Fingers touched his face, but he barely felt them as his head was pushed up and back. Something was shoved between his lips, and cool liquid trickled over his tongue, a blooming sort of warmth following in its wake. And perhaps, by the grace of Callisto herself, he still had seconds on the clock, because Vanya could still move his throat, and he swallowed the chance given to him.
Three
SOREN
When Soren walked into the damaged train carriage, he hadn’t expected to come across any survivors, much less the Imperial crown prince. Neither did he expect to need to administer an antidote to mourning berries, but at least he had the chemicals available to hastily mix it up. Wardens carried cure packs for others, not themselves, and this wasn’t the first time Soren had to reverse a poisoning for some unfortunate person.
The prince was breathing, shallowly, but his lungs were working. Which meant the antidoteshouldreverse the damage, if they were lucky and the stars shined on them.
Soren removed the vial from the prince’s lips, keeping hold of his face with bare fingers. He’d removed his gloves before touching skin, not wanting to transfer any poison from his fight with the revenants to a man he was trying to save.
His fingers were pale against the prince’s darker skin as he kept the prince’s head up so he could swallow without choking. Soren studied him with a critical eye, counting his breaths. Dark lashes fluttered as his eyelids twitched, expression frozen from the poison that afflicted him. His black hair was cut short, but not short enough that Soren couldn’t see the tight curls in the strands and the cut along the side of his head that still bled.
His white robes with their brilliant gold-and-crimson embroidery across the shoulders and chest were stained from ash and blood and smelled of smoke. His loose trousers weren’t much better. The gold ranking medallion with its roaring lion head hung askew from his throat, rising and falling at deeper intervals as his chest began to expand with more ease.
Soren sighed in relief, watching the prince come back to life in slow increments. Quiet killer was a gradually attacking poison, but the reversal was always quicker. Soren never looked away from the prince’s face until dark brown eyes stared back at him.
“You with me?” Soren asked.
“Hmm,” the prince mumbled, mouth twisting into a grimace. “I’m going to be sick.”
His voice was deep, and he spoke with a clarity not usually found after a poisoning, but Soren figured this probably wasn’t the first time the prince had suffered through something of the sort.
Gripping the prince’s shoulders, Soren hauled him away from the velocycle. He braced the other man with an arm curled around his chest, letting him expel whatever was in his stomach onto the ground beside them. It wasn’t much, and when he finished, Soren carefully eased him back up against the velocycle.
The prince wiped a shaky hand across his mouth, blinking rapidly as he stared at Soren. His pupils weren’t quite right, but his focus was better than Soren thought it would be, given the circumstances. “Warden.”
“Yes,” Soren said as he set the empty vial on the ground. “I go by Soren.”
“Vanya,” the prince said. “Vanya Sa’Liandel.”
“I know who you are.”
Wardens might not have any presence in the governments of Maricol, but they all knew who was in charge of the countries whose borders they monitored. The prince hummed tiredly, eyes falling shut. Soren studied him for a moment longer before glancing over his shoulder at the wreckage, the bodies of the dead, and the growing fire. He grimaced, turning back around to find the prince’s piercing attention on him.
“What’s wrong?” Vanya asked.
“The derailment caused a fire. It’s spreading. We need to go.”
Soren had half a tank of fuel left, enough to hopefully outrun the start of a wildfire that was growing behind him. At least the wildfire would take care of the bodies.
Vanya’s head tipped to the side, gaze focusing beyond Soren. He lifted a hand, fingers twitching, and Soren watched starfire pool in Vanya’s palm, the aether tugging at his awareness in a way he’d long been told to ignore.
He shoved the old, aching want deep, watching as Vanya curled his fingers inward to make a fist. Fire gutted out behind them with a burst of sound, like hundreds of candles going out at once. When Soren looked back, the fire threatening to lick at his velocycle’s wheels as they rode off had disappeared. Only smoke remained, acrid in the air, and the breeze was quick to pull it into the sky.
Vanya’s arm dropped to the ground, breathing ragged. “The fire won’t be a problem.”
Soren studied the sweat beaded on his brow, mingling with the blood there, and sighed. “I need to check you over.”
Vanya’s fingers twitched, but he made no move to stop him. Soren took that as permission and set about patting the prince down with firm hands, checking for broken bones and other hurts. Aside from the cut to the head and growing bump there, Vanya only hissed when Soren’s hands pressed too hard on his ribs.
“They don’t feel broken,” Soren said, listening to him breathe.
“Bruised.”
Considering the state of the train carriage Soren had found him in, that was to be expected. He was lucky, actually, that the wounds sustained weren’t so terrible. A possible concussion, bruised ribs, and a wrenched ankle discovered when Soren got him standing were the only physical ailments aside from the poisoning.
Vanya swayed on his feet once he was vertical, and Soren gripped his broad shoulders firmly to keep him from keeling over. They weren’t of height—Soren’s eyes were level with Vanya’s mouth—but the prince didn’t have the look of one leading a soft life. There was muscle beneath his expensive clothes, and the calluses on his fingers and palms didn’t lend themselves to a life spent without a weapon in hand.
