‘Please,’ Luna begged, voice barely audible. ‘Just make it stop.’
Bisma met Xander’s eyes. ‘I’ll do the extraction; you make the potion.’
‘We have to time it properly—’ Xander began, but Bisma ignored him. She looked around to find a tourniquet, and Xander sprang into action.
He gave Luna something to help her sleep as Bisma tied the tourniquet around her arm.
‘Make that potion quick,’ Bisma ordered, picking up a scalpel. Xander was already at work, and without sparing him another glance, she put the blade against Luna’s darkened veins and cut.
The first incision was like a dam breaking loose: blood spurted up in a gush, shooting over Bisma’s hands, arms, and the front of her dress. Taken by surprise, Bisma squealed, stepping back.
‘Bis!’ Xander cried, coming to her side. His face was wild with concern as he reached for her, but she held up a bloodied hand.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. Her heart was pounding, but the extracted blood wasn’t harmful. It was warm on her skin, seeping through the fabric of her dress, but it wasn’t any hotter than blood normally was. If it was poisonous, it would have burned upon contact, since it seemed to be burning Luna from the inside.
‘Here,’ Xander said, handing her a bucket to collect the poisoned blood. Her dress was already ruined, her hands covered, but she held the bucket against Luna’s arm, drawing more incisions to release the blood, which was thick and an unnatural purple so dark it was almost black.
Luna whimpered, her face contorted with pain despite the potion Xander had fed her to put her to sleep. Bisma’s eyes burned with tears, her hands shaking as she held the scalpel over Luna’s skin. There was already a row of cuts along Luna’s arm, but Bisma hesitated to add more.
You have to, she told herself. She was already a monster, what was one more monstrous thing? Lip trembling, Bisma cut across her sister’s arm, watching as more blood flowed out. An acidic smell filled the air.
‘The potion, Xander,’ Bisma called, her voice thick. He was busy mixing it.
‘Almost done!’ he called back.
But blood was pouring from Luna’s arm freakishly fast, and Luna’s light brown skin had lost all its warmth. A gray pallor came over her, her lips becoming dry and cracked. Bisma’s stomach turned, dread seizing her.
‘Xander!’
‘Here!’
He dashed over with his mortar, the blue liquid inside splashing. Grabbing a beaker from another table, Xander filled it. Then he fed it to Luna, who swallowed it.
‘Is it working?’ Bisma asked, unsure. There was no way to tell if any of what they were doing was effective; Luna’s skin was still hot, the veins still dark. She had lost a lot of blood—too much.
‘I think it is,’ Xander said, feeding her more of the potion. ‘Look.’ He pointed to Luna’s arm. ‘It’s stopped spreading at least. Now it’s just a matter of extracting all the poison.’
But how much bloodletting would Luna survive? The fortifying potion had brought some warmth back to her skin, but it lasted only moments before she went pale again. Bisma’s entire body shook with uncertainty, with fear.
What if it didn’t work? Had she risked Luna’s life? Should they have amputated her arm? How had this even happened to begin with? Questions swarmed through her mind. She felt she was in the worst nightmare, but there was no waking from it.
‘Bis, don’t worry,’ Xander said, though even he did not seem sure. ‘I’m sure if we just keep at it …’
Xander fed her more of the potion as Bisma watched Luna’s blood pour out. She couldn’t look at anything but the blood dripping down into the bucket, splashing, a hideous sight.
Luna’sblood, her sister’s blood. Each drop felt like a prick against Bisma’s heart. Bile rose in her throat as the bucket filled up.
Then, finally—finally—the blood spilling from Luna’s arm changed from purple to ordinary scarlet, no longer thick, with none of the acidic smell.
‘I think that’s enough,’ Xander said, pressing a clean cloth against Luna’s arm. Bisma was frozen in place, unmoving. ‘Bis?’
She stared at the bucket, the contents now having fallen still.
The gruesome sight was Bisma’s only solace. The poison was out of Luna. Even as Bisma abhorred what she had done, even as she blamed herself for it, at the very least, Luna would be safe.
Her vision swam, and she wanted to collapse, but the work was not over yet.
‘We need to close the wound,’ Xander said.
