“We should be with them.”
“I would prefer that,” he admitted. “But we have our own work to do, and Anayla is a good leader. Better than me. She’ll bring them home.”
“Better than you?”
I had faith in Anayla, but I couldn’t quite make sense of him saying someone else was better than he. Though I supposed he had trained her, so perhaps Fear managed to work his arrogance into confidence in his followers.
Fear didn’t answer. “I’ll fetch the Nightwalkers.”
Soon, Fear and I were facing the first Nightwalker. Riven ducked his head under the flap to enter the tent, and his gaze met mine, dark and even.
The canvas ceiling of the tent felt too low over my head, making me claustrophobic as he regarded the room where I was going to cut out the enchantment.
“How does this work?” he asked me.
“When I did it before,” I answered carefully, because I had only seen this work once, “the enchantment crystallized under the skin, and I was able to cut it out.”
“Before?” he asked sharply. “Once?”
“Once,” I admitted.
He let out a sharp huff of a laugh. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Sit on the bed, please.”
He did. There was something not quite right about the Nightwalkers, as if something essential to who they were had been cut out of them. Their every movement was deliberate, as if they did not move unless commanded. He was still in that way now. His gaze was steady somewhere beyond my shoulder.
“I’m going to need to find it first,” I told Riven. “Before I cut. It’ll feel strange.”
“I feel little,” he promised me. “Just free me.”
Fear moved behind him, ready to act if he felt more than he realized and turned dangerous under the knife. I was not concerned about the Nightwalker when Fear stood waiting.
The knife wasn’t just a blade. It searched. It pulled toward the wrongness the way water found the low ground. I had only to follow what it found and keep my hand steady.
It found the enchantment immediately.
Not the same as mine had been. Mine had been crystalline and geometric, the queen’s work done precisely and just underneath my skin. This was older. More settled, the way rot was made of the wood itself, and though I could see the lump of it pressing out through his skin now, it was buried in the flesh too.
Riven’s breath changed. Barely, just the faint catch of someone feeling something they had not expected to feel.
“We are going to need a healer,” I told Fear quietly, taking a step back.
Fear nodded and went out. A moment later, he was back. He had his hand on his belt, on the potion, but I could guess he did not want to use it unless he had to. Not when his dragon had to bleed for it.
“There’s a reason I’m first,” Riven said, sounding unoffended.
“You’ll be fine. I did it to myself.”
Riven’s gaze leapt up to mine, as if that were new and startling information. The healer came in behind, making the room crowded, then moved to Riven’s other side.
I cut.
The enchantment resisted. As I bore down, the warmth in the knife’s hilt flared into heat. Blood welled. Riven made no sound,but his hands found the blankets to either side and tore them loose.
The enchantment came loose the way old roots come loose, tearing, resistant, leaving something behind in the soil. I gripped it with my fingers as I slid the tip of the blade beneath it as an anchor. Riven made a sound for the first time, small and desperate, and I dared not look. I cut and ripped and pulled it free.
I looked down at the hard lump of the enchantment on my palm, glittering between the blood and clumps of gore. Bile rose sharp and bitter in the back of my throat. I flung the enchantment into a waiting bowl at the table. The healer was already working to fix the gap left behind in Riven’s flesh.
