James handed Juniper a small cloth. “For your shoulder. Staunch the wound until it stops bleeding.”
She pressed the cloth to her shoulder and squinted at him, her brow knit with a little frown.
“Nate’s hurt too.” Sparks gave him a gentle push toward James and spoke to him with an easy familiarity. “Not that he’d tell you.”
James glanced at him. “May I?”
Nate extended his arms and studied Alden while James shone a crank-light on the throbbing wounds at his wrists. Alden’s lips were pale, and his skin had gone ashen. He’d always been thin, but it was worse now—his cheekbones too sharp and the skin around his eyes papery. Even gut-stabbed and bleeding out, Reed hadn’t looked this bad.
“You and the girl need salve and bandages. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll retrieve them,” James said.
Nate squinted in the dark, finding Brick already snoring with her mouth wide open. He wondered how long they’d been running since they left the bank, never sure where they’d find a place to stop and close their eyes. Sparks had disappeared to somewhere else in the house. Juniper curled up on the chair, very still but awake. She clutched her shoulder, and her pale eyes watched him from beneath a fall of hair. She wasn’t restrained in any way, but by the way she’d stumbled and dragged her feet, she wasn’t getting far if she tried. They’d have to figure out what to do with her later.
Legs trembling, Nate sank to a crouch beside Alden’s bed. He touched Alden’s hair. The rain and wind had blown it to a snarled mess.
Reed sat on the floor on the other side of the bed. “Maybe the Servants will have something to help him,” he offered.
It was a wish, and nothing more. The truth buzzed like an insect in Nate’s ear. He rearranged the sheet over Alden, his knuckles brushing against Alden’s chest where his robe hung open. “He’s cold. He feels like stone.”
Alden’s labored breath made a low, unsettling sound.
Nate’s fingers trembled until he curled them into fists. “He needs his hairbrush.” Alden couldn’t die like this, not with his hair a mess. Not when he’d treasured it, worn it like finery around his shoulders.
Reed said nothing.
James came over with a small jug of water and a basket. “I’m afraid this is all I can spare. You’ll have to share it.”
Reed took the jug and woke the girls up to distribute water quietly, leaving James and Nate at Alden’s bed beneath a broken pendant light that cast a jagged shadow in the candlelight.
James crouched beside Alden and gave Nate a knowing look. “He isn’t simply sick, is he?”
Nate shook his head.
“Was he beaten?”
Nate’s throat clenched as he tried not to picture that. “Yes.”
James lowered the sheet and carefully opened Alden’s robe. Nate gasped. Deep-purple bruises mottled Alden’s belly. The skin had gone hard and shiny in places.
“Gods,” Nate whispered. He pressed his hand to his middle absently, struck by how much pain Alden must have been in as he’d staggered around his shop, feral and feverish.
“He’s bleeding inside,” James said. He raised the sheet and tucked it around Alden’s thin shoulders. “The stillness will come in a day or so. I’m sorry.”
Nate felt like James had punched him in the chest. He’d expected a long examination, like his careful dissection of broken tickers. “Is he going to wake up?”
“He may or may not. There’s no telling the state he’ll be in.” James took Nate’s hands, one after the other, quickly coating the worst of the cuts on his wrists with a sticky salve. He wrapped them with soft, clean cloth. “Speak to him calmly and tell him that you’re close by. That’s the most any of us can hope for in the end.”
“You’re not staying?” Nate asked, panic rising in his throat.
James gave him a gentle smile and adjusted his glasses. “The last few days have been unkind to the Withers. We nearly have a full house tonight and less help than usual. Another den nearby was lost in a fire, and we’ve been helping them set up a temporary shelter.”
Nate nodded, trying to follow along. It didn’t make sense. And it didn’t matter. Not anymore.
“If I get more help, I’ll send them by to check on him,” James said, approaching Juniper carefully—as if he expected her to take off running. He held his hands out and waited for her to nod before he coated the bite on her shoulder with the same salve. “My advice is to sleep while you can in case he wakes up in a state.”
“Wait—there’s one more thing.” Nate rubbed his palms at his face, willing his thoughts to unsnarl. His body screamed with exhaustion. He wanted so badly to close his eyes with Alden and forget about this nightmare. “Does anyone here have a hairbrush?”
James gathered his salves. “Yes. I believe so. I’ll bring it in after I finish my rounds,” he said, soft and kind.
