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Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but Cela didn’t have the energy to deal with Ruby’s hysterics. She’d worked in theaters with less drama. “Then do something about it,” she snapped, realizing too late how sharp her tone had become. She let out an exhausted breath, knowing she wasn’t really upset at Ruby. She was scared for Viola, same as the girl.
“I’m going to need some supplies,” Cela told Ruby, trying to make her voice a little gentler. “We’ll need some hot water to clean her wounds. Find whatever clean towels and blankets you can, and you’d best grab my sewing basket, just in case.”
Ruby simply stared at her.
“You can do that, can’t you?” Cela asked, her voice sharpening again. “I know you’ve probably had women like me running your baths since you were a baby, but if you want to take responsibility for what happened to Viola, then you’ll get yourself together. She needs us.”
The girl wiped the wetness from her eyes. “You’re right,” she said with an undignified snuffle. “I can do it. Towels and water. I’ll fetch them for you.”
Cela didn’t know who Ruby was trying to convince, but if it stopped the other girl from wailing, she didn’t much care.
“Good. I’m going up to check on them,” Cela said, releasing her shoulders. “Make sure that other boy is in the kitchen where I sent him, and then bring everything to Viola’s room when you have it.”
She gave the girl a quick, sure embrace. “She’s going to be okay, Ruby.”
Ruby wrapped her arms around her in return, and for a second they just stood there in the open air of the street, an unlikely pair brought together by even more unlikely circumstances.
“She has to be,” Ruby whispered.
By the time Cela reached the doorway of the small room where Viola slept, Harte had already laid her facedown on the narrow bed. Cela stopped short when she saw Viola’s back. “Jesus,” she whispered, lifting her hand to her mouth. She’d never seen anything like it.
“I don’t know how Nibsy got a hold of her,” Harte said. He was kneeling by the edge of the bed, peeling the blood-soaked fabric away from Viola’s skin with the long, noble fingers that had once manipulated locks. “The Viola I knew would’ve killed him before she let him touch her.”
“She’d just watched a friend of hers get murdered, so I don’t think she was exactly thinking straight,” Cela said softly.
Taking a breath to fortify herself, she stepped into the room and pushed Harte aside gently so she could see what needed to be done. Viola’s back was a bloodied mess. A dark tattoo of two intertwined snakes lay between her shoulder blades. Had it not been split open and bleeding, it would have looked like the one Jianyu also had etched into the skin of his back.
“I’ve never seen damage like this,” she murmured, almost afraid to start. “I can’t even begin to picture the weapon that caused it.”
“He used the mark against her.” Harte’s voice sounded hollow. “When I found her, he already had the silver cane top pressed against her.”
Cela’s brows bunched in concern. “This is what happened because he tried to take her affinity?”
Harte nodded. “He started to. It looked like he was ripping the magic out through her skin. If I’d been a few minutes later…”
Jianyu and Viola had tried to explain about the marks and the control that Nibsy had over them, but Cela hadn’t realized. Not really. She knew their magic was a part of them, but now she could see exactly what that meant. It looked like her skin had burst open, like her body had turned on itself.
There was a gasp from the doorway behind her, and Cela knew Ruby had arrived with the supplies.
“If you’re not going to be able to handle yourself, just leave the stuff there and go,” Cela told her, tossing a stern look over her shoulder.
Ruby looked like a ghost, but the edge in Cela’s voice must have shaken some sense into her. Cela watched something harden in Ruby’s expression as she drew herself up. If she’d thought the girl nothing but a porcelain doll, she now started to revise her judgment. There was steel in Ruby’s eyes. Determination likely born from getting whatever you wanted for an entire life.
Cela nudged Harte away, and together with Ruby, they began the terrible, painstaking process of working on Viola’s back. Once the crusted-over blood was washed clean, Cela could see the true extent of the damage. It was worse, somehow, than she’d expected. Viola’s back looked like a piece of shredded silk, but luckily Cela had plenty of experience with mending far more delicate things.
“How does it look?” Harte asked.
“She’s going to need stitches,” Cela said, stretching her neck. With all the damage, it would take a while to put her back together. “But she’s still breathing, and I’m not sensing any infection yet. I think she might come through.”
“Do you know where Jianyu is?” Harte asked. “I expected to find him here with you.”
Cela couldn’t stop her cheeks from heating, though she knew that wasn’t what Darrigan meant. She shook her head. “He’s not here,” she told him, not sure how she managed to keep her voice steady. Darrigan’s unexpected appearance and Viola’s injuries had been enough to distract her, but now the worry returned like a wave crashing over her.
She couldn’t keep the emotion from her voice as she told him how Jianyu had followed Viola to Ruby’s wedding and how he hadn’t returned. And when she glanced back, the expression on Darrigan’s face—the pity in his eyes—let her know that he saw the truth of her feelings.
“So the two of you are…?” he asked awkwardly. His ears had gone red.
“We’re friends,” she told him stiffly. “Nothing more.”
