‘What can I do?’I asked her frantically. Ronnie wasn’t there, and I wasn’t sure she would even know what to do with this type of injury anyway. We’d never dealt with a breeder woundbefore.
Dawn motioned to the birthing pools.‘If anything on sky home could help him, it would be the birthing pools. They help repair the nurturers afterlabor.’
If that water healed Galadria hoohahs after giving birth, then maybe it could heal his arm. Suck out the poison orsomething.
“Brisk, help me get him in the water!” I shouted, as I hooked my hands under Damien’s armpits and hauled himup.
Brisk grabbed his legs and then we were walking. My ribs were jabbing my lungs with each breath, more so now that I was carrying Damien’s unconscious form, but I pushed through the pain. Once we got to the edge of the pool, I slowly lowered him inside. His back was against my chest, his head lolled over by my neck. The second his arm hit the pool, it started to fizz like soda water. My eyes flicked up to Brisk, but heshrugged.
Dawn came to the edge of the water with Joan. Her purple coat shimmered in the moonlight as she looked down onme.
‘Your human will be okay. The birthing pools transmuteimpurities.’
‘Transmute impurities’ better be fancy language for ‘sucks outpoison.’
I was too tired to think right then, so I just nodded to her. The fizzing water was a brownish red, I assumed because it was mixed with his blood. I was at a total loss on what to do. My eyelids felt heavy and my right side, where my rib was cracked, was killingme.
Damien’s head moved then and I sighed in relief.ThankGod.
“What the hell?” he said, looking at the water aroundhim.
“I’m here. We’re healing your arm. The breeders have poison in their claws, apparently,” I stated from behindhim.
He looked back at me. “The last thing I remember was seeing this floating island and then… blackness. But Kit… Idreamed.”
At his words, I froze. “What do youmean?”
He looked misty-eyed. “I dreamed of my parents at our old lake house. They were smiling, and Jeremy was there. I… I dreamed like it was the olddays.”
That must’ve been because his real body was in the Dream Wars, and not aduplicate.
Incredible. I hadn’t dreamed in tenyears.
“I’m coming in to patch you up, brother,” Brisk said, and we broke our locked gazes as he jumped into the water. I could see the small skin stapler in Brisk’s hand.Ouch.
Damien’s eyes flicked to the stapler, and I saw the moment he toughened up. He clenched his jaw and stood a bit taller in thewater.
“You think all the poison is out?” I asked Brisk. After Ronnie, he was the next best thing to amedic.
He inspected Damien’s arm and then pulled it out of the water, smelling it. “I think so, and he’s conscious, so that’s good. I don’t want him to bleed to deaththough.”
Umm yeah, I don’t want thateither!
I was no longer supporting Damien in any way; he was standing on his own two feet, and had his forearm held beforeBrisk.
“Do you want a one two three?” Briskasked.
Damien shook his head. “Just doit.”
With gloved hands, Brisk pinched the open gash, which caused Damien to take a sharp inhale of breath, and then Brisk gave him three quick staples in rapid succession. After he did the first gash, he moved on to the othertwo.
Once they were done, Damien looked white as a sheet but otherwiseokay.
“You need to rest,” he told me, and I realized my eyelids were lowered. I was swaying in the water, I was so tired. I was going to pass out without some coffee orsomething.
“Here? Is that safe?” I asked him. I knew we were safe there, but sleeping in the Dream Wars sounded weird. But my body was shutting down, so Inodded.
I shuffled out of the pool and told the team I was going to get some rest, showing them to my little den. They agreed to keep watch, and when I woke we would fly somewhere that hopefully wasn’t over the Atlantic and gohome.
