“Well, you did knock me off my . . .” I begin, but my voice trails off. The scraver is bleeding from a long wound under his ribs. It looks older, because the edges are crusted with scabs that look infected, though knocking me off my horse probably reopened it.
He’s bruised, too—at least, I think he is. His gray skin is mottled with darker splotches along his ribs and down one arm.
“You’re hurt,” I say in surprise. Rain continues trickling through the trees, but like before, Nakiis is all but pinning me to the ground. “Did someone shoot you? Let me up. I can help you.”
He casts a glance at Malin, and I add, “He won’t shoot you either. Tell him, Mal.”
“I won’t shoot,” he says flatly, but it’s not very convincing.
Nakiis sits back on his heels while I pull another twig out of my armor and sit up. I’m probably lucky he didn’t break my neck.
Now that I can look at him fully, I notice that wound on his ribs doesn’t look like an arrow strike anymore. It looks like a slice from a blade. His trousers are streaked and stained, too. They look like they’ve been patched and repaired in several spots. He’s also missing one of the weapons he wore the last time I saw him.
I lift a hand and nod toward the slice on his chest. “Do you want me to heal it?”
“You cannot.”
My eyebrows go up. “Iishellasan steel?”
“Yes.”
I glance at the empty sheath along his thigh. “Did someone take it from you?”
“Xovaar.”
He doesn’t elaborate further, and we stare at each other in the rain for a bit. When I shift my weight, his entire frame goes tense, his wings flickering like he’s ready to take flight.
“Relax,” I say. “At least let me fix the bruising.”
When he doesn’t move further, I roll onto my knees and reach for his arm, where the worst of the bruising is. The first arrow wound from Malin is almost fully closed, but it’s still swollen and hot like it’s also infected. The sparks and stars flare in my blood, but like before, it’s obvious when healing begins, because the tension eases out of his frame.
“What happened?” I say, as the mottled bruising begins to melt away.
He stares back at me wordlessly, and an icy wind whips between us. I shiver—then realize the magic in this one feels different from his. I let go of his arm and scrabble to get a hand on a weapon, but Nakiis slaps a hand around my wrist, his claws digging in.
“No,” he says. “She is with me.”
But on the path, Malin already has an arrow nocked.
Nakiis glares up at him. “If you loose that arrow, soldier, I will not leave a wound for you to heal.”
“I’m not shooting!” Malin snaps. “But what was that?”
My heart is still pounding, but I stare back at Nakiis. “She.There’s another scraver here?”
“Yes.”
I cast my gaze upward, into the trees. At first, I see nothing, but it’s only because I’m looking for a dark shape, a pair of night-colored wingslike his. But then I spot a shimmer of purple well overhead, and I swallow.
“I see her,” says Malin, and Nakiis growls.
“Put away your bow,” I tell him, hoping I’m making the right choice.
He does.
The scraver is too far to see much detail at all, but I remember a scraver with purple markings on her skin crouching beside little Nora when the queen helped heal her injuries.
“She was in Briarlock,” I say.
