Chapter 27:

There was a light knock on the door, instantly killing the moment between us as he moved away to allow Devon back into the room. He held a steaming mug of what smelled like medicinal tea along with a vial of some kind of herb mix and a bag full of bandaging supplies. 

Xavier carefully helped me ease up into a sitting position, propping me up to where I could lean back against the headboard before Devon handed me the steaming mug. "Drink this. It should help with the fever, along with any nausea or dizziness, for tonight, and this is for tomorrow." He set the vial of the herb mixture on the dark wooden nightstand beside the bed before turning to Xavier. "Alright, now it's your turn. I'm already here, so I might as well take care of that shoulder now rather than waiting until later, so let's see it." 

Xavier rolled his eyes, but didn't fight him as I took a sip of the tea. It was quite bitter, but even just one sip had my head steadying out already, and I just watched in pure fascination as Xavier pulled his shirt over his head. Not even my condition could stop me from admiring the miles of tanned, rippling muscle. He walked forward towards the end of the bed, and my eyes started slowly wandering up his muscular back. I couldn't help but to let my eyes catch on those scars once more, but this time, with the lantern he had lit earlier highlighting the deep indentations cutting across the muscle, I could see them far more clearly. I couldn't help it once more as my mind caught on the fact that they looked so deliberate. Easily a dozen or more deep, parallel marks ran diagonally across the toned muscle of his back, never crossing, never even touching. With how deeply those marks had scarred the wounds that made them had to have been horrendous. Slowly, I allowed my gaze to move past them to the bandage covering his entire left shoulder, instantly feeling a little bad as I noticed that it was spotted with fresh blood. He had to have broken that wound back open when he carried me up here. 

Devon looked over the bandage as Xavier sat on the end of the bed by my feet, frustration written all over the healer's face as he took in the bloody bandage. "I thought I told you to take it easy on that wound." Devon chastised as he looked down at Xavier, who just raised an eyebrow at him. 

"It's not my fault that your version of easy and mine are two very different things. I was as easy as I could have been on it." Xavier answered, causing Devon to just shake his head at the stubborn warrior before going about the task of carefully peeling the bloody bandage off. 

The further Devon pulled the bandage back, the more I couldn't believe that he had actually carried me up here like that. The deep punctures and gashes from that amphithere's teeth looked horrible, and by the looks of the bruising, he was lucky it hadn't shattered his shoulder entirely. 

Devon slowly started moving his hand over Xavier's shoulder, gently prodding some of the deeper wounds that were still slowly leaking fresh blood before he actually started healing them a little further. It took a bit, but the bleeding stopped once more. The multiple wounds started closing a little tighter as the bruising turned from almost black to a mottled purple, but it was absolutely going to need a couple more sessions to fully heal. 

"Couldn't you get Dex to cover your classes for a couple of days? If you rip this open much more I won't be able to heal it fast enough to stave off permanent damage to the tendons that thing's teeth shredded through. I could write you a pass as well, but I doubt it would really help considering how pissed the General is at you right now." 

"I don't need you to tell me how fucked I am right now. Trust me. I'm well aware, but I was planning on asking Dex to cover at least tomorrow anyway." Xavier answered as Devon stood back for a moment, looking over his work before pulling out more bandages and covering his shoulder once more, before looking between the two of us. 

"Alright, do you need anything else before I go work on that sample?" He asked, but Xavier just shook his head. 

"I think that's all, thank you," Xavier answered him before getting up and letting Devon out of the room. 

I swallowed the last bit of the tea before setting the cup aside on the nightstand with a sigh of relief. I felt a hundred times better than even just a few minutes ago. My head had stopped spinning, I didn't feel nearly as feverish, and I had about a million questions. "How are you feeling?" Xavier asked as he came back over beside me, and I gave him a smile. 

"That tea helped a lot. I actually feel pretty good right now. Thank you for doing that. I really appreciate it, but with that said, I'm not the only one who needs to rest here. I didn't realize your shoulder was still that bad. You shouldn't have been carrying me like that." I told him, and he just raised an eyebrow at me. 

"It was either carry you up here or risk you breaking your neck on the stairs. Personally, I would much rather be slightly uncomfortable rather than even risking that, princess." He whispered, leaning into me slightly as he once more gently brushed his knuckles over my cheek before leaning over to press a soft kiss to my forehead, and moving away to head over towards his dresser. He pulled out a pair of bed pants before looking back over at me. "Would you be more comfortable changing into something else?" 

"As much as I would love to get out of this uniform, I highly doubt you have a sleep dress on hand, and if you do, then I probably don't want it." 

He chuckled at that, and I was stunned once more as those dimples made their appearance as he grinned at me. "No, I don't have a sleep dress in here, princess. I generally make it a point to not mess around with anyone in this academy. However, I do have several shirts that would be more of a dress on you than any type of shirt." 

I debated it for a moment, but honestly, it had to be more comfortable than this, so I took him up on it. "I would appreciate that." 

He nodded, looking down at the dresser drawer for a moment before pulling a black shirt out. "Are you able to change on your own, or do you need assistance?" He asked, but if I wasn't mistaken, there was a hint of a blush staining his cheeks as he looked down at the shirt in question. 

"I should be fine now, thank you, though," I told him, and he tossed the shirt to me before heading into the bathing chamber to change himself. 

I made quick work of shimmying out of my pants and carefully pulled my shirt off before settling his over me. He was right, his sleep shirt came down all the way past mid thigh on me, but the neckline was cut in a low V, showing off a good bit of my chest, and even though it was short-sleeved, they almost came down to my elbows. I very quickly stopped caring, though, considering it was far more comfortable than the uniform as I lay back down under the soft blanket. Even if it did bunch up around my thighs, it was thin and soft enough that it wouldn't bother me. 

