“Help me get down the hall.” His voice was strained but steady. “There’s a medical storage room downstairs. We can handle this ourselves.”
We. Like I had any idea how to patch up whatever had been done to him.
But I slid my arm around his waist anyway, taking as much of his weight as I could. He was heavy, all muscle and bone and stubbornness, but we managed to get moving.
Silas followed, offering absolutely no assistance whatsoever, just padding along behind us like this was a normal evening stroll.
Useless fucker.
We made it down the corridor, then the stairs, moving in painful increments. Wickett’s breathing got more ragged with each step, but he didn’t complain. Didn’t make a sound except for the occasional sharp intake of breath when the movement was too much.
The medical storage room smelled of every wound I’d ever tended, sharp alcohol, dried herbs, the metallic promise of pain. Leaving Silas in the hall, I kicked the door shut, and the sound was too final, too much like a decision we could never take back.
He bled against my side as I helped him to the table. Each drop of blood felt like borrowed time.
“Shirt.” The word scraped out of me.
“Such sweet bedside manners.” But his fingers were already working the buttons, trembling just enough to make him vulnerable.
I turned to gather supplies because watching felt like trespassing. Wolfsbane for infection, yarrow to slow the bleeding, comfrey root for the deeper tissue damage. Still, I heard fabric whisper away from skin, heard his sharp intake of breath, pain or relief, both maybe.
When I faced him, every smart thought I’d ever had abandoned me. Silver scars wrote stories across his chest, a bibliography of violence. The fresh wound wept along his ribs, but it was the older marks that made my chest tight. Too precise. Too deliberate. Too many. Not just the marks from the countless witches he’d claimed to have killed, but more, beneath those.
“That bad?” His voice held an edge I recognized. The kind you develop when you learn young that showing hurt is showing weakness.
I shook my head, gathering water between my palms to clean the wound. “How many times have you had to use rooms like this?”
“Stopped counting.”
I stepped between his knees to reach the wound, and we both stopped breathing. The table height meant I had to look up at him, meant he had to look down at me, meant we were close enough that hiding vulnerability was nearly impossible.
“What happened?”
“My father happened.”
The water trembled in my hands. “He did this?”
“He had questions about the smuggling operation. About the ships.” Each word was careful, measured. “About where they were going after they left the bay.”
I moved water through the wound, and he hissed.
“Sorry,” I muttered, trying to be gentler even as my hands shook.
“You’ll need nightshade extract,” he said, his voice tight. “Blue bottle. Shelf behind you.”
I found it among the rows of tinctures, the glass cool against my palm. “This will probably hurt,” I warned.
“Everything hurts.”
Fair point.
I uncorked the bottle, and the sharp, acrid smell made my eyes water. The extract was thick, almost black, and when I dripped it onto the wound, Wickett’s entire body went rigid. His hands gripped the edge of the table hard enough that his knuckles went white.
“It has to sit,” he said through gritted teeth. “Five minutes. It’ll kill any infection and dull the pain enough to stitch.”
“Five minutes,” I repeated, setting the bottle aside. My hands hovered uselessly between us, not quite touching him, not quite pulling away.
The silence stretched. His breathing evened out slowly as whatever was in the nightshade extract began to work. The tension in his shoulders eased, just barely.
