“Amma,” Damien whispered, “do not make us appear weak.”
She eyed him sharply. “I’mnot.”
“What I am hearing,” said the king as he rose back to his feet, slim form swaying, “is that you would humble yourselves before the Winter Court for a favor, and that you would remain here to earn it. Yes?”
Amma handed off Kaz to Damien’s good arm and took a step forward, curtsying. “Your Majesty,” she said in her sweetest voice, “we would be honored if you would host us in this trying time.”
The fae king steepled his too-long fingers, peering down at her. She held herself in gentle supplication, waiting, and then he smiled again. “The court shall see what it can do.”
CHAPTER 25
THE CARE AND CURING OF BLOOD MAGES
Ihate this.” Damien’s voice was as surly as ever, echoing out into the chamber they had been ushered into.
“Yes, I know, I know.” Amma took Kaz back from him, eyeing a divan not far off from the door. She laid the imp into a bundle of furs there and tucked him in. Kaz snuggled down with a sleepy yawn, the cutest she’d ever seen him, uneven jaw notwithstanding, though the fact he wasn’t talking certainly helped.
Amma took stock of the rest of the room. Walls of shimmering ice reflected back, cloudy and blue and carved into with intricate patterns over every inch like a gaudy, colorless wallpaper. Furniture grew directly from the icy walls, a wardrobe, a dresser, a desk, each smooth with elegant designs and sharp corners, impossible without magic. From the ceiling hung a chandelier covered in frost, the drippy, frozen snow illuminating the space with a gentle, white glow but no flames. Similarly, a fireplace was built out of one of the walls, so mimicking a traditional hearth though made of ice, blue flames dancing in its center but giving off no warmth. The chamber’s center held a bed, its frame similarly cast from ice and raised up on a frosty platform, though thankfully covered in many pillows and fluffy linens. But—Amma swallowed—there was only the one.
The Winter Court’s king had agreed that they could retire for the evening and conjured another creature from snow, this one short, web-footed, kneeless, and adorable. It was perhaps some sort of bird as it had a beak, though it waddled rather than flew, and gestured with a flipper-like appendage. They followed it through the reflective, empty halls of the palace and were left in guest chambers, though no other place appeared to be occupied.
They would need their rest, the fae king had ominously said before they were led from the hall, but they would find everything they could possibly need where they would be taken. Amma hoped that meant something to treat Damien’s wound.
There was an adjoining bathing chamber, and Amma tugged Damien by his still-intact sleeve into it. A basin of ice was jutting out of the wall, and when she placed her hands beneath the spout, it ran with clear water. The shock of the cold made her pull back, but she grit her teeth and cleaned away the dirt from her palms and then stoppered it. As the basin filled, she opened a narrow larder and found a stack of thin linens as well as a row of transparent boxes, strikingly familiar.
Amma picked up the central, glass box, parchment wrapped just about its middle, the label written in Ouranic, of all things, but then below that, a translation in Key:For healing the unmendable wounds of surly blood mages.
“Well, that’s convenient,” she said, flipping it over to look at the back and another label there that read, in much smaller script:May cause drowsiness.
The blood mage in question was sulking as he leaned against the chamber’s doorway, apparently not feeling the ice his head and shoulder rested against. “You were awfully nice to our captor,” he said miserably.
Amma rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s what I do.” She held up the jar. “And it got us this.”
“I don’t want that—I told you, I’ll heal eventually, it may just take until we’re out of the Everdarque which is what we should be trying to do—finding a way out.”
“Oh, you’d prefer we run away?” She gestured to him and the edge of a big block of ice that served as a bathtub of sorts.
“No.” He grimaced, following her direction and taking a seat before her. “But no good will come of this. Fae are mercurial and ill-humored, and that one’s no exception.”
“Well, you would know,” she mumbled and began working at the shoulder straps to his leathers. “Come on, now. You might be okay with all that bleeding, but I’m not.”
The pinched anger fell off of Damien’s face as he used his good arm to assist, and they managed to remove his chest armor. Amma tugged at his tunic after, and he did his best to slide out, but she could tell nearly half of him was paralyzed at this point, so she eased it over his head and then down the damaged arm, discarding the bloodied thing on the floor.
The wound itself was unchanged, deep and dark as it ran from his shoulder to his elbow, and it still gave up blood, but the skin around it had blackened more than she’d noted before.
Amma ran a finger over the dark veins that were crawling away from the mark. She couldn’t imagine enduring a wound like that herself. “Help me, Isldrah.”
“Hmm? Who is that?” Damien’s eyes had gone glassy as he peered up at her. “Do I know her?”
Amma shook her head, turning from him to dunk a linen in the basin of water. “She’s the goddess of health, one of my mother’s attendants worshiped her, and would say that whenever I’d get hurt. She does birds too, I think.”
Damien sucked in a sharp breath when she wiped at the drying blood, eyes jolting open. “You don’t invoke divinity,” he said, voice strained as he looked away.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said tenderly, taking even more care to apply as little pressure as was needed to wipe at the blood. “This just seems especially bad. I know you weren’t healing before we climbed through the burrow.”
“Observant.” He tipped his head back to watch her, and she could feel his muscles relax under her hands. “The magic the Sentries use has always been rudimentary, but this time it was as if it were tailor-made to damage someone with noxscura in their veins.”
Amma traded the dirty linen for a clean, damp one. “And they found you too.” As she pressed the cold fabric to his arm, the bleeding finally ceased.
