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This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. When we prepared to fight d’Ambray, we always assumed we’d be together. We would be a team. I hadn’t realized how much stronger that belief had made me and how much I had leaned on it until he was gone. Now I felt like my crutch had been jerked out from under me. Well, fate had once again confirmed that when you assume, you make an ass of you and me.
I leaned back and rested my head on the chair’s back. It’d been twenty-four hours since I slept. My side hurt. My left arm was going numb. Breaking Hugh’s ward had cost me. My ribs hurt.
So tired . . .
The Keep would hold against anything Hugh would muster. Of course, it would hold. Even if Hugh had brought every vampire in the People’s stable, it would hold.
I needed to drag myself up and go down to the third floor to see if Doolittle had an update. Just another minute to rest and I would get up . . .
• • •
THE PLAIN ROLLED out before me, far into the distance. It looked like some magical giant had cut the world in half: the bottom was a vast field, the blades of dried grass frosted white with snow, and above it, endless, painted with the pink and orange of sunrise, the sky soared. A colossal tower rose from the grass, silhouetted against the sky, impossibly tall.
The wind stirred my hair. It smelled of wheat.
The clouds churned above the tower.
Anxiety drowned me. I gritted my teeth.
A man strode toward me through the grass. He wore black pants and a fisherman’s sweater of undyed gray wool. Ice crunched under his shoes. Magic shrouded his face. It emanated from him, controlled, but too powerful to be hidden, folded around him the way a condor might fold his wings when not in flight.
A voice rolled through the field, lifting the dead grass. “Child . . .”
I jerked upright.
The door of the room swung open and Doolittle rolled in. He looked the way he usually looked, a black man in his midfifties, his hair touched by gray, his eyes intelligent and kind.
“I told Jim not to bother you.”
“First, it’s not a bother, it’s my job. And with you, young lady, it’s also a challenge. Every time you return to the Keep I wonder what new and inventive way you’ve found to injure yourself.” Doolittle looked at me. “Unless you’re implying that my chair is somehow preventing me from doing my work. In that case, I can . . .”
“No, it’s not what I meant. I just thought stairs would be inconvenient.”
“That’s why I have interns. They carried me up here. I thought of commissioning a palanquin. Something understated.”
“With silk and crimson velvet?”
“And golden tassels.” Doolittle rolled forward. “Then I could be transported in a manner appropriate to my vast experience and wisdom. Off with the shirt.”
Arguing with Doolittle was like trying to block the tide from coming in. I pulled off the sweater the witches had given me. Ow. Ow. “It was the guards, wasn’t it?”
“In all fairness, they let you sleep for two hours before they became concerned and called for help.”
I stripped down to my sports bra.
Doolittle sighed.
I looked down. My entire left side had gone blue and purple. “I think I have a cracked rib.”
He examined my side, whispering under his breath. “I think you have three.”
Ow.
I couldn’t avoid the question any longer. “How are they?”
“Derek and Desandra will live,” Doolittle said. “They lost their teeth, nails, and hair and had to have several blood transfusions, but now the poison is out of their bodies. They’re weak, but that’s nothing a few good meals and some rest won’t fix.”
“Ascanio?”
“He’s eating soup downstairs.”
I blinked. “You’re kidding me.”
“No. And trust me, right now he has much bigger problems. His alpha and his mother are both in the Keep, so he’s getting chewed out in stereo. It’s quite frightening. No more questions until I’m done.”
Doolittle put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. The door swung open and Agatha, one of Curran’s and my guards, stuck her head into the room.
“Wheel my cart in, please. I need water, and the Consort needs a fresh change of clothes.”
• • •
I PULLED ON my T-shirt. Agatha and I had a mild argument over Evdokia’s sweater. I wanted to put it back on and she pointed out that it was filthy and smelled of unnatural and very noxious things. We reached a compromise. She would have it washed and dried to get the wendigo guts off it and then I would put it back on. The witches told me to wear it. I saw no reason not to. My side still hurt, but the pain had subsided to a dull ache. I sat next to Doolittle. Agatha had brought us some iced tea and honey. The guards had made the tea, so for once I was safe from falling asleep immediately after medical treatment. Doolittle had a bad habit of lacing his tea with sedatives. According to him, it saved him from arguing with hard cases about taking their prescribed rest.
We sipped our tea. This was the calm before the storm, and I welcomed it. It was selfish, but there was something about Doolittle’s presence that steadied me.
“Who healed Ascanio?” Doolittle asked quietly.
“Hugh d’Ambray.”
“The same man who healed me when my neck was broken?”
“Yes.” The injury had left Doolittle’s legs paralyzed, but without Hugh he would’ve died. I never knew why Hugh did it. He asked me if I wanted Doolittle to live, I said yes, and he pulled Doolittle back from the brink of death.
Doolittle frowned and drank his tea. “Ascanio is seven pounds lighter than his last weigh-in, which was less than a week ago. Hugh didn’t just mend bones. He forced Ascanio’s body to absorb the bone matrix and build entirely new tissue.”
“Could you do that?”
“Yes, but it would take me hours. Possibly days. How long did you say he worked on him?”
“Maybe six or seven minutes.”
Doolittle’s face turned serious. “Let me show you something.”
He looked down. I looked down too, at his feet in white socks.
Doolittle made fists with his toes. I blinked to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. No, he was making fists with his toes.
“You’re getting better.” The relief washed over me. I was drowning in grief and I had no defenses against it.
“It appears to be so. It is possible that in a few years I may even walk again.”
