Untouchable by Linda Winstead Jones Page B

roiling off of him as if it were a wave of the ocean she had left behind to come to this cursed land. “No.”
    “But if I was not entirely myself...”
    “No,” she said again, her voice more forceful than before. “It was Vyrn and Tari. They drugged us, murdered the princess, and set the scene to make it look as if we did the killing.”
    He shook his head. “Why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Trystan had departed and Alixandyr had emerged sometime before they’d stopped to rest the horse. Though there had been no physical signs of the change that she could see, since his eyes were not in her range of view, Sanura had felt the shift within him and experienced a wave of relief. Alixandyr remained the stronger of the two, though she imagined Trystan would return—and probably sooner than she’d like.
    In the early days she had been so sure that the two men within the one body were one and the same, but since neither of them accepted that, they continued to act separately. More and more she thought of them as separate beings. One of them frightened her; the other she liked very much. In essence, they truly were two men, not one.
    Alixandyr looked down at the blue stain on his hands. He’d tried to wipe the paint away, brushing his palms briskly against his trousers. He’d attempted to wash his hands in the stream where the horse drank. Neither effort removed much of the stain. Sanura did not yet have the heart to tell him that his face was also marked. She should be horrified that he had touched her so when it was not his right, but she could still feel the scrape of his cheek against hers and she liked that memory of connection, even if it had been his darker side which dared to be so bold.
    “Can this damnable blue paint not be scrubbed away?” he asked tersely, standing and wiping his wet hands against his trousers. “Until we settle on a plan of action, we’d best keep a low profile. In this part of the world, you are anything but low profile. I suppose I could wear gloves, but you are not so easily disguised.”
    “With time and enough vigorous washing, the blue can be removed,” Sanura explained. “The process takes several days without the oils made specifically for that purpose.”
    “We don’t have days,” he snapped. “Where might we obtain this oil?”
    “In my tent,” she said softly. “A large vial of the oil is kept in a box along with the paint and brushes necessary for the application and repair of my blue. A few drops will be enough to see the job done.”
    He stopped scrubbing and looked her in the eye. She was relieved to see that his eyes were still a nice light shade of green. “So our choice is to remain blue or else to return to a camp where everyone wants to execute us for a murder we did not commit, so that we might fetch your box.”
    “Yes.” She did not tell him she wanted that special box for other reasons: that it was special, that it reminded her of home and of being cared for and appreciated. She did not tell him that she wanted the container, which was a work of art, because it was all she had left of who she’d once been.
    “I could wear gloves,” he said again, “but you...”
    She reached up and touched his face, her fingertips very lightly raking along the section of his cheek which was more brightly blue than his hands, and then across his nose. Why did touching this man’s nose, such an ordinary and unimportant body part, feel so intimate? She allowed her fingers to linger for a moment. “Gloves will not cover this,” she explained as her hand fell away.
    “I don’t remember,” he said softly, not bothering to question her assertion. Did that easy acceptance mean he trusted her? She knew he was not a man who gave his trust easily or often.
    “I know.”
    “This darkness, this part of myself I can’t control, what else might I have done?” There was such frustration in his voice. “I could’ve murdered the princess...”
    “You did not,” she