“Stop,” Kade interrupted, grabbing Florian’s hand where it pressed to his blood-soaked chest. “Florian, they were monsters. Maybe they were shifters once, but they were Blighted. We could both see that. Whatever the Arrow did to... to that woman, it obviously wasn’t that simple, or they wouldn’t have been the way they were. They aren’t shifters any more. They’re Blight monsters.”
“I killed her,” Florian whispered, shaking his head. “She looked right at me. She wasscared.”
“You had to,” Kade said. “They would have killed us first if you hadn’t.”
Distantly, Florian knew he was right, but it didn’t make him feel any less guilty. Maybe he could have done something differently, saved them somehow... Wasn’t that what he was supposed to be doing? Saving everyone?
The moment his mind drifted back to it, he felt acutely aware of the Arrow in his free hand. He held it up to look, hands still trembling. It was pristine, no hint of the blood that coated his arm anywhere on it. It had the same tiny inscription near the arrowhead—
No, it wasn’t the same. He frowned, bringing it closer to his face.
I pierce the heart of summer, it read. The first one had said something else, hadn’t it?
“Sacrifice,” Florian whispered, remembering the first Arrow.I pierce the heart of sacrifice. The words had stuck bitterly when he first read them, after his father had...
“What?” Kade asked. Nervously, Florian looked up at him again. He didn’t know what it meant, if it meant anything at all. Kade certainly wouldn’t know either.
“Nothing,” Florian said quickly. “I... I read it wrong. It sayssummer.”
For a moment Kade was silent, looking down at him with an unreadable expression only made more inscrutable from the blood that coated his face. Florian looked away.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. He felt Kade take a deep breath, sighing.
“I think so,” he answered, finally releasing Florian from his arms and stumbling to his feet. “Looks worse than it is. Can you walk?”
Florian stumbled to his feet. He was shivering all over—partly from the cold, and partly from whatever painful mix of emotions still rattled around in his chest. “Yeah, I... I think so.”
Kade took a few cautious steps before pressing a hand to his side with a groan. “That hurts. Fuck, it’s going to be a long walk.”
“Let me help,” Florian said, scrambling toward him. With his free hand, he pulled up the hem of Kade’s shirt, wincing as he revealed the worst wound. Four deep gashes snaked down from the bottom of his ribs to his hip bone, steadily leaking blood.
“Heal,” Florian murmured, lightly touching the skin with his fingers and letting magic trickle from his words. But he felt it swell from the Arrow in his other hand, pouring out of him; and before his eyes, the wound began to knit together. It took only seconds for the open gashes to vanish, leaving raised scabs where they had once been. His clothes were still soaked with blood, but the wound itself seemed to have fully closed.
“I think you got everything,” Kade said, frowning as he gingerly touched his throat and shoulder, where smaller scratches and punctures had littered his skin. “That’s... useful.”
“I think it’s the Arrow,” Florian confessed, looking down at it once more. “I don’t really understand how it works.”
For a moment he thought of his father, wishing desperately he could ask Jerah what he thought—if he knew how its magic worked with his own—if he knew about the different inscriptions—if he thought those creatures reallywereshifters.
“Can you walk?” he asked abruptly, looking up at Kade again. If he dwelled on any of it too long, he thought he might be sick again—or worse, lose another week of time. What was wrong with him?
“I think so,” Kade answered, but his first few steps away from Florian were wobbly and uncertain.
“Here,” Florian said, darting next to him. He pulled one of Kade’s arms around his shoulder, so the taller man could lean against him. It was slow going, but if he could focus on Kade, it was easier to ignore the guilt still gnawing against his stomach.
