It was still more than his experience.
I reached for the hilt. My fingers scraped over his as I took it in my hand, and he shifted but kept his grip on the hilt, too, stabilizing my shaking fingers on the knife but letting me lead.
“It senses the enchantment.” My words came out garbled, and Ander’s grip tightened.
I guided the tip of the knife over my skin. The same glitter was visible under my skin, near my shoulder, as before at the campsite. Ander tried to hesitate there, but I pulled the blade further down. “Not right.”
I was too tired to quite make sense. I just wanted to go back to sleep, but the wound was still pumping blood steadily despite all their efforts to seal it.
Something pulsed, agonizing, under my skin at my hip. Anayla pulled up my tunic, exposing something red and crystalized, the size of my thumb to its first knuckle. It seemed to throb in time with my wound.
“There,” I managed.
The door flew open.
Fear strode in. His hand went to his throat, and his cloak fluttered away behind him, falling to the ground. He was already pushing up his sleeves.
“You haven’t saved her yet?” His voice was rough.
“Fear.” There was a world of questions in my voice, or would have been, if it weren’t.
“I’ve got you, Cara.” He all but shouldered Ander out of his way, taking the knife from my hand.
The red throbbing thing faded back into my flesh.
“She has to hold the knife,” Anayla said. “It must be some magic that only works for mortals.”
Fear guided the cold, hard hilt back into my hand. Hand in hand, the point drifted over my skin, back to the place where it had been, and the red crystal rose to the surface, just beneath my skin.
His grip on mine hesitated. The point slipped over the surface of my skin, just barely scoring it.
“Do it,” I said, and then I drove it in. I let out a cry of pain as the tip of the point worked around the wound. Fear cursed as I tried to dig out the crystal, and then he had the crystal in his hand, blood dripping between his fingers. Wisps of magic began to leak between his fingers. The enchantment was disintegrating.
“Get her the healing potion there,” Fear ordered. Ander was already reaching for it. Fear cupped my head, tilting it back, as Ander lifted it to my lips.
My eyelids were so heavy, my eyes aching. The potion tasted bitter.
“Would you see the clan prepared for our departure?” Fear asked Anayla. “We may have to stay. We may have to fight our way out. Be ready for anything.”
“Yes, of course.”
She cast a troubled look at me, but she didn’t question Fear. She was good at reading him. She squeezed my hand. “Get some rest, my friend.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Anayla.” Fear’s voice was a whip snap. But that anger was meant for me; I knew it. “No one needs to know what almost happened to our mortal.”
“Understood.” Anayla cast us both a worried look, but she went through the door.
Then Fear’s firm hand was on my bare skin, holding me down as he spread salve over the wound. It sealed under his touch.
“You’re all right,” Ander told me, his voice warm. His fingers brushed over mine. “Be well, Cara. I’ll see you again soon.”
Fear gave the two of us a look of such open, seething something—wrath or jealousy or hurt—that I had never thought I would see from him. But Ander was just my friend. Just saying goodbye.
Ander lifted the still-bloody unmaking knife.
“I need that,” Fear told him. “I have enchantments to cut away.”
