Page 66 of Once Broken Faith

“And that would be the answer, if he were like you. He’d be able to rebuild what he’s lost, and keep healing. He’s not you. He needs to recover on his own.”

I turned back to Tybalt. He was still breathing, but he seemed to be having trouble; his breath kept catching, and the pain in his expression was obvious. I reached out with one shaking, blood-smeared hand, smoothing the hair back from his face. He opened his eyes. Not all the way, but enough that I could see him looking at me. I forced myself to smile.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“’Tis not as deep as a well or as wide as a church door, but it will do,” he whispered, voice rasping.

I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t do that. Don’t quote Shakespeare at me when you think you’re going to die.”

“He was a lovely man. You would have liked him.” Tybalt winced, but didn’t close his eyes. “Little fish, what did you do?”

I would normally have objected to him using that name for me twice in quick succession, but he hadn’t used it the first time: the memories stored in his blood had done that. It was a name born of aggravation and affection, and I’d never been so glad to hear it. “Just a little blood,” I said, letting my bloody fingers rest against his cheek. “You were hurt. We helped.”

“I hate to disillusion you, but I’m still hurt.” He grimaced. “Quite badly. I feel as if some things have been knocked askew. I am . . . afraid I won’t be able to make it to the wedding.”

“Over my dead body.” The smell of blackberry flowers intruded. I looked up. Arden was pushing through the crowd, a tray in her hands. I shifted so I could prop Tybalt’s head up on my leg. “I need you to try and drink as much of this milk as you can. If you can eat, do that too, but you’re going to drink.”

“October—”

“Drink it.” I shook my head. I was shivering uncontrollably. Finding a way to make it stop would have been too much trouble. Instead, I waited for Arden to come closer, and reached up to take the bowl of milk from her tray. It was unpasteurized, thick, with cream hanging heavy at the top. I lowered it to Tybalt’s lips.

He gave me a dubious look. Breathing was clearly getting harder for him.

“Please.”

He drank.

He drank all the milk, and when I took the plate, he managed to force down a few mouthfuls of fatty salmon, chewing thoroughly before he swallowed. Finally, he sagged against me.

“As last meals go, I could have been offered worse, but I beg you, no more,” he whispered. “Something is broken. Toby . . .”

“You need time to heal. We need access to better magic. We need to find Jin and get her to put you back together.” I looked up at Arden, the plate of salmon still clutched in my hand. It should have seemed comic, but under the circumstances, it was just sad. “Arden. He needs time.”

She blinked at me, clearly not understanding. Tybalt took a sharp breath. He clearly did.

“Please,” I said. “He needs time.”

“He needs time that won’t kill him,” said the Luidaeg, and pushed past Arden to kneel at Tybalt’s other side. She moved her hand in the air in a quick but complicated movement. When she was done, an arrow rested in her palm. It was short, no more than five inches in length, with a shaft of black wood too warped and riddled with thorns to have ever flown. The fletching was owl feather and dried leaves, and the tip was obsidian black, gleaming with oily rainbows.

Looking at Tybalt solemnly, the Luidaeg said, “I promise this is of my own making, and that it carries nothing more than the sleeping spell it was intended to spread. No poison, no tricks, no lies. You’ll wake when your time is done, and we’ll have had the time to heal you.”

“What if they find against the cure?” asked Tybalt, his eyes darting to me.

In that instant, I knew why he was worried. I forced myself to smile. “I’ll be here,” I said. “I’ll burn the mortality out of myself if I have to, and I’ll be immortal, and I’ll be here. For you, forever. Just don’t leave me now.”

“You know I’ve never wanted—”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I hissed, my smile dying. “Stay with me. Whatever it costs, stay with me.”

Tybalt nodded fractionally. “Then yes. Let it be done; let me rest.”

I leaned down to kiss him. He kissed me back, and I could have stayed that way forever, threats of violence and the taste of blood be damned. He wasn’t going to leave me. I was home.

The tension went out of him, his lips going dead beneath mine. I gasped and pulled back. His eyes were closed; he was limp and motionless, and the Luidaeg’s arrow protruded from his shoulder, the tip buried just deep enough to break the skin. I turned to look at her. She looked solemnly back.

“You would have fucked around and kept on promising to wait for him and all that bullshit, and you wouldn’t have been able to get anything done,” she said. There was no accusation or blame in her tone. Everyone around us was silent, too stunned to speak. She shook her head. “I need you moving. There was an attack. Find out who. Find out why. Stop this.”

Stop this: yes. It needed to be stopped. I paused to kiss Tybalt one last time—his forehead, and not his distressingly slack lips—before standing. The knife I’d used to cut my palm was gone, lost somewhere in the blood slick covering most of the floor. I turned to Arden.