Page 83 of Be the Serpent

I did my best to ignore her. This wasn’t a good time to get distracted. “I knew Cass was telling me to eat because I was going to bleed a lot, but I didn’t know why, and now I’m guessing it was so I’d have enough blood to save you, you jerk. Just fucking swallow already.”

The Luidaeg knelt on his other side, pressing two fingers to the side of his neck. Then she looked at me and nodded. I didn’t know whether the rules against lying would keep her from communicating an inaccuracy in gesture. I had to assume so. Sign language is still language, after all. I looked back to Simon’s face.

“Luidaeg says you’re alive, and you know we don’t argue with the sea witch, so you need to live now, okay?”

The Luidaeg snapped her fingers. The sword that had been buried in his stomach turned into water, holding its form for a bare second before it fell apart, splashing over everything, leaving Simon and me equally drenched.

“That should clean the wound,” she said, quietly. “That’s all I can do.”

“That’s got to be enough,” I said, and pulled my arm back, preparing to lay my wrist open for the fourth time.

Simon coughed, and swallowed.

I went instantly rigid, staring down at him for a moment before shifting my attention to the wound in his stomach. As I watched, it began to knit closed, the damage disappearing like a tape being rewound. In a matter of seconds, the blood still smeared on his skin and soaked into his sodden clothing was the only sign that anything had happened.

I turned back to his face. Some of the color had returned to his cheeks, and while his eyes were still shut, I could see him breathing now. He swallowed again, then coughed, and finally opened his eyes.

I smiled at him, tears running down my cheeks as I stopped fighting them back. “Hey, jerkface, you can’t die on me, Dianda would kick my ass,” I said.

“And mine as well,” he said, raspily. “I think she’d catch and jar my night-haunt just so she could shake it for the next hundred years.”

“Let’s not find out.”

He swallowed for a third time. I straightened up and offered him my hand, pulling him into a sitting position. He looked at me, eyes slightly unfocused.

“I may have seen more than you intended,” he said. “Are you . . . ?”

“I literally have not had five seconds alone with Tybalt since I found out, so please don’t say anything,” I said.

He looked faintly amused. “Given that the man is standing directly behind you, he knows there’s something to be said.”

“There’s always something to be said. Are you going to be all right?”

“I am now.” He touched his stomach. “I truly thought . . . Well. I thought I was going to be joining the night-haunts.”

“And again, Dianda, my ass, bad combo,” I said. “That doesn’t even go into what Patrick would do to me if I let you die.”

Simon laughed darkly, shaking his head. “Nothing good, I’m quite sure. He’s far more frightening than she is.”

“So let’s just not, okay?” I pushed myself to my feet, not sure what was left to say, and turned to find Tybalt watching me attentively.

“What did you find out?” he asked.

“Again, we’re not alone,” I said. “Can it wait until we finish cleaning up this mess?”

“The more you put me off, the less I like that idea,” said Tybalt, following my gaze to the orangery. “Ah,” he said. “I see. Well, yes, I suppose that is rather more urgent. But we have a great deal to discuss once this is settled.”

“Yes, we do,” I agreed, and started toward the orangery door. I glanced to Lowri. She nodded, indicating that it was safe for me to go inside.

So I eased the door open, and winced as a crossbow bolt embedded itself in my right shoulder like a particularly large and vicious splinter. “Hey!” I snapped. “Whoever pulled that trigger better be damn glad I was the first one inside, or you’d be getting a way longer lecture about trigger safety than the one you just signed up for.”

I directed my glare at the figure peeking out at me from between the orange trees. Maybe they had been planted according to some reasonable pattern once, but the years of neglect following Gilad’s death and Arden’s exile had given them plenty of time to run riot, and run riot they had. In the mortal world, an orange tree takes about a decade to reach its full size. In Faerie, where the growth conditions are magically perfect, it can happen much faster. This was a forest of fruiting trees, and the air smelled so strongly of orange blossoms that it made me want to sneeze.

Not only oranges, either; they might call this an orangery, but it had clearly been designed to offer as many kinds of tree fruit as possible. Apples and peaches grew nearby, and a small grove of thorny pomegranate trees, their fruit-heavy branches drooping in a canopy toward the ground, occupied almost the dead center of the glass-and-silver structure. I grasped the crossbow bolt, grunting through my teeth, and shoved it through my shoulder, where a hand yanked it out the other side.

I turned, blinking. Tybalt was right there, a frown on his face. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to have been followed, given the circumstances, but it was still a little surprising. Pleasantly so, at least. I offered him a wan smile. He didn’t return it.

“If they’re planning to keep shooting at you, I will be going elsewhere,” he said. “I can’t force you to come with me in any meaningful way, but I can tell you that I would prefer not to leave you here, where you’re being shot at, without my support.”