When I succeeded in turning him over, I bit back a gasp, and my hand flew to my mouth when I revealed the caved-in side of his face. The right side of his face was little more than mush as no bones remained intact. With no bones to support it, his skin slid to the side in a way that made my stomach roll.
The left side of his face wasn’t much better. Blood soaked the front of his shirt, caked his pants, and stained the snow. In the center of his chest was a wide-open hole. Because the bleeding had stopped, I could see his heart. I didn’t think it was pumping anymore, and then it gave a lumbering beat before going still again.
With the amount of blood on him and in the snow, I didn’t think he had much left inside him. My hand tightened on his shoulder as I willed him to be okay. When a shadow fell over me, I tipped my head back to find Raphael standing over me.
I lowered my hand from my lips and swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth before speaking. “Can you heal him?”
“No,” Raphael said. “I cannot interfere with these things. He must heal himself.”
I opened my mouth to scream at him that Wrath wasn’t dying, but he was suffering when he didn’t have to, but I bit back the words. Raphael wouldn’t help, but judging by the sadness in his eyes, it wasn’t the decision he would have made.
He wouldn’t interfere in this because that was the way of his world and mine. He saved River once, but he’d made it repeatedly clear he would never intervene again. No matter how much I wanted to beg him to make Wrath better, I couldn’t blame him for his decision; he was an angel. They had their ways, and we demons had our ways too.
“I’ll help you carry him inside,” Hawk said as he knelt at Wrath’s other side.
“So will I,” Lix said as he trudged through the snow and stopped beside Zorn.
Relief filled me when I spotted the skellein. Part of his chest was still concave, and some of his bones bent at wrong angles, but he was healing fast.
“I’ll help too,” Aisling said.
“Thank you,” I whispered because I couldn’t speak any louder.
They’d accepted him here because he was my Chosen. However, they’d all remained standoffish around him. No matter if they trusted me, he was the enemy. After what he’d done today, and the sacrifices he made, I didn’t think they would see him like that anymore.
I released him before rising to grasp Wrath’s shoulder while Hawk lifted the other one. Lix and Aisling got his feet. I suppressed a wince when something inside his body grated together as he shifted.
When we moved him a couple of steps forward, and his body moved awkwardly, I realized his spine was broken. I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath as the conflicting urges to beat something to death or to sit down and weep hit me.
Hewouldsurvive this; it would take a while for him to recover, but hewouldsurvive. Unable to look at Wrath’s face anymore, my attention shifted to where Corson knelt in the snow beside Shax.
Corson’s shoulders hunched up to his ears and his head bent forward. Whatever dim hope I had for saving Shax was doused by Corson’s position.
I didn’t bother to look at Raphael. I bit my tongue to keep from begging him to bring Shax back to us, but I wouldn’t ask him to compromise himself. He would never ask it of me. And it wasn’t fair of me to make him say no.
Unable to stop them, a couple of tears slid free and froze on my cheeks. After everything I’d been through for nine hundred years, I should be used to losing friends and family; I wasn’t. I could already feel the gaping hole of Shax’s loss as I blinked away more tears.
Now was not the time to grieve him. There would be plenty of time to do that once I was alone and Wrath was safely inside. Until then, just like always, there were things to do.
“Let’s go,” I murmured.
The others tore their attention away from Corson and Shax. I ignored the tears in their eyes and on their faces, and they ignored mine. I turned away as Corson, Magnus, Fiora, and Caim lifted Shax from the snow.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Bale
“How is he?”Corson asked.
I looked up to find him standing in the doorway of the room where we had settled Wrath. It wasn’t the room we’d been sharing; we’d opted instead for one of the rooms with a fireplace and a large tub. The bed was larger than in most of the other rooms, and I suspected this room was once special to humans. The fire crackling in the hearth provided us with plenty of heat, and Hawk brought in a supply of fresh wood this morning.
“Better than yesterday,” I said.
“That’s good,” Corson said as he entered the room.
“How’s the arm?”
He held up what remained of his right arm; beneath his long-sleeved shirt, there was little visible of his healing wound. However, judging by the amount of arm inside his sleeve, there was more of it today than yesterday.
