Page 171 of Feralheart

A breath hissed through Fen’s teeth. “You didn’t count.”

“This didn’t feel like the best situation for counting.”

“You did that on purpose.” A touch of humor shone in his eyes, though how could it? He had to be in agony.

“Not too much on purpose.”

His snort rang out.

“I’m going to take a look.” I lifted the bandage away and leaned closer.

The wound was deep but appeared clean. A blade had gone in at an angle, missing anything vital but carving through muscle. Blood still oozed from the puncture, but slower now. I doubted they’d hit anything vital.

“Who did this?” I growled.

His jaw worked. “I don’t know. It was dark. I was asleep. I heard movement and saw a shadow, felt the blade, and then they were gone.” Frustration bled through each word. “I should’ve been more aware. Should’ve⁠—”

“What, never slept?” I lifted an eyebrow. “You have to relax sometime.”

“I can’t afford to.” His voice flattened. “Not ever.”

The certainty in those words stopped me cold.

I’d spent my life assuming the elite had it easy. That their biggest worry was which clothing to wear or which wine to drink. But he was sitting here bleeding because someone had tried to kill him while he was asleep. A person he probably knew.

At least in Shaleside, no one was trying to murder me in my bed. The threat came from hunger, cold, and sickness that took its time. Not blades in the dark wielded by people who smiled at you during the day.

“I’m sorry that you can’t rest. That’s no way to live.”

His throat worked. “It’s the only way I know.”

“Walk me through it,” I said. “Your tent sits in the middle of the elite camp. Servants up before dawn. Riders on every side. Dragons that can scent a stranger from half a valley away.” I counted it out the way I counted coal. “And Aristus never made a sound.”

His gaze went to the tent wall, toward where his dragon slept. “No. He didn’t.”

“So either your killer can pass a dragon’s nose without waking it⁠—”

“Or they didn’t smell like a stranger.” His voice stayed level, which frightened me more than shouting would have. “Someone in this camp already knows. Or someone who never had to cross it at all.”

Lord Andra had stepped out of thin air that very afternoon to whisper with Vella. The council didn’t need to walk past anyone to reach him.

“It needs stitches. Are you up for that?”

“I will be.”

I sniffed and pulled what I needed from the kit he’d given me.

After threading the needle and ensuring it was clean with the proper herbs, I leaned closer. “This will pinch.”

“I’ve dealt with worse.”

The healed scars across his chest and sides in pale lines told me he had. My hand hovered above the nearest one without touching. Stories written in old damage, nothing I had any business reading. I focused on the thread. The needle. On anything that wasn’t the way his breath hit my hair each time his lungs rose and fell.

He was alive. Blessedly alive.

“Are you counting?” he asked, a frown knitting his brow.

“I should be.”