So when Emillie pried the wound open with the retractors, Dahlia let out a bark and animalistic scream of pain that buried into her soul. This was not a dhemon with no name, a fighter with whom she could not speak—this wasDahlia. Dahlia, who traveled with them, laughed with them, ate with them, and kept watch over them. Dahlia, who was honored by the fae as one of their most successful assassins, who alerted them of Loren’s approach to the tomb of Anwenja, who protected them.
“I am sorry,” Emillie gasped and eased the tweezer-like tool into the wound. They slipped from the blade broken inside her, refusing to grip on the smooth, bloodied metal. She cursed andtried again, nearly smacking Revelie in the face as the other Caersan leaned in to soak up the blood with a clean cloth.
Again and again, she tried to pinch the metal, only for it to cause even more bleeding. However the blade had broken, her body had caused a sort of suction that prevented it from being plucked free with ease. Setting the tool down, Emillie sent a prayer to Keon and Silve before slowly sliding her own fingers into her friend’s chest cavity.
Dahlia squirmed, howling from the agony and drawing the attention of the other attendants in the tent. A dhemon woman hurried over and knelt beside Revelie, holding the wolf down by the neck and shoulder as her friend focused on keeping the hips steady.
“Almost,” Emillie said as she wiggled the broken piece loose, doing her best to ignore the way her lycan friend tried to thrash before finally giving in to the pain and losing complete consciousness.
When at last the blade pulled free, Emillie’s heart leaped with excitement…then dropped in pure terror. The tip was gone.
“Fuck,” Revelie breathed at the same moment the dhemon woman cursed in her own language. Both sets of eyes landed on the missing chunk of metal, still lodged somewhere in Dahlia’s side.
Turning her attention back to the wound, Emillie almost let out a scream as the lycan’s body began to heal, effectively trapping the rest of the blade somewhere inside. “I need a knife—quickly!”
Without a word, Revelie launched across the tent, skirting around the others to bring back a small, thin blade meant for such delicate surgeries. If there had been one thing Phulan warned them against, it was leavinganythinginside the wounds before they healed. Doing so could cause more damage internally that they would have no idea about, and it could,ultimately, lead to death if the patient’s body was unable to push it out on its own.
“No, no, no.” Emillie sliced back through the healing flesh and shoved the retractors deeper to hold it apart so it could not heal. More blood poured out, and Revelie soaked it away the best she could.
The dhemon woman lifted one of Dahlia’s eyelids, then said a single common tongue word, “Breathing?”
Indeed, Dahlia’s rapid breaths had turned shallow and labored. Her chest hardly moved, and when Revelie dug her fingers under the wolf’s fur at the neck in search of a pulse—a skill vampires were acutely good at—she bit her lip with worry.
“Do not say it,” Emillie commanded as she plunged the tool back into Dahlia’s chest in search of the broken bit of blade. “Do not say it.”
“She has lost a lot of blood,” Revelie said, her voice quiet and wavering. “She is no vampire, Em.”
But Emillie shook her head. “She willnotdie.”
The tweezers bumped something hard, and she screwed up her face in concentration as she navigated the tool blindly through the mess of blood and a body attempting to heal itself. When she finally grasped the bit of metal, she forced herself to move slowly. Too fast, and she would lose it again. Too slow, and she may not have enough time.
“Please, Dahlia,” she whispered, but the lycan’s breaths only grew more hitched and infrequent. “Please, Dahlia…”
The blade tip appeared, tumbling free of the tweezers onto the cot beside the lycan, where Emillie discarded the tool as well. Next, she pried the retractors from her friend’s chest and watched, waiting for the healing to begin.
But it never did.
“Dahlia.” Emillie stared at the wound, no longer trying to stitch itself together. She turned her wide eyes up to Revelie, then the dhemon woman. “No…”
Revelie stared back, fingers still on the lycan’s neck and eyes brimming with tears. “Em, I am sorry.”
The dhemon woman swallowed hard and sat back on her heels, her face drawn with a detached grief that Emillie had somehow convinced herself would be her throughout this entire endeavor. After treating so many soldiers whom she did not know—after sitting with those whom she knew would die—she thought herself immune to the pain that accompanied losing a friend.
They had not been fast enough.Shehad not been fast enough.
Emillie sat back, hands covered in her friend’s blood, her final shrieks of agony echoing again and again in her mind. Staring around the tent, the cries of the injured and dying crashed against her as a strange numbness gripped her body. The dhemon woman stood, laid a hand on Emillie’s shoulder, then moved on to the next patient. Revelie said something, but the words did not register. When she did not respond, her friend, too, stood and moved on.
A moment later, Phulan appeared at her side, took her by the shoulders, and guided her back to her feet. “Sit in the back. The day’s battle is over.”
Each step Emillie took was slow and jerky. Unsteady. She stumbled to the back of the tent where their chairs sat vacant. No one else rested. The world continued on for them, unfazed as they tended to their patients and sent those able back out to collect more of the injured.
But time stopped for Emillie. One moment, she knelt at Dahlia’s side, and the next, she sat at the back of the tent, watching the others she had worked tirelessly beside move from cot to cot with bandages, salves, and flutters of magic.
They moved as she remained still, the horrible truth sliding into focus: Dahlia had been her friend, but each of those dead bodies they had carried out of the tent when the healing was not enough…those had been someone’s friends. Their family members. Their sisters. Brothers. Mothers. Fathers. They fought, like Dahlia, for something greater than themselves—for monarchs and land and gods.
Emillie had fought, too, to keep them alive.
She fought…and she failed.
