“Make me,” Karis mumbles, his lips white.
Ronan perches on the carriage seat and carefully repositions Karis. He tries not to jostle him too much, but the wound is right at the side of his waist, and even the slightest movement forces out a whimper. Each stifled sound of pain echoes through Ronan’s soul.
He pulls Karis up against his chest for support. Blood soaks warm through his shirt, connecting them. Karis’s head rolls back against his shoulder. Ronan unscrews the first healing potion, and the scent of blackberries fills the cramped carriage. The bottle contains just a few ounces of clear liquid.
“Can you drink this?” Ronan asks. When his jaw moves, Karis’s soft, sweat-damp hair tickles his skin.
“Yeah,” Karis gasps, but his bloodstained hand trembles too much when he reaches out.
Ronan brings the bottle to Karis’s lips. Even as he hears Karis swallowing and feels the faint magical shimmer as the potion begins work, he doesn’t relax.
A pained, high-pitched noise keens from Karis’s throat. He tenses, completely rigid, then collapses bonelessly in Ronan’s lap. His head falls back on Ronan’s shoulder. After a few shuddering breaths, he turns his sweat-damp forehead into Ronan’s bare neck and mumbles aggrievement into Ronan’s skin. “It smells like blackberries, so I thought it would taste good. But it doesn’ttastelike blackberries.”
Ronan forces himself to joke back, to play along with Karis’s apparent coping strategy, when all he wants to do is panic. “That’s Dansa’s fault, not mine.” He drops the empty bottle on the carriage floor. “Let me check the injury.”
He’s barely looked at it yet. Rushing to get the potion down Karis’s throat was more important—and he was too scared, he’ll admit in the darkest corners of his mind. Now, though, he needs to see if they need the second healing potion.
Karis doesn’t help much. He moves his arm out of the way, and that’s it, as Ronan works his shirt from his belt and slides it up. His lean waist is wet with far too much blood. There’s a break in the soft skin, a hole a few inches to the side of his navel. The muscle is already knitting together, the worst of the internal injuries fixed and the outrush of blood slowed, but a single potion won’t close the rest of the flesh wound.
Ronan reaches for the second potion, but Karis grabs his arm. “We should save it.”
He’s right, even if Ronan wants to fix him right now. As if erasing the last trace of the wound will absolve him of responsibility for getting Karis hurt, for dragging him into this mess to begin with. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, inhaling the scent of Karis’s hair, then moves. Props Karis carefully upright on the carriage seat. Karis grabs his shoulder and pulls him in for a kiss. His breath tastes of blood, and when Ronan breaks away, he finds Karis’s eyes shining with inexplicable satisfaction.
“I need to wrap you up,” Ronan says roughly. “Behave.”
Still chalk-white beneath his freckles, Karis pouts but complies. He allows Ronan to cut his ruined shirt from his body, saving him the effort of lifting his arms too high. Ronan moves far more slowly, far more carefully than he needs to. He knows this knife well—but he has terrifying, visceral proof of Karis’s fragility before him. The wound will already leave a scar. Ronan refuses to damage him even the slightest bit more.
Kneeling in front of Karis, he wipes the blood away as best as he can. They don’t have enough spare water in the carriage, so he rubs Karis’s stomach with the clean remnants of his shirt. In any other circumstance, he would savor the warm, smooth flesh flinching under his touch. Then Karis slumps forward against him, allowing him to wipe down his back too. The nearly-healed exit wound makes Ronan’s stomach flip with nausea. “Was it an arrow?”
“Yeah,” Karis says into his shoulder.
Ronan reaches for the bandage roll. He’s cleaned up as much blood as he can. “Can they track you by blood?”
“Hm. Don’t think so.”
Karis remains still and pliant as Ronan wraps the bandages around his waist. Again and again, his arms cross behind Karis’s back in a mockery of an embrace. Ronan forces himself to focus on the firm, careful pull of the cotton, flattening it out, getting the tension right. The task gives him space to steady himself. As if he’s bandaging his own heart along with Karis’s waist.
But when he’s done, Karis straightens up and rests a bloody hand on Ronan’s knee. He looks into Ronan’s eyes and says, “There wasn’t just one arrow.” His voice is stronger now. The thread of casual arrogance sends the coin of Ronan’s heart spinning all the more madly. “There were two.”
“Two?” Ronan’s blood runs cold. He looks down, searching—if he missed—
Karis drapes his arms gingerly over Ronan’s shoulders. He’s still too pale, but there’s a fierce, terrifying light in his eyes. “I deflected the other one,” he boasts, “before it hit you.”
The coin of Ronan’s heart lands dagger-up. Cold spreads through his chest, and all the bandages unravel inside him.
“Next time,” Ronan says, “let it hit me.”
***
After resting, the journey back to the barn takes three more hours of ducking through shops, holding their breath past guards, and backtracking through gardens and alleys. The streets of Melody are awash with shouting soldiers rather than song—but not as many as there could be. Enough soldiers have been filtered away, chasing after the leads Ronan and Karis spent the last few days planting.
By the time they reach the barn, Ronan is exhausted. His worry for Karis is a demon’s curse gnawing his bones, even as Karis grows brighter and more pleased with every narrow escape. As if he isn’t weak from blood loss, as if he doesn’t wince when Ronan pulls him too quickly into an alley’s shadow.
Relief crashes over Ronan’s shoulders when he closes the barn door. He leans back against it, eyes closed, and simply breathes.
A warm body presses against him. Slim fingers wind through his hair, tugging his head downwards. Ronan opens his eyes to see Karis glowing with triumph.
“We made it,” Karis says, almost laughing in delight. He rises on his toes to whisper against Ronan’s lips. “You should probably check my bandages.”
