Page 25 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

He took the step.

“No!” Her eyes flashed, and then the sand beneath him fell away, his vision crazily panning across the sky and the vista of flowers and bees and pollen as he stumbled and fell to the ground. His head landed hard, exploding barrel cactus flowers flashing across his vision, and the world went dark.

Chapter ten

Hurt

Mara stared down at Ethan, lying still on the ground. He was unconscious. She had not meant to hurt him, just to…

She was not sure what she had meant to do, actually. She just knew he had been there, right there, at the edge of the barely scabbed-over wound of her garden, and though her strength had been gone, some last surge of power had burst forth from her, sending him tumbling to the rocky ground.

In her panic, she had made the sand soft, begged it to fall away from him, but she had little control of rocks. Rock belonged to the fire fae, whose heat could melt it, reshape it. All she could do was wear it away, not tell it not to harm, to move, to protect…

She rushed to Ethan’s side.

There it was—a hard white chunk poking out of the sand. The visible piece was just six inches or so across, but that was the barest tip of the stone slab. And now it was marred with a small smear of blood.

Blood was not spilling fast from Ethan’s head, though, which was a small favor. She could not see if his chest was moving under his useless armor, but she could see a strong pulse in his throat. The sand obeyed her request to lift him higher, supporting him to the nape of his neck so that she could inspect his injury.

There was a scrape beneath his thick red-gold hair, rapidly swelling as it oozed blood, but the rock did not seem to have…dented him, at least. Not that she knew anything about medicine. Not that she knew how to save a life spilling itself onto the pavement…

The thought sent a sick wave of memory through her, followed by a hot rush of determination.

She had not been able to help Tristan, but she could help this man. Help him recover from the wound she had inflicted.

A wound she wouldn’t have had to inflict if he’d listened to her and just gone away, of course, but she could argue with him about that later. When he was crying out her name in bitter defeat because she’d won. It was inarguable now. She was conscious, and he was not. She was whole, and he was injured. She was clearly the victor.

She did not feel victorious.

And she could not just leave him there, either. “I still do not like you,” she grumbled as she shifted his head away from the rock.

His lack of answer was more irritating than anything he had ever said.

Her strength had not yet returned, unfortunately, so she could not easily fetch his cooler, but the cans of mead in his backpack were still cold. She was just tucking them under his head, cajoling the sand to hold them securely against the lump, when his eyelids fluttered open.

“Ow,” he said in a faint voice.

“You are awake,” Mara replied frostily. “Can you stand?”

“Maybe,” he said, his vowels long and stretched. He squinted up at her. “Stop moving so I can decide.”

“I am not moving. I am—”

The change in his expression alerted her, and she pushed his body away just in time for him to heave the contents of his stomach downhill. She held his shoulders as he vomited, to keep him from rolling onward into the foul, wet sand.

“Sorry,” he muttered, spitting. “What was I doing?”

“Standing,” Mara snipped, easing him onto his back again. His eyes were closed again, but his forehead was creased with thought, not the smooth dullness of unconsciousness.

“Ah.” He grinned weakly. “Not doing a very good job, am I?”

“You hit your head on a rock.” She folded a layer of sand over the wet patch of sick, tucking the smell away. Her strength was slowly returning, now that she wasn’t using it to repel Ethan’s invasion.

“That explains a lot.” He blinked one eye open. “Okay, now there’s only one of you. Though I think there might be two skies.”

“If there were, how would you be able to tell?” Mara looked away, down at her hands, which had landed on his armored chest. The canvas had torn in several places, revealing the plastic beneath.

“It’s a vibe,” he sighed. “A two-sky vibe. Kind of…fuzzy around the edges.” His chest heaved under her hands in another sigh. “Something feels nice.”