The griffin collapsed beside me. I rolled onto my stomach and eyed him.
“What, exactly, were you thinking?” I snapped.
He gave me a look full of gentle reproach and I made it up onto my knees, looking him over.
“Are you even going to be able to find your friends now? What do I call them—your herd? Your pack? Your gang?”
One of his back legs was dripping blood in a steady stream. Shit. I unzipped the main compartment on my utility belt, no longer worried about contaminating it with dirty swamp water. I’d replace what I needed to when I was back in my realm.
The griffin showed me his teeth as I approached him with the bandages and I paused. Now was probably a good time to remember that his head was all lion, and that lion could chomp me into tiny pieces if I pissed him off.
“Are we going to have a problem here?”
I leaned forward and his teeth gleamed at me, his eyes making it clear that he wasn’t happy. I scowled at him.
“Your blood is going to be drawing predators for miles. If we don’t stop the bleeding, we’ll be stopped by hungry creatures who want to snack on a griffin. And I’m not exactly at my best right now.”
That was putting it lightly. My arm was killing me after spending so much time flailing in the water. My ankle ached, although those cuts were relatively shallow, and I was bone tired in a way that warned me I needed to sleep soon.
The griffin huffed out a sigh and lowered his head on his paws, closing his eyes. I took that as a sign that he would allow me to bandage him up.
“It’s tricky with all this fur,” I told him. “And I’m not a vet.”
He opened one eye and stared at me. I couldn’t help my grin. He not only understood me, but he knew what a vet was, and he was offended.
“Just kidding. I’m just going to wrap this around you for now. When it’s no longer bleeding, you can chew the bandage off or remove it with your claws. Deal?”
He didn’t give any indication that he’d heard that, and I shrugged, slowly climbing from my knees to my feet. The world turned fuzzy at the edges. I was likely still fighting off the remnants of whatever Ilis drugged me with.
Oh, she would pay.
“Right. This is where I leave you. Thanks for, you know… covering my ass in that water. Although I didn’t kill you and I should’ve, so I guess we’re even.” I reached out and petted his soaked fur and then turned in the direction of Ilis’s house—at least I was pretty sure that was the right direction. I slid my Nim Cub out of my sheath. I was really, really hoping I wouldn’t need to use it.
I squeezed through a gap in the brush, the mud sucking at my boots.
“Not long now,” I muttered. I was very carefully not thinking about Kyla, left alone with the traitorous unseelie, and I was most definitely not thinking about all the time I’d wasted here, while the sands in Samael’s hourglass trickled down.
My body ached for water. Iwasdehydrated by now, but I hadn’t seen a freshwater source since I arrived in this humid cesspit.
Something moved behind me and I spun, Nim Cub ready. The griffin stared at me. I glowered at it.
“You gave me a heart attack. What are you doing? You’re going to lose track of your friends.” The thought of the griffin wandering alone made my chest clench. “Although, to be honest, they seem like complete jerks for not waiting for you.”
He ignored all that, waiting patiently, and it clicked.
“You can’t come with me.”
Nothing. I sighed.
“Seriously. You can’t get anywhere near Ilis. She sent me to kill you. Do you understand what that means?”
His gaze moved past me, as if he was impatient. Was I assuming he could understand me when he couldn’t? No, I was sure he had some level of understanding. I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Lookit, you’re on team Danica now, which frankly surprises the hell out of me. But if she tries to hurt you, I’m going to have to kill her, and then I’ll be in even deeper shit with Finvarra.”
He stayed where he was, and I threw my hands in the air. “Fine.”
I blew out a breath and turned back toward Ilis’s house. The sun was getting low in the sky now, and if I ran out of light in this place, I would be in big trouble.
