Milo kneels at my side. “Why? I need to treat her shoulder.”
“Just trust me.” Kelt tugs my shirt up above the wound, then pushes the wet hair from my eyes and brushes my cheek before standing to go. “Take care of her.” I watch him run after Eli, wondering when in his secret past he became capable of fighting.
Consciousness sticks around to torment me as Milo tends to my back. Thepopof a cork slipping from glass sounds above my head. Rain drips into my ear, each drop amplified.
“First I’ll pour the tincture to heal the inside of the wound, then pull.”
“Pull what?” I’m frantic and trembling, barely able to keep track of my thoughts, but he gives no further explanation before the liquid hits my skin.
I’m not sure if I yell out loud, or if it’s in my head. I scrape my nails through the dirt. He must be burning a hole straight through me. He braces himself with one hand on my back, then pulls. And this time, I know the scream makes it past my lips.
“You demented fucker!” Wind thrashes. Lightning strikes over and over.
But he yells too. “Ow!” He slams a bloody hand over his mouth, breathing through the pain, then rips it away. “I don’t know what that was, but we have to be quiet. They’ll find us. And save that talk for Eli.”
The ground shakes with the impact of dozens of fallen limbs, severed from the trusty trunks that held them for hundreds of years. Branches crack, their sharp echoes carried by the wind.
I know the language of the forest. And it’s livid.
“The woods seem as pissed as you,” Milo says.
Rapid breaths shove in and out my nose. I groan and whine, squirming in pain, my cheek in the blood-soaked dirt.
“Don’t yell again. I’m going to have them close it up,” Milo says.
Them?But I don’t even have the sense of mind to question him in time. Heavy wet blobs drop onto my shoulder blade, and it’s not the rain. Tiny teeth or maybe nails or miniature daggers sink into my skin, pulling and twisting, stabbing and tugging. I grit my teeth. The motion repeats until I’m dizzy with pain. My mind conjures a vision as its offer of escape.
Lightning strikes at my heels, chasing me as I run through the woods until my legs tire. Until my muscles lock. I turn my face to the sky and embrace the violent flashes with my arms stretched wide. Lightning jolts my chest. And stops my heart.
But it’s the pounding beat of pumping blood that brings me back, the pain I tried to escape now multiplied. I search for distractions. The splatter of rain. The cool wind. The squish of fresh mud between my fingers.
When I consider banging my head into the ground with the sole intention of slipping into darkness, the pain lessens. My breathing slows. I unclench my fists.
“The bleeding stopped,” Milo says, as though he wasn’t quite sure it was going to. “You’re all sewn up.”
I roll fully onto my side. The rain ceases to fall, and the wind calms to a swirling breeze. “The cuffs,” I say weakly.
He moves the lock stone over the cuffs. They pop open, and I immediately try to sit up.
“Hold still!” he cries, pushing me down onto my back then crying out again at the contact. He grabs his chest, recovering. “You’ll never heal like that.”
“And shoving my wound into the dirt will help? Stop touching me!”
Milo leans over my head, his untamed blonde hair hanging down, light blue shirt splattered with blood. “You need to rest.”
“Where was this tincture shit when the blitzer tore me open?” I force myself up again, but before Milo can complain, a guard appears from behind a tree and races toward him. “Watch out!”
He startles and twists, accidentally elbowing the guard in the leg and setting him off balance. It buys him half a second to get to his feet.
“Oh shit! He’s big.” Milo raises two fists and tosses them around sloppily. “Donotmess with me!” The guard laughs and goes for him again. Milo ducks out of the way. “And don’t you dare move,” he says to me as he swoops down and picks something up from the ground.
“Focus!” I yell.
The guard closes in on him and punches him in the gut. Milo groans and splashes the remaining tincture into his eyes before doubling over in pain. The guard screeches and grabs his face. “Fucking medicine freak!”
Then Eli returns. He finds my eyes in an instant, the depth of his gaze pulling me in as he drives his knife through the guard’s neck. He lets him fall, then snatches his pack up and shoves a small, dripping sack inside before sitting next to me. My heart is still going berserk from the attack, the sudden death. He leans as close as he can get without making contact, one hand sinking into the puddle of blood surrounding me.
I hate that his presence is comforting.
