Which meant I had to remove it.
Unlike the movies, I couldn’t snap the tip off. Her wing was too fragile for me to put extra force on it. “Do you really want me to just yank it out?”
She made a quick succession of harmonic chirps.
“Okay, I don’t speak bird. If that’s a yes, do it again.”
She repeated the exact sound.
“Fuck.”
I sighed and examined the arrow. The tip was close to her body and poked out of the top of her wing, so they must have shot her while she was flying overhead. Luckily it wasn’t a barbed arrow, which would do serious damage going back the other way.
“I’m going to pull it out the way it went in. It’s gonna hurt like hell. Is that what you want?”
She moved her head around, eyeballing me from different angles.
I gingerly found a place to grip her wing and held it steady. Then I wrapped my fingers around the back of the arrow as close to her body as I could. I didn’t know a damn thing about bird anatomy and whether this thing was piercing muscle, ligaments, or bone.
“Okay. Ready? One… two…”
I yanked it out.
Blue’s falcon made a feverish series of screeches and flapped her good wing. I scooted back just as she transformed.
“You were supposed to say three,” she bit out.
“Sorry. That’s how my dad used to take off my Band-Aids.”
“Is that so?” Blue turned her shoulder in a circle. “Remind me to personally thank him,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“How is it? Do you need to shift again?”
Her brows drew together. “No. That’s strange. I thought I would, but it seems completely healed.”
“Maybe it was just a little nick.”
She gave me a scolding glance.
“What are you doing here?”
Blue jerked her cape out from beneath her and sat. Her lustrous brown hair was pulled up in a French braid that was uncharacteristic of her style, and yet one she would be wearing for an eternity. “I don’t remember this cage. Did Viktor ever mention this to you?”
“No. I think we’re in one of the locked rooms on the east side.”
She glanced at the sun on the floor and back up at the windows behind her. “Yeah.”
I stood up and tested the cage door to see if maybe he hadn’t locked it properly. “The keys are on the wall. Can your bird slip through and get them?”
Blue pushed up to her feet and stuck her hand between the bars. “No. I’m larger than natural birds. My body won’t fit.”
“How did they catch you?”
“Viktor sent me to scout the area. It was a routine flyby. I was here before, but there weren’t any archers. I guess they found bows and arrows in one of the rooms.” She tested the strength of the bars. “If they found Shepherd’s armory, they’ll have guns.”
“Aren’t those too loud for Vampires?”
“Probably. But we need to prepare for anything.”