I was, however, a little worried about the fact that I would be sleeping with Xavier while wearing said thin piece of clothing. At the same time, though, he's had so many opportunities to take advantage of me if he had wanted to, and he hasn't, not once. Sure, he might be an ass sometimes, but he's never once crossed that line, so I hoped that meant that he wouldn't now while I'm more vulnerable than I've ever been around him. 

It was only a couple of moments later before he walked back out of the bathing chamber, and I couldn't help but to just watch. He hadn't bothered to grab a shirt for himself, not that I was going to complain, and to be fair, I also didn't blame him for not wanting to put anything more over that shoulder. He threw his uniform pants into a small basket by the door, but I couldn't pull my gaze off him. I couldn't actually believe that all of that was destined to be mine. Hell, if how he's been acting lately had anything to say, it already was mine. 

Bane and Nova silently moved down below my feet to accommodate Xavier's large frame as he climbed into bed beside me. I instantly turned over onto my side to face him as his arm found its way under my pillow and around my shoulders. I couldn't help but to smile as I openly took his invitation, curling in close against his side. That warm, cinnamon, and rich, deep spiced scent enveloped me, and I couldn't help but to burrow in even closer as his hand slowly rubbed over my side. I moved to where my bad arm rested across his chest before laying my head right beside it. 

My fingers itched to explore the defined muscles of his sculpted chest, but I knew I wasn't in any condition to actually explore his body like I really wanted to at the moment. Instead, I tried to distract myself by thinking over all the questions I had for him, but one stood out far more than the rest at the moment. 

I took a breath as I decided that I might as well just ask. The worst he was going to do was tell me that he didn't want to talk about it or some form of that statement, so I just went for it. "What happened to your back?" I asked quietly as I looked up at him, watching his face as he took a deep breath. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and just when I thought he wasn't going to answer, he opened them once more as his gaze locked onto mine. 

"Do you remember what I told you about how I got here?" I nodded, instantly recalling how he had said his mother had sent him to one of the burnt outer cities of Celestia. "Because I was still only fifteen when they found me, I was sent into the foster care of one of the families in Lucia." That caught my attention. Everyone from Celestia knew the village of Lucia. It was the second largest outer city in Celestia, but it was known for its depravity. "The family I was sent to live with had a tendency for harsh punishments, and sold their girls out to the different brothels for money. They tried to sell me out, because they thought I was pretty for a boy. However, they quickly found out that wasn't a good idea, considering I not only nearly killed the person they had tried to sell me out to, but I found the youngest girl from the family and killed the man with her." He took another breath before shaking his head. "I tried to just take her and run, but you know how those types of places work. Everyone knows everyone in that city, and the second we escaped, someone found us. The girl was only maybe ten, and the husband ended up beating her to death in front of me. I'm not about to go into all the gory details. You saw the scars. Luckily for me, it was only a few days before my sixteenth birthday, and Bane came along. After Bane took his hand, their attitudes towards me changed very quickly, and he never laid another hand on me." 

That confession was the last thing I was expecting from someone like him. It honestly made me grateful that my foster family mostly just ignored me. I was honestly shocked. I had been expecting something more like it had happened in one of the war camps or something like that, but to know it was from just having to survive in an outer city, in a very similar situation to mine, struck far too close to home with me. 

"I'm sorry that you had to go through that," I whispered, leaning into him a little further. 

"I'm not looking for your apologies, princess. It's just something that happened. Something that changed who I was as a person, and personally, I would take it all over again, because even though I couldn't save that girl from death. She would have suffered a far worse fate if I hadn't stepped in that day. I hate to say it, but being there, being treated that way taught me a very valuable lesson. When I came from Carnavia, I was naive and far too ignorant for my own good. That was the first time I had ever seen anything like that happen, the first time I ever knew true pain, and it's something that I'll never forget. When I came here, I hadn't known the struggle to just simply eat or drink in a day, so it changed a lot for me. Hell, it's what made me grow up and see the world as the fucked up place it really is." I honestly didn't know what to say to that, because he wasn't wrong, but at the same time, it was such a bleak outlook on things that I wanted to say that he was wrong. 

"So that's why you're here, trying to find a cure for the corruption, right? To change things for the better?" 

"I want to find the cure, yes, but I can't promise that anything will change if I do. There will always be wrong in the world, there will always be corrupt rulers, and just because it may or may not fix one problem doesn't mean it will change everything. We don't know if the people who are left are too far gone for help, their minds are just as damaged by the corruption as their bodies are, and we don't know that it's reversible. Hell, at this rate, considering the number of Beastials attacking the border, too far gone to recognize their own people as their groups turn on each other, not even just the soldiers slaughtering them, I don't know if there will be people left worth saving, Ari. It's already been seven years since it fully engulfed the Beastial Kingdom, and it's already spreading into the others." 

"Don't say that," I whispered with a shudder as I leaned into him a little further. "You don't know that it's not reversible. What if it can be changed, but better yet, what if you're not the only one looking? You said it yourself before, some of them still have their minds. Some of them are like you, and it stands to reason that they're looking for the same thing you are, but they don't have your ranking in the Allied Military. Out of everyone, you're in the best position to be able to find it, Xavier." I told him, looking up to meet those bright eyes as he just looked down at me for a long moment, but then a slight smile tipped one corner of his full lips.