“This way to the healer’s room,” Lucien says, beginning to drag Sevrin in one direction.
The princes carry Sevrin into a small stone room, an infirmary with a single narrow cot and shelves lined with dusty jars. No one is in the room. No one follows us inside. Lucien herds me in after them, closing the door behind us. The world narrows to just this one space: the bed, Sevrin’s limp body, the three men I’d trust with anything.
Gareth lays Sevrin on the cot, propping his head with a bunched-up blanket. Sevrin’s skin is gray. Every inch of him is wounded but the worst one is at his his throat, which is thickly coated with blood. The wound is a crescent moon, ragged and ugly, still seeping. All his other wounds are no better. His eyes are closed, and I can only hope he’s found enough peace to sleep.
I push past Alaric and Lucien, nearly falling across Sevrin’s body. My knees hit the stone. “He’s barely breathing,” I whisper.
I can feel the slow rise and fall of his chest, but it’s so weak, it might as well be nothing.
Alaric tries to guide me away, but I shake him off, reaching for the shelf. “Water. I need water. And cloth. And—” The words trip and tumble, all the knowledge I ever had about healing trying to melt away under panic. “Honey. Yarrow. I know what to do.”
Lucien’s hands are on my shoulders again, but lighter this time, steadying instead of restraining. “Harper. You’re hurt. We should be taking care of you. We can find someone else–”
“I’m fine,” I lie, even knowing that I’m not. My side is a white-hot spike. I’m fairly certain at least one rib is broken, and every breath is painful. “He needs me.”
Gareth finds a battered wooden bucket and pours clean water into a pot that’s placed over the fire. Alaric grabs a handful of rags from a cupboard and lines them up beside me, neat and orderly. Lucien goes to the fire in the fireplace, with embers barely burning, and builds it up until the room is brighter, and the water can boil.
I lean over Sevrin, hands hovering above his chest. I’m shaking so bad I can barely control the movement. “Hey,” I murmur, and my voice cracks. “You’re going to be okay. We’re here. We’re going to take care of you.”
Lucien hands me a knife. I don’t question how he knows what I need, but I appreciate it. I slice the linen into strips, hands working on muscle memory. “Get the honey,” I tell Alaric. He grabs a jar from the shelf and brings it over, unscrewing the lid.
“And I need the yarrow,” I say, pointing at the correct pot of flowers.
Gareth brings over the yarrow, a dusty bundle of dried stems and leaves, and sets it beside the water. “I don’t know what else you need,” he says, voice rough.
“This is it. For now,” I say, not looking up.
“I need the water. Has it boiled?”
Lucien checks. “It has.”
“Poor it in this bowl and keep the bowl full of clean water as I work.”
“Okay,” he says, doing as I ordered.
I let the water cool as I gather all my supplies and organize them.I’m ready. It has to be now.“Hold him down.”
“What?”
I glance up at the three of them, my vision suddenly sharp as a knife. “He might fight me. We have to be prepared.”
Lucien moves to Sevrin’s head, palms cupping either side of his jaw. “Got him,” he says.
Gareth takes one arm, Alaric the other. Together, they pin him to the cot.
I get to work.
First, I select the correct jars: willow bark and meadowsweet. I crush them together with a stone pestle, mixing the powder with a few drops of water until it’s a gritty paste. I pry open Sevrin’s mouth, ignoring the blood, and rub the mixture against his tongue and the inside of his cheeks. “It’ll help with the pain,” I say aloud, more for me than for him. “Even if it tastes like hell.”
Sevrin’s throat bobs, his jaw twitching. For a second, I think he might bite me, but then his mouth slackens and he sags back against Lucien’s hands.
Next are the wounds themselves. They’re oozing, and I know I have to clean them before I can do anything else. I dip a cloth in the honeyed water, sprinkle it with yarrow, and press it to the largest of the cuts that’s at his throat. Sevrin spasms, body arching off the cot, as pain races through him. Gareth and Alaric hold him firm. He screams, raw and inhuman, and my heart shatters a little more.
“Almost done,” I murmur, working in small, steady circles over the cut and then moving across his arms and his chest. Whenever it’s needed, I wring out the rag and soak it in more clean honeyed water and yarrow. Then I remove his pants to clean the wounds there as well. “Almost done. Almost done.”
The blood slows. The pink edges of the wounds turn yellow-white as the honey and yarrow work their way in. I keep cleaning, washing the cloth every few minutes, until the water runs clear and the wounds are flushed of grit and dirt.
I find the needle and thread. My hands never shake, even though I feel on the edge of collapsing. I run the needle through the flame of a candle, then jab it through Sevrin’s skin at the baseof the largest wound at his throat. He jerks, hissing through his teeth. Lucien murmurs soft, steady nonsense, stroking Sevrin’s hair, and Gareth and Alaric keep their grips.
