The wound is closed. New skin where the ash was. Pink and raw but whole.
"Elena, I need medical transport at the hub. Julian is down. Fourth floor. Hub security casualties too."
"Loading the transport now," Elena says.
I let go of Julian's wrist. The floor tilts. The lights above me are too bright and everything is too loud and my arms are shaking from the elbows down.
I try to stand. My legs don't cooperate.
Maximus's arm goes around my waist. His other hand cups the back of my head, pressing my face into his shoulder. His shirt is cold against my cheek. He smells like blood and concrete dust.
I grip his shirt with both hands. He pulls me tighter. His mouth finds my hair. Neither of us lets go until Elena's team rounds the corner.
Julian is loaded onto a stretcher. He's conscious, protesting, his Scottish accent thickening as Elena ignores him. She puts a hand on his chest. She says something quiet. He stops talking.
They carry him out. I look down at my hands. Still shaking.
The edges of my vision go dark. Maximus's voice, somewhere far away, saying my name.
Then nothing.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Celeste pulled the healing through the bond to put Julian back together, and she pulled the strength for it out of me. But the work was hers. She spent everything she had and then spent what she took from me. She didn't stop until the wound closed.
Her hands are shaking when Elena's team rounds the corner.
I have her against me, one arm at her waist, my hand spread over the back of her skull. I hold on while they lift Julian onto the stretcher. He's conscious. He's arguing. Elena sets a palm flat on his chest and says something low, and he stops. The burn at his temple is closed, pink and raw where the ash was, new skin grown over the bone.
They carry him out. She watches them go. Then the shaking stops because there's nothing left in her to shake with.
"Celeste."
Her knees give. The bond narrows under my ribs to a thread, the read it carries down to almost nothing. I catch her before she falls.
I lift her. She's warm against me. Warmer than she should be. The healing did that, or the drain after it. There's a witch loose in this building, a device that may be an explosive, and a man on a stretcher who took a strike meant for her. Her skin can wait.
Marcellus meets me at the stairwell.
"Go. I have the device. Seraphina's waiting for it." His eyes drop to the woman in my arms and come back up. "What happened to her?"
"She healed Julian. It took everything she had."
"Then take her home, Maximus."
I nod.
I run. Midtown blurs past and none of it registers. Her heartbeat against my chest, in time with mine, steady. That's all I track. The compound gate. The corridor. Our room. I lay her down and pull the blanket to her shoulder and I sit in the chair beside our bed.
The dawn comes up gray through the eastern windows. The curtains are open. The light crosses the floor and reaches the bed and touches her face and keeps going. Neither of us flinches from it.
I watch her breathe. Her lips are slightly parted. Her hair is across the pillow, dark against the white. One hand is curled loosely beside her face. The crescent mark on her chest is still, no pulse, no glow, just the faint crimson edge visible above the neckline of her shirt. She looks young when she sleeps. Younger than she ever lets herself look when she's awake.
She sleeps through the whole day. I stay where I am.
It's dusk when she comes back. The bond thickens, the read returning, and the first thing it carries is fear. Her name reaches her mouth before her eyes open.
