“And too heavy.” I pressed my sodden cloak tighter against his wounds. “So me carrying you is also out of the question.”
He slumped against me. The beach quivered, black waves slapping higher. His skin radiated fever through the shreds of his ruined armor. His breath ratcheted against my throat. My fingers flexed, although I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to hold him tighter or end him right then and there.
Fortunately for him, I’d left both my blades somewhere on the steaming corpse behind us. And I wasn’t in the mood to kill any more monsters tonight.
“Stay with me.” I took great pleasure in slapping him awake. “Irian, you’re dying.”
“Sword… will not let me.” His low tone held a surety I didn’t share.
Interesting. But unhelpful.
“Unless your sword is going to start scooping up your blood and putting it back inside your body, we’re going to need a backup plan.”
An idea grew swift and sudden inside me. The Sky-Sword might be the most powerful magic here tonight, but it wasn’t theonlymagic. That day in the greenhouse, when the starling pecked me—I’d healed myself with my Greenmark. It had been a small cut—much smaller than this gaping wound.
I might not be able to save him. But maybe I could delay the inevitable.
And that gave me leverage.
“I think I can heal you.”
His voice was rough with pain. “Then what are you waiting for?”
“You were the one who told me nothing in Tír na nÓg came free.” I almost felt guilty dangling his own life in front of him like bait. Almost. “I want another story.”
Surprise and an obscure kind of admiration winged his gaze.
“Ruthlessness becomes you, colleen.” His head lolled. He didn’t call my bluff. “I agree to the same bargain as before.”
It was good enough.
I ripped my sodden mantle from Irian’s back and placed my hand there instead. I glanced down at his ashen face lying limp on my shoulder, his sweat-slicked hair pasted to his temples.
He might be my enemy. But he was also a fighter. A fellow warrior. Watching him fight that wyrm had been like watching flames dancing silver along the edge of a blade. I wasn’t sure I’d truly have been able to stand and watch as he bled to death in front of me. Part of me was glad I wouldn’t have to find out.
“This is going to hurt.”
I spread my hand over the wounds, silver liquid pooling over my fingers. The gouges left by the wyrm’s claws were deep; shards of white bone pricked through layers of muscle, fascia, skin. I almost lost my nerve. I wished—not for the first time—for my bracelet of thorns and nettles. It would have helped me focus. Instead, I thought of my work in the greenhouse. Dead seeds being coaxed back to life. Dirt and scrub tempted toward loamy lushness. Flower buds unfurling.
Here in Tír na nÓg, I barely had to imagine it before it became real. The forest was so close—so vital. All I had to do was reach out, and my Greenmark wasthere. Waiting.
Brambles tangled out of my fingertips, delving sharp into the ragged skin of the cuts. Irian’s eyes flew wide as hundreds of piercing needles dug into his flesh. At the edge of the forest, roots shifted and trees screamed.
“Go on, then.” I didn’t want him to rip this place apart before I patched him back together. “Tell me your story.”
“Now?”
“Are you busy with something else?”
“Besides dying?” He jerked as another line of brambles cut into his skin.
I made my brambles stop twining together, leaving the edges of Irian’s wound open. The muscles of his neck corded in tension, and his hand tightened into a huge fist next to my thigh. Pebbles chattered like teeth.
“Once—in a place at the edge of nowhere, where cliffs reared tall as giants above a dark sea, and selkies rode foam pale as white horses—there was a boy.” Irian squeezed his eyes shut as the brambles tightened once more. “He was—thoughthe was—a boy like any other, wandering the moors and exploring the cliffs. When the sun was high, he would scrabble down layers of shale to the stony beach below his cottage, hunting for spooning cockles, clams, and winkles—”
I bid damp green moss to grow into the gaps between the brambles, stanching the flow of blood. Irian gritted his teeth but kept talking through the pain.
“One day, he discovered a high stone wall he had never seen before. He wished to know what it hid, so he found a way inside. There he found Deirdre. Though she was many years older than he, the two became friends. She sang him songs and told him stories. That summer, he spent every day in her garden, and when night came, he hated going back to his mother’s drafty cottage.”
