“It missed my subclavian,” he explained, indicating along the ridge of his own shoulder.
My fingers twitched over the dagger handle. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have a major artery right here, so try to avoid nicking it.”
I swallowed, my belly suddenly queasy. “What will happen if I do?”
He gave a dark laugh. “I’ll only be around a few minutes to tell you.”
My knuckles flared white. I stared at the knife in my hand, then at the shaft. “I don’t think this is a good idea. Let’s figure out something else.”
“There’s nothing else,” he said. “I can’t lift this arm without feeling the arrowhead slice deeper in my shoulder. I’m walkingaround with a knife in my back. I might sever the artery myself if I wait for a physician. And I don’t trust Rivean doctors.”
My breath bounced off his neck in quiet, ragged waves. The view of the shaft jutting from his shoulder curled my empty stomach into a tangled patch of thorns and vines, and I fought the sudden wave of light-headedness that washed through me. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Kye reached along the compact dirt behind him, gently grasping my knee. He squeezed. “You can. I trust you.”
He couldn’t see me from where I sat, his head angled down and to the side. He didn’t catch the way I stilled at his words. Sparks danced along my skin where his warm palm curved around my kneecap, his dark lashes flickering as he studied the rocky corner he faced, waiting for my response.
I shook hair from my eyes, swallowing the small dregs of my fear. Each one lodged, talons in my gut. The pirate alcohol burned my fingertips as I sprinkled it on, igniting the small cuts left under my nails from scratching the wooden deck ofDarkness’s Hourglassfor purchase after I'd turned it over. Kye sucked in a hiss as I gently grasped the arrow.
“Ready?” I asked, my gaze locked onto the shaft, though I wasn't sure which of us I was asking. Buried deep into his muscle, I couldn’t see the arrowhead at all.
“Just do it."
I loosed a short burst of air as a bubble of nerves rushed from my belly. One hand pulling his skin taut, I leaned in. Kye clamped a piece of driftwood between his jaws.
Cautiously, I pried his wound open with the tip of the dagger, driving it in against the arrowhead.
Blood drained.
Kye made no noise, though his body grew rigid. A sudden heat rolled off him, desperate and fierce. I could have prodded deeper until I found the tip of the arrow, but I pressed my hand againsthis back instead, calling to the water in his body to tell me where to find it.
Had he been made entirely of liquid, I could’ve coaxed the arrow out of him by pulling water. But his flesh was too swollen, his muscles too tight. I wiggled the arrow against the flow of his blood, just barely, and heard his breath catch.
Stuck fast. I’d have to pull it out by hand.
The seconds ticked, achingly slow. Nervous sweat surfaced across my brow. I tugged, keeping the shaft in a straight line. Each stitch of his muscle and sinew vibrated under my fingertips. Inside his body, fluid and blood popped and pumped.
The sounds of the world faded. The wind, the tide, the soft, arrhythmic panting from the man before me. Tickles from hair stroking my cheeks faded, the rocky floor less sharp under my shins. The salt hovering in the seaside air, the iron-forged scent of blood. I lost it all as I closed my eyes, opening to the world under my hands, mapping out the fluid in his muscles as Selena had once taught me to do with pathways in a palace.
Little by little, I worked it free.
I suppose it’d been a stroke of luck, an arrow in his back. I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to close my eyes and feel my way through his body had he been able to watch me. He ceased all movement as I worked, holding his breath until a small pop pulsed through my fingertips, and I glanced down to see the progress I’d made.
Then I saw them—the barbs of the arrow. Another smooth tug and they were free. The entire thing came out, the arrowhead unbroken, its tip still sharp. A final surge of blood streamed out of his shoulder, thinning to a slow dribble. His back loosened as it left him, disbelief tugging my mouth agape.
But it wasn’t over yet.
“Ready?” I breathed the word a second time.
Kye’s hands flexed into fists. I heard him swallow, knowing what came next. “Just do it,” he ground out, voice muffled through the wood clenched between his jaws.
I poured the liquor over the hole in his skin. It hissed and foamed as it kissed his blood.
Kye seethed into the driftwood, the noise somewhere between a growl and a grunt, then leaned forward, cradling his forehead with a shaking hand. He released a trembling gasp, all the tension in his body escaped with the arrow.
I watched the watery crimson trickle down his back, and something shifted in my chest. A lump thickened in the back of my throat as I pressed a swatch of clean fabric into his shoulder. One I couldn’t quite swallow. Kye seemed to fold in on himself with relief, but waves of nausea crashed through my body from something entirely different.
