“Let me see,” she said.
“It’s not bad.”
“You’re lying.”
Probably. I couldn’t tell anymore. The edges of my vision were starting to blur, which was never a good sign.
She reached me. Set down her rifle. Her hands went to my shirt, pulling the fabric away from the wound.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were green in the dusk, and something in them made my chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with the knife wound.
“Inside,” she said. “Now.”
I didn’t argue.
We’d thinned their numbers. Not enough.
More were coming.
And I was bleeding.
The math was getting worse.
ANHARA
Blood has a smell. Copper and salt and something else underneath, something animal. I’d learned that smell young, learned to associate it with endings.
Tonight it meant Kallum, bleeding on my kitchen table.
“Hold still,” I said.
“I am holding still.”
“You’re breathing.”
“I’ll stop if it helps.”
The cut was bad. Six inches long, curving along his ribs, deep enough that I could see the white gleam of bone in places. Another inch to the left and it would have punctured a lung. Another inch lower and it would have hit his liver.
And it wasn’t closing.
I’d lived with Torek for twelve years. Watched him seal shallow cuts in hours, seen deep gashes knit together overnight while he slept. Vinduthi healed fast. But this wound gaped open, the edges raw, no sign of the regeneration that should have already started.
“The blade was coated,” I said.
His jaw tightened. “They knew what they were hunting.”
Conclave work. Torek had come home with wounds like this twice. Compounds designed to suppress Vinduthi healing, make the damage stick. He’d been miserable for days both times, his body fighting the toxin while I did the work it should have done on its own.
“How long until it clears?”
“Hours. Maybe longer, depending on the compound.”
Hours. With reinforcements coming.
“Then we do this the slow way.” I picked up the needle. “Hold still.”
I pressed the numbing agent into the wound. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t make a sound. Just watched me with those red eyes, steady and patient, like pain was something that happened to other people.
