She looks half dead already, and my heart races with panic as it tries to settle heavily back into my chest. Sticky blood coats her mouth and lips as though she’s been coughing it up. Streaks and splatters of crimson are drying in the light strands of her long, wild hair. The rich tan of her skin is sickly and sallow, making the smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks darken and stand out. Her tunic and pants are soaked with scarlet, and I start to question if she has any blood left in her small body.
“Skull, go get a healer,” Scorpius barks from Auset’s other side as he positions the linens from his bed around the chakram and then pushes down on the split in her abdomen.
He hurries to pack the wound and apply more pressure, as Skull soundlessly steps into a shadow and disappears. I rip my tunic off and hurry to wrap her shredded arm, ignoring the flashes of bone the deep gash reveals as I do. She writhes and whimpers against what Scorpius and I are doing to her, but there’s no avoiding it. I apply as much pressure as I can and hold her arm up to try to help with the bleeding.
“I thought you said Tilleo knew he wasn’t allowed to fuck with her anymore?” I snap at Scorpius as another pained keen from Auset sets every nerve in my body on edge.
I need to stab something. Tear into someone. Scream until my voice is gone and the rage has dulled to a low roar in my chest, but I can’t. All I can do is watch helplessly and hope with everything that she doesn’t die before Skull gets back.
“He’s fucking dead,” Scorpius snarls in answer, and he repositions his hands to keep the chakram from digging any deeper while also making sure that Auset’s intestines don’t spill out.
“Mine,” Auset gasps out. “Tilleo is mine,” she croaks more harshly, but first we need to save her, then I can go about giving her whatever it is that she wants in this world.
I drop my fangs and press my mouth to my inner wrist. Quickly, I pierce my flesh with the sharper canines, the pinch of pain a small payment for the healing I’m calling on. Blood fills my mouth, and I pull my fangs out and position my arm above her stomach. Carefully I direct the steady flow of blood to spill from me onto the circular chakram blade, and then watch as it drips down into her wounds. My blood won’t be enough to heal her completely, especially not when the damn weapon is still in her, but it can start to repair what it can, which could make some difference before the healer comes.
Skull strides out of the shadows with a lanky elderly healer in his grip. The balding fae is being carried into the room by his nape, as though the fucker was unwilling to come, or maybe Skull didn’t waste time on the invite and just grabbed him. His robes dangle around his feet, the dirty fabric swaying jerkily from Skull’s rough treatment as he shoves the healer at the table where Auset is lying.
“Fix her,” he barks, his tone filled with promises of death and agony if the healer doesn’t do exactly as commanded.
“Tilleo ordered us not to,” the healer squeaks out, and if the situation weren’t more dire, I might be impressed with the set of balls this shit must have to talk back to a member of the Order of Scorpions.
“You either start pumping her full of healing magic right this fucking second or I won’t just killyouvery slowly and very painfully, I’ll track down every member of your blood, every person you’ve ever talked to or even looked at, and I’ll do the exact same thing to them,” Scorpius seethes, and all the color drains from the healer’s wrinkled face.
He looks down at Auset, his eyes softening and his hands hesitating above her as though he doesn’t know where to begin. The entire front of her tunic is soaked in scarlet, and I realize at the same time the healer does that she might have other wounds that we can’t see.
“Skull, take her arm,” I call out, and my brother is there before the command is all the way out of my mouth. “I’ll check her for wounds up here, you fix her stomach,” I tell the healer, and he nods and starts chanting as he begins to pull the bed linens Scorpius packed from the grizzly gash in her abdomen.
Scorpius holds the chakram still, and we all work in tandem as though we’re a finely tuned team. Auset’s eyes are closed, and I think she’s passed out, the blood loss and injuries all too much for her body to handle. But when I pull a dagger from my thigh and start cutting away at her tunic, silver eyes snap open, her gaze luminescent, pained, searching.
“Hey, little moonbeam,” I soothe as I cut the blood-soaked fabric from her body, careful not to jostle anything that Scorpius and the healer are working on in her stomach.
My eyes stay fixed on hers, and I wish, not for the first time, that I wasn’t wearing this fucking glamour so she could be staring intomyeyes and not the black orbs that Scorpius’s power, his thura, morphs them into.
“You’re going to be okay,” I reassure her, and she nods once weakly, like she believes me.
She makes a fist with her good hand, squeezing it tight once before relaxing, and I reach out and grip her delicate palm in my larger callused grip.
“I’m going to check you for other wounds, is that okay?” I ask as I pinch a corner of her bloody tunic with my free hand.
She licks her dry, blood-caked lips and nods again. Wasting no time, I quickly peel the sticky top away from her skin and look down to search for stab wounds or more cuts. Her chest is wrapped, and I scan the crimson-stained fabric for puncture wounds or pooling blood, but I don’t see anything. Urgently, I look over her throat, trying to figure out where all of this blood is coming from, but I don’t see any seeping cuts or scratches or anything else that would account for all of it.
Auset cries out, and I jerk my head up to see that the healer and Scorpius are pulling the chakram from her stomach. I look away when a lake of blood pools in her abdomen and starts to form a river to the ground.
No. No. No. No. No!
Her agonized wail rips into my depths and demands that I do everything in my power never to hear that sound torn out of her again.
“Shhh,” Skull whispers soothingly as he smooths hair away from her face and tries to pull her attention away from what’s happening to her.
“It hurts,” she pants.
It breaks my fucking heart.
I’m going to track down whoever did this to her, and I’m going to rip them into tiny pieces, bit by bit. I’m going to scatter their parts across the realms so all fae know that you don’t fuck with the Order of Scorpions. No one will so much as glare her way by the time I’m done making it clear that to do so is a death sentence.
“I know, but it’ll stop soon,” Skull answers comfortingly.
The healer wipe at his sweaty head with his sleeve, the few strands of hair he has left soaking with stress and perspiration. His hand is covered in Auset’s blood, and I know it’s a sight that’s going to haunt me.
