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I stood before I thought of standing.
Creon dragged himself upright another few inches, holding out a hand slick with blood; I grabbed his wrist and yanked him towards me. Already, some fae were firing red at us again, their magic digging small craters in the paving around my feet. I half-carried, half-dragged Creon with me, stretching my sword hand back to Tared …
Calloused fingers found my bare lower arm.
The sun-streaked, blood-drenched battlefield blurred around me.
And it was in that fraction of a second, an eyeblink before we well and truly left the Golden Court behind, that a third arrow whizzed down and slammed with a sickening thwack between Creon’s shoulder blades.
Chapter 8
He didn’t even scream.
We emerged in the dusky Underground living room in a tangle of blood and limbs and torn wings, almost tumbling over from the speed with which we’d faded. Tared was cursing. I was still crying out in shock. But Creon dropped to his knees with nothing but a glower at the rest of the company, splayed his left hand flat against the dark floor, and began flicking blue magic at his bleeding wounds with such swiftness his fingers blurred in the dim light – curt, offhand gestures, as if this was a routine issue he dealt with every morning before breakfast.
‘What in hell ishappening?’ Agenor snapped behind me, sounding on the brink of violence. ‘Is the evacuation—’
Tared bit out something I only half registered, about the evacuation being the only bloody thing thatwasfine right now.
‘Em?’ Creon said between clenched teeth, not even looking up as he pressed his left hand to his blood-soaked black trousers and his right hand to the wound in his chest. Blue magic flared, and the gash stopped bleeding. ‘The arrows are barbed. I’m going to need to cut them out. Could you—’
‘What?’ I heard myself splutter.
‘They’re barbed.’ More blue. The wound at his hairline grew shut. ‘Tearing damage is much harder to heal with magic, so I’m going to—’
‘Cut them out?’ I let out a shrill, joyless laugh, shoving Beyla’s sword aside with a disregard that might have killed me under any other circumstances. ‘Byyourself?’
He looked up, expression showing no discomfort except for a mild, weary irritation. ‘Yes? I’ve done it before.’
‘I’ve also tried to kill you before,’ I protested, my voice inching dangerously close to a shriek. ‘Doesn’t mean we need to do it again, does it? Ylfreda?Ylfreda?’
‘She’s getting her tools,’ Lyn said – I hadn't realised she was in the room until that moment. ‘I warned her the moment Beyla came crashing in that we might have injuries.’
Creon muttered a curse. ‘There’s no need for—’
‘Oh, shutup.’ My heart was beating at about ten times its usual speed, pumping more panic than blood through my jittery limbs. Why was he still bleeding? How did he even have any blood left to lose? ‘You’re not going to do a single fucking thing except sit still and let us get the damn things out, and don’t you dare try and do it anyway. Iwillstop you.’
‘You …’ His hands paused as he considered that for a moment, then groaned and admitted, ‘I suppose you could.’
Agenor let out a choked sound on the other side of the room.
‘Damn right I could,’ I grumbled, managing a scoff. My head felt light – as if I’d stood up too swiftly and all the blood had sunken to my feet, except my ice-cold feet didn’t feel like they’d been blessed with an abundance of it either. ‘So you’ll have to resign yourself to the coddling, villain that I am. Woe is you. You might have to start caring about your own comfort levels one day.’
On the couch, Tared let out a high-strung chuckle; I wasn’t sure if it was a response to me or to Agenor, who couldn’t have looked more dumbfounded if I’d grown wings on the spot. Creon glared at the both of them, then at the arrow in his thigh, and then at me again, visibly debating how much trouble he’d be in if he just pulled the thing out before Ylfreda showed up.
The healer appeared in the middle of the room before I could be forced to make good on my threats, thankfully.
One look at Creon and me, and she dumped her bag on the floor, snapped something about hot water and soap, and began pulling out a terrifying assortment of scalpels and knives as Lyn hurried off in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Barbed?’
‘All of them,’ Creon said curtly.
She cursed and threw me an impatient glare. ‘And you? Are you waiting for something before you heal yourself?’
I blinked and glanced down, realising only then that my pale pink dress was soaked with blood at my waist – a gash just below the lowest ribs on my left, bleeding fiercely. With a mumbled apology, I pressed my feet against the floor and drew out a bright azure. Too much: through the cut in my dress, the skin of my side grew pink and soft like a newborn child’s.
Better than fainting, though.
Ylfreda set to work with commendable efficiency, grumbling all the while about reckless idiots and risks of perforated lungs. The arrow in Creon’s back turned out to have lodged itself into a rib between spine and shoulder blade, which he called “amanageable scratch” and Ylfreda called “a madman’s unearned good luck”; the resulting grisly wound was deep but at least clean. I attempted to get to my feet to help them heal it and found my vision blotting aggressively as soon as I did, black spots crawling over my field of sight like poisonous spiders.
