I check her again just in case, and then I shake my head. “None that I can sense. It simply won’t come out.”
He makes another humming noise. “You will keep an eye on it, yes?”
“Yes.”
With a nod, he glances at Judd before looking at me again. “Captain Judd said she may have wounds on her back.”
My shoulders stiffen.
Judd holds up his hands. “I know I told him a lot, but he has to know in order to help her.”
I shake my head, because I’m not angry with him for telling Hojat these things. I would have too. I’m mad that I didn’t do more than simply prop her up on her side. “I couldn’t...” I clear my throat, trying to sound a hell of a lot stronger than I feel. “I haven’t checked it.”
Because I’m a coward.
Because I couldn’t bear to.
Hojat doesn’t chastise me, even though I deserve it. Instead, he tips his head toward Auren. “Best if I do. Lean her forward so I may check her and treat as need be.”
With a nod, I walk around to the other side of the sofa. Gently, I take hold of Auren’s shoulders and roll her until she’s lying on her stomach. As soon as I have her positioned, Hojat has already gone through the bag slung across his chest and dug out a pair of scissors. He wastes no time carefully snipping down her dress until he can fold it away.
The moment her back is bared, a jagged inhale cuts through my lips and slices down my throat. I hear my Wrath take in a collective gasp, all of them stepping in closer to see. Yet I don’t step closer. Instead, I’m rooted to the spot.
Her back is in ruins.
The satiny gold ribbons that used to sprout along her spine like feathers of a wing have been utterly destroyed. Those twenty-four delicate strips, draped down like the train on a gown, moving alongside her as an extension of herself, they’ve all been torn from her, barely an inch or two of length left on her bloodied back.
Auren’s ribbons were beautiful. Unique. Fae. They were as bright and alive as her. Now, they’ve been cut away like the branch of a tree, hacked off and shredded, left in splintered ruin.
Use your ribbons.
I can’t.
My eyes blur as I stare at each chopped stub, at the dried blood caked to the ends and smeared along the skin in spatters of gold. Her ribbon ends are frayed and bent, her skin bruised up and down her spine from the trauma.
Even now, some of the shorn ends weep with golden drops of blood, and I curse myself again for jostling her too much, for not seeing to this immediately. For being a coward.
“Fuck…” I hear Judd say.
“That fucking monster,” Lu spits, turning away.
My throat is too clogged to say anything at all.
“Okay.” Hojat straightens, the only one in the room who isn’t grim-faced or full of horror and pity.He doesn’t make a single mention of the way they bleed gold or the fact that she has them at all.Instead, he’s fallen into his mender role effortlessly, methodically, and without hesitation.
“Commander Ryatt?” he says, turning to my brother. He’s one of the only ones aside from my Wrath who knows I even have a brother and that he takes the lead from me when I’m being a king instead of a soldier. “I will need you to boil some clean water.” He turns to Lu next. “I’ll need a big shirt for her that ties or buttons all the way up. Preferably Captain Osrik’s size.” Both Lu and Ryatt immediately disperse, heading in separate directions.
“You two,” Hojat says, motioning toward Judd and me, “she needs a bed where I have more room to work and she can be more comfortable.”
“I already started a fire in your room,” Ryatt calls to me from the kitchen.
With a nod, I carefully gather Auren in my arms. Judd walks ahead of me down the corridor, and we pass by the flickering firelight from the sconces hanging along the walls. He opens the last door at the very end of the hallway and then hurries over to the bed, yanking the furs and blankets down. The room is warm, the fireplace crackling and casting off both heat and a comforting orange glow, though it can’t stave off the musty smell from disuse. It’s been a while since I last stayed here.
Judd wastes no time as he starts to light the lantern on the bedside table before pulling open the thick brown curtains. We wouldn’t have bothered to put windows in the Grotto at all since we have no true view of the outside, but we did so that it seems less claustrophobic, and because the glowing fluorescent rock in the cave casts off a comforting blue that almost resembles stars.
“On her stomach, please, Sire,” Hojat tells me, striding into the room.
I set her down as gently as I can, making sure her head is turned and that she doesn’t look too uncomfortable.
