She wrapped her arm under his massive shoulder and hoisted him up. Or, at least she tried. Gods, he was heavy. She took off some of the weight, gasping at how heavy he was, and waited for instruction.
“Where?” she wheezed, determined to help even though he was monstrous and several times her size.
The demon didn’t answer.
She pointed and directed, forcing him to come with her through the castle. Having explored most of the castle by now, she knew there were many unused guest chambers. She rapped on a random door and cracked it open, revealing a guest chamber with a four-poster bed.
She set her patient on the bed and ordered sternly, “Wait here. I’ll be back. Don’t move.”
The demon looked at her curiously, not moving an inch.
She hurried away and returned a few minutes later with supplies. She had no poultices or bandages, but she had found sheets and towels, a knife, and a bottle of brandy she had filched from the kitchens.
Why the creature was here or what importance he had to the castle was a mystery, but she sensed it was up to her to help him—she couldn’t quite explain why. Perhaps it was because he had saved her life from that red demon in the field, and now again with the lizard-demon. She felt she owed him a kindness.
Her charge sat on the mattress, his breathing laboured. Now that her adrenaline receded, she took in his rough shape. He gestured towards the brandy, and she shook her head.
He gestured again, insistently, and she passed it to him, bewildered. “I read in a book once that they used alcohol as a disinfectant in place of a healing poultice. I thought it would help against infect—”
Her babbling was cut off as he chugged the brandy. He paused, took another swig, and gave it back to her.
She grimaced and set the bottle aside. Remembering how Caspian had tended to her arm, she gently dabbed his wounds with a damp towel, not entirely sure what she was doing.
Incredulous, she watched blood wash off him, leaving his skin clear and largely unblemished. Most of the blood and grime on his arms wasn’t his, which was a surprising but small blessing.
The blood smeared across the pristine white towels. His blood was red, but darker than hers, almost black. There was a large cut on his bicep, a few shallow, half-clotted cuts on his arms and forearm, and the arrow buried in his thigh.
“Shhhh, shhhh,” she murmured when he grunted as she brushed the damp towel against a particularly large cut. “You’re okay. You’re alright.”
She cleaned his wounds and used the knife to cut strips of cloth from the bedsheet, which she planned to wrap around his arms, torso, and thigh. The cuts came out jagged, and she cringed, feeling like she was butchering Caspian’s priceless sheets.
Lying a few strips out, she held the damp towel against his arm. It seemed logical to apply pressure and try to stop the bleeding as much as possible before she bandaged it.
She decided to practice her bandaging skills on the wound on his arm before dealing with the larger one on his leg. She eyed the arrow sticking out of the meat of his thigh warily—it looked more complicated to clean and bandage.
Maybe he would thank her for her efforts, and she would finally have an ally in this castle besides Fiza. The idea cheered her on as she gritted her teeth against the nausea that rolled through her stomach from the sight of his wounds.
“Do you have a name?”
No answer.
“What is it you do for the castle?”
A slow blink was all she received.
She rinsed the towel in clean water and wrung it over the wound on his arm, spilling water over his broken flesh until it ran clear instead of black and brown with soot and muck. She did it one more time, not caring about the water on the flagstones below. She could mop them after.
“Ready?”
He gave no indication, and she prayed for any gods that were listening that she wasn’t about to be struck as she poured brandy over his wounds. The demon grunted, the only sign it had stung.
“Er. Sorry.”
She wrapped his arm with strips of the bedsheet, but his blood seeped through. So she cut a square of a towel, applied pressure to the wound, and re-bandaged the sheets around his arm tighter to staunch the bleeding.
“You saved me from the demon in the field.” She said, not knowing if he understood Common at all. “I remember you.”
She scurried back to the bathing chamber to refill the bucket with clean water and returned to his side. Elizabeth poured a bit of water around the arrowhead and cleaned around it.
