“You can brief the Council,” she said. “I will get him stabilized.”
A beat. Two.
Then the ranking Guardian bowed his head. “As you command.”
The corridor became a flurry of motion, one Guardian breaking ahead to clear the route, another unlocking a concealed passage, a third forming a protective barrier behind them. Penelope kept moving, Mingxi leaning into her, breath hitching with every other step.
He spoke once, voice thready. “Lady Penelope—”
“No, don’t call me that,” she said.
His brow knit, pain shadowing his eyes. “Then… what shall I call you?”
They reached the hidden stairwell, narrow and dark and blessedly empty. She helped him down each step slowly, carefully, feeling the tremor in his muscles. Only when they reached the bottom did she speak.
Her voice was quiet, but not soft. “Call me Poppy.”
Mingxi’s breath caught, and she sensed it was not from pain this time. Their eyes met, but only for a heartbeat. Then another ripple of pain tore through him, bending his posture.
“Poppy,” he managed.
She nodded once. “Good. Now keep breathing.”
The Guardians ushered them into a lantern-lit room carved into the old stone beneath the Hall, a secure chamber, wards thick and ancient.
The moment the door slammed shut behind them, Poppy’s control sharpened into purpose.
“Sit,” she told Mingxi, guiding him onto a cot.
He tried to remove his coat; she stopped him with a gentle but firm hand.
“I said sit, not struggle.”
He obeyed. Barely.
She tore open the fabric with a knife, revealing the wound: a jagged gash of shadow-burn and frostbite along his ribs, still bleeding steadily.
Mingxi hissed between his teeth. “You should not—”
“Be touching this?” she finished. “I know. But I trust my hands more than theirs.”
She reached for a basin, water sloshing as she dipped a cloth.
Mingxi’s gaze followed her with quiet intensity. “You should not be tending my wounds,” he said hoarsely. “It’s beneath your station. And dangerous. And—”
She pressed the cloth to his side, and he inhaled sharply.
“I decide what I do,” she said.
For a long moment, the only sound was water dripping from the cloth and Mingxi’s uneven breaths.
She could feel him watching her, really watching her. Not as the moonborn, not as the Lady Penelope Sinclair, and not as the Council’s target, but as someone who had chosen to be here, hands steady, movements sure, tending the wound he took in her place.
“Poppy,” he said again, quieter this time.
She stilled, and moonlight flickered faintly under her skin, just once.
“Yes,” she said as she kept working.
