I exhaled slowly, aware of the weight in my body and the warmth still lingering where she had held me.
I had not misjudged the enemy.
I had misjudged how much I would care if I lost her.
And that was far more dangerous.
19
ARTEMIS
Like the cabin in Iceland, the cottage Caliban acquired for us looked like something straight off the pages of a storybook.
Stone walls softened by ivy, and windows glowed with warm light. A narrow garden sloped toward a view that opened into rolling green and gray, the city lights of Edinburgh flickering in the distance. The clouds hung low, drifting lazily over the sky.
I stood there for a moment too long, taking it in, because my brain needed to catalog it before it could move on. This was real. Not a fantasy. Not a book jacket. A place where we were actually standing. This was happening to me. God, how lucky was I?
Arthur unlocked the door and held it open for me. His posture was steady and his expression calm, but something was off. I’d noticed it back in the Uber. His shoulders were just slightly too rigid, his movements extra careful. He’d said he was only mildly injured, but I wasn’t convinced.
The moment we crossed the threshold, my internal switch flipped.
“You need to sit down,” I said, already setting my bag on the small wooden table by the door. “No. Lie down. Couch or bed. Preferably bed.”
“I’m fine,” he said automatically.
“I wasn’t asking.”
He sighed, then nodded and disappeared down the narrow hallway without argument. That should not have made my heart flip, but it did.
I followed him, dropping the bag at the foot of the bed and unzipping it. Caliban had packed it like a man who had done this too many times. There were clean bandages, herbal salves, and tonics in bottles labeled in careful script. The way it was organized scratched my brain just right.
“Shirt off, please,” I said briskly, because if I stopped moving I would think too hard about what I was about to do.
He complied without comment, sitting on the edge of the bed and removing it with deliberate care. My focus narrowed instantly, the way it always did when something mattered. This was not Arthur the man. This was Arthur the patient.
The damage was worse than he had let on.
Bruising darkened his ribs, spreading like spilled ink beneath his skin. There were shallow cuts along his back and one deeper one near his shoulder that was already beginning to knit itself together. Still, it wasn’t nothing.
My hands hovered for half a second before I caught myself.
“Tell me where it hurts,” I said. “And don’t say nowhere.”
He smiled faintly. “Here,” he said, tapping his ribs. “And my back. The leg is improving.”
I nodded, filing it away, already uncorking one of the salves labeledTrauma Resin No. 4. For Scale, Skin, and Muscle. I told myself the heat in my face was from concentrating. That was reasonable, since this required focus.
I cleaned the cuts first, trying my best to be both gentle and thorough as I watched his reactions carefully. The muscles in his jaw jumped.
“That one?” I asked, pointing to a particularly gruesome cut on his side.
“Yes,” he said. “But it’s manageable.”
“That’s not the same as being okay,” I muttered, applying the salve with slow, careful pressure. His skin was hot under my fingers.
I moved methodically, narrating my actions out loud because it helped me stay anchored. Cleaning. Dressing. Securing bandages. My brain locked into pattern and purpose, and the part of me that wanted to spiral about proximity and skin got shoved firmly into a box at the back of my mind.
My hand shook, but I didn’t notice it until Arthur caught it.
