Wesley’s laugh came out like something broken, then repaired. “Well,” he said hoarsely, “that was terrible.”
“Agreed,” she said, equally hoarse.
He staggered. From wrist to elbow, his forearm was the sick gray of frostbite, ice etched into his veins in branching patterns like a shattered window. He cradled the arm tight against his chest, eyes pinched shut, breath pulled steady by sheer force of will.
Maude caught him by the shoulders and hauled him down to the rock. “Stupid,” she said, voice shaking. “Stupid, heroic—suicidal maniac.”
“Says the witch bleeding all over the mountainside.”
“Hush.”
She ripped open her satchel, hands moving faster than her heart. Comfrey salve—no good. Thawing tincture—yes. Warming draught—not for drinking; for skin. She uncorked a vial with her teeth and poured it over the ice-tattoo. Steam ribboned. He hissed finally, the sound she’d been waiting for and dreading, and clamped his jaw shut on the rest.
“It’ll burn,” she said, softer. “Better to burn than be dead.”
“Convenient motto for your shop.”
“Don’t speak.” She rubbed the tincture in with brisk, careful circles. The frost receded grudgingly, inch by inch, color creeping back. The branching pattern remained—faint white threads under the skin, a memory of having been almost not-alive.
She wrapped the arm in wool and laced the bandage with a whisper of heat that would hold for an hour. Then she just…sat back on her heels and looked at him. Looked at what he’d done. At the ward-web glowing like old starlight over their heads. At the cooling line of her blood.
She heard herself say the unthinkable. “Thank you.”
His eyes flicked up to hers, surprised into something unguarded. “You’re welcome,” he said, equally unadorned.
She looked away first and bent to rearrange her vials, which did not need rearranging. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“We make an excellent team,” he said after a moment, voice rough but returning to its usual shape.
“We make a functional catastrophe.”
“Semantics.”
She wanted to laugh. She did not. The ward web dimmed a fraction and steadied; the air lost its blade-edge. The forest exhaled, a little resentful, a little impressed.
Maude wiped the blood from her palm on the moss and hissed when it stung. Wesley caught her wrist gently, with his good hand, and turned it to examine the shallow slice. He didn’t comment, didn’t tease. He tore the clean strip from his own sleeve with his teeth and bound her hand like he’d done it a thousand times—because he had—an apprentice, a baker—burned on hot trays, taught plants and pain by a mother who knew both well.
She waited for the pull to hate him again. It didn’t come right away.
“We move when you can stand,” she said—logistics were safer than truth. “The ward will hold an hour, maybe two. After that, the wolves will be back. They always come back.”
He rolled his shoulder, tested his fingers under the wool. “My arm will work. Maybe not for pastry.”
“Tragedy.”
“Unspeakable.”
The corner of her mouth betrayed her by moving, and she scowled at the trees to punish it. The light had shifted. That was the worst of it—how the Peaks bent time into useless shapes. Afternoon had become evening without consulting her.
She rose. The world swayed once, briefly. Wesley stood too, even slower. For a moment they simply stood there, close as they had been at the mixer, closer maybe, heat and breath finding a rhythm that had everything to do withnot dying.
“Wesley,” she said, which was stupid because she had nothing ready to follow his name.
“Yes, Maude.”
She swallowed. “If you ever throw your arm into a monster’s mouth again, I will turn your hair into bubble-wrap.”
Lines bracketed his eyes. “Understood.”
