Cuatro.
Cinco.
I open my eyes and shove the terror and the failure into a dark box in the back of my mind, and I lock it down.
I turn away from the empty baskets and walk straight toward Mira.
“What do you need?” I ask, a bit surprised I’m able to keep my voice flat. It sounds unrecognizable.
Mira doesn’t look up from the warrior’s chest. “Firebloom. As much as you can grind. We’re going through it too fast. And I need someone to hold Trecia down. She’s thrashing, tearing her stitches.”
Stitches?
My chest hurts as I head toward the sick bay.
Trecia is writhing on a blood-stained mat. I stop dead. The entire right side of her face is a shredded, pulpy ruin. Four deep, diagonal gouges tear from her temple down past her jaw.
A wave of guilt drops straight into my stomach. Hot tears instantly blur my vision as a sob tears out of my throat, but I choke it back down. I sent her down that tunnel alone. I should have gone with her. I should have dragged her straight down into the dark and made absolutely sure she kept moving instead of trusting her not to freeze up again. If I had just taken the risk and stayed with her, she wouldn’t be in pieces right now.
I drop to my knees beside her, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat and pushing back the tears threatening to fall. I grab her thrashing shoulders, pinning her to the stone with my entire body weight. She screams, a raw, rough sound of pure panic, fighting my grip with terrifying strength. Mira moves in fast with a bone needle and a fresh piece of hide thread. I look away. I stare at the cave ceiling, my jaw locked so tight my teeth hurt, holding my friend down while she is pieced back together.
When it’s finally done, when Trecia’s face is tightly wrapped in bandages and she goes limp from sheer exhaustion, I push myself back up.
I don’t pause. I stagger over to the grinding stone, drop to my knees, and start pouring dried firebloom leaves into the bowl, bringing the stone pestle down to grind them to dust.
I scoop a handful of the finished paste and turn, my hand rising toward the sluggishly bleeding wound on Kol’s ribs. He is standing still right behind me, like a dark starry shadow, not moving.
Before I can apply the paste, he catches my wrist. His grip is unyielding.
I look up at his feral, black-eyed gaze. “Kol, you’re bleeding. You need?—”
He doesn’t even look at his own chest. He releases my wrist and jerks his chin toward the wounded warriors groaning on the floor.
“Them.” The projection hits my mind. It is an absolute command. I blink, swallowing hard.
I push down another lump in my throat, turn my back on him, and step seamlessly into the terrifying void Alex left behind. For the next three hours, I do not stop moving.
“Hold him,” Mira barks, pointing to a lean warrior who is bleeding freely from a serrated shadowmaw bite on his calf.
I press my hands down on his thick thigh, using my entire body weight to pin his leg to the stone as Mira applies the stinging paste. The warrior flinches, his body jerking against my hold, his muscles locking in agony. Kol steps up directly behind me, his enormous shadow completely swallowing the warrior. Immediately, the warrior stills.
I lean in, dropping my face level with the injured warrior’s.
“Do not move that leg,” I say, my voice a dead, dangerous monotone. “Either you hold still, or I ask Pam to sit beside you and sing the entire soundtrack toLes Misérables, and considering her current emotional distress, it will take at least three hours. Choose.”
He might not understand the words, but he understands the tone. He freezes, his amber eyes wide, darting from my exhausted expression to the wrathful warlord looming directly over my shoulder.
Across the cavern, Pam is kneeling next to Kelvan. She glances over, catches my eye, looks at Kol, and silently mouths:He should be afraid.
Mira’s cracked, blood-stained lips twitch for a fraction of a second. Nobody laughs. The situation is too horrific. But the air in the immediate vicinity eases just a little bit.
It’s the scream that shatters the temporary quiet.
It is piercing, raw, and hysterical. It comes from the far side of the sick bay, where I just left Trecia recovering.
I drop the firebloom paste and sprint. Kol is instantly right on my heels, an inescapable avalanche of muscle.
Trecia is backed into the deepest corner of the rock wall, her knees pulled to her chest. Her eye is wide, unblinking from beneath the bandages wrapped around her face, and devoid of sanity. She is screaming.
