spider silk, a binding I used to muffle cursed blades when soldiers came back bleeding from border skirmishes. When I draped it over the iron, the hum dampened, the prickling sting easing. Caleb exhaled raggedly when my fingers skimmed the edge of his nipple as I slid the cloth beneath the band. His eyes darkened, a quick flare of heat that ran through me and settled low. I wrapped the cylinder tight and secured it, letting my knuckles brush the line of his sternum as if to soothe. He went still at the touch, and then eased, shoulders loosening.

“Better,” I breathed. “The grove will still know you’re here, but it won’t scream about it.”

“What about you?” His fingers, rough and warm, curved around my wrist. His thumb stroked my inner arm, as if drawing me back to myself. “If they come, can you live with it? The cost?”

I thought about the way Lorian’s mouth tightened when I bent the rules in the healing pavilion. I thought about the way other healers avoided my gaze when I refused to cut corners. The law had never reached back when I needed it. “I can live with this,” I said. “I don’t know if I can live with letting them use you to light a pyre.”

He nodded once, slow, like it was a vow. I slipped an arm around his back. His skin was hot and smooth under my forearm, his weight heavy and solid when he leaned into me. The curve of his mouth brushed my temple by accident as we maneuvered him to his feet. I shivered.

“Put your arm over my shoulders,” I said. “There’s a root-cellar beneath the far wall. It’ll be tight. It’s warded against scrying.”

He did as I asked, careful, his breath catching as the sutures pulled. I felt his abdomen tighten against my side, the play of muscle under my palm as I supported him. Every inch of him was immediate, unignorable. We moved together in small, slow steps. The floor creaked softly. The grove murmured, displeasure ebbing and flowing against my wards like a tide.

I pressed my free hand against the living wall and whispered the old word. The bark unspooled. Sweet damp air breathed out. He ducked his head. Our bodies slid flush in the narrow opening, chest to chest, hip to hip. His hand braced above me, caging us in for a heartbeat. We looked at each other, breath mingling, the world narrowed to the sound of it.

“Xena,” he said, low. My name was a touch. He didn’t move to kiss me. His restraint shook me more than if he had.

I guided him down the carved steps, his weight half on me, half on the roots. He swore under his breath when he jarred his side. I settled him onto the pallet in the small space, the earth cool beneath us, the faint glow of moss a soft light on his skin. He caught my wrist again before I could pull back. His finger slid along the inside of my wrist, sending sparks up my arm.

“You’re choosing,” he said.

“I am.” The edges of fear and certainty cut me clean. “Stay here. Don’t make a sound unless the world ends. If anyone comes, you’re a client who left after I stitched him. I burned the bandages. There’s no blood trail.”

“You thought of everything,” he said, a faint smile pulling at his mouth that made it hard to breathe. “Except you.”

“What about me?”

“You don’t hide well,” he said, eyes on my face, on the small tremor in my lip I hadn’t been aware of. He lifted his hand, and his knuckles skimmed my jaw in a touch so careful I felt it through muscle and bone. “Your heart is loud.”

I caught his hand and pressed a kiss to the heel of his palm, a quick, desperate seal on a choice. His breath shuddered. The sound crawled over my skin. I placed his hand against his chest, over the wrapped iron and the steady beat underneath. “Then keep it quiet for me,” I whispered.

“Go,” he said. Not an order. A shared understanding.

I closed the root door. The hollow folded around him. When the wall smoothed over, I pressed my forehead to it and let myself feel the shake in my knees for one full breath. Then I straightened, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and began to strip the room of any sign that a man had bled and breathed here. I scattered crushed pine and feverfew to mute his scent, burned a pinch of sage and salt to irritate the grove into a different story. I set fresh willow bark on the table, arranged my needles in a neat row. If Lorian came—and he would—the room would tell him only what I chose.

I was not safe. He was not safe. The law, for once, could knock and wait.