Page 84 of Raven’s Fight

I cross to her. Blood has gone down her sleeve and dried tacky at the cuff. The cut is longer than I'd like but clean, a straight edge with no tearing, which means it will close properly once it's bound right. The sleeve tourniquet is doing its immediate job. She tied it correctly, which means she had the presence of mind to bind her own arm in the middle of a fight. I'm not surprised. I have always known her composure was better than her theatrics suggested.

I get the kit out and work fast. Three-layer compression, from Balor's first session on this — the one meant for a forearm that has to keep moving without losing circulation. Firm. Even. I check it after.

"Close your hand."

She does. The grip is strong. The arm works.

"Twenty minutes?"

"About. The fire drake found me first, when I came back from the north grounds. Azalea saw it from the north walk and put the flare up before I lost sight of her — I told her to run and she ran." She says it evenly, the voice she uses when she's reporting to herself as much as to me. "The green dragon came in around ten minutes. Saw I was already busy and decided that was an opportunity. He was faster than the fire drake and less experienced. I kept the fire drake between us as long as I could."

"You did well."

She looks at me steadily. That's the look she uses when she's received something she intends to keep rather than answer. "I used the vial."

"On which one?"

"The fire drake. Fifteen minutes in, when he got close enough. It didn't stop him — different body — but it wrecked his heat for long enough that I could move and keep the door open." A pause. "I was very responsible with it."

"I know you were." I tie the last knot. "That will hold. Don't ask the arm for anything at full extension."

"Understood."

We don't discuss the landing. We don't discuss what she saw, or what I did, or what four seconds cost. We step over the fire drake on the upper landing with the deliberate efficiency of two people who have a next thing and are going to do it.

In the corridor outside, Bella says, "You need to go back."

"Yes."

"Two of them at the pinch."

"Yes."

"They've had—" she works it out, quick, her father's arithmetic sitting under it "—eight minutes since the flare. They know it worked. They know you came south. They'll be moving."

"They'll assume I came through the main corridors and I'm coming back the same way. They'll have set up for a straight approach."

"So you go crooked."

"So I go crooked."

She nods once. "I'll find Azalea. We'll stay together and stay out of the eastern grounds until you send the all-clear through the bond." She looks at me sideways. "Your shoulder."

"Sealed. Working."

"Good." She looks at me a moment — not the long look, the short one that does the same work. "Go. We're fine."

I look at her one more time. The bound arm. The steady face. Her father's discipline sitting in her eyes over the top of everything she's carrying out of that stairwell. She is fine. She has been fine for twenty minutes in a situation most people would not have been fine in for five. The composure she wears for performance is the same composure she reaches for in a crisis, and I have never been more grateful for that in her than I am right now.

I squeeze her good hand.

I go.

The shoulder burns. There are two fire drakes at the pinch who have had eight minutes to think. The Purge has nearly three days left to run, and Samara is still somewhere on these grounds.

I go back to work.

Chapter 29