"Julian."
"Alive. He's alive because of you."
She focuses on me. "I felt him dying. The magic was eating him."
"It was. You stopped it."
"How is he?"
"His eye." I won't let her hear it from anyone else. "The strike went into his head. You closed the wound and brought the skin back. But the magic reached his left eye before you stopped it. Seraphina says what it did there is beyond what your healing could reach."
Her jaw tightens. Whatever is moving behind her expression, she doesn't let it out.
"I should have been faster."
"The magic did that. Not you." A beat. "He would do it again. So would you."
She tries to sit up. Her arms don't hold her. I put my hand between her shoulder blades and take the weight.
"Rest," I tell her.
She earned the rest. I feel her go under again through the bond, the pull of her easing, ordinary. I sit until her breathing evens out. Then I go to find Julian.
The medical wingsmells like antiseptic and cold steel. Elena has her station set up at the far end, monitors and charts and the labeled blood bags in the glass-front refrigerator, each one dated and typed in her careful handwriting. The lights are low. The cot nearest the window is Julian's.
He's in the chair beside the cot. The tablet is balanced on one thigh. A black patch covers his left eye. The strap cuts a line across his temple where the new skin is still pink.
He reaches for a stylus on the side table. His hand goes wide by an inch, fingers closing on air before they find it. He adjusts without looking at me. Picks it up. Marks something on the tablet screen.
"You put yourself between her and the strike."
He doesn't look up from the tablet. "I was closer."
"Julian."
He lifts his chin.
"If you hadn't moved, she would be dead. Thank you."
The tablet goes still in his lap. His throat moves once. He holds my gaze, and whatever he finds there he doesn't look away from.
"Aye," he says quietly. "I know what she is to you."
He picks the stylus back up.
He's not going to talk about the eye. But his hand went wide by an inch, and we both know why.
"Seraphina analyzed the device." He doesn't look up. "Witch-made. It alters the molecular structure of stored blood. Turns clean supply into contaminated supply without opening a single bag. If it had been activated near the west wall, every unit that survived would be poison on the shelf."
A weapon that turns clean supply into contaminated supply. If Adrienne can build one, she can build another.
Julian marks something on the tablet. "The east wall is gutted. West wall held. We lost half the clean supply we've been offering the coalition as an alternative to Konstantin's network."
He says it the way he says everything that matters. Flat. Precise. The accent thickening on the consonants he doesn't bother softening.
"And he's not done. The next target is Charleston. Vivienne's territory. She's the most powerful lord who hasn't committed. He hits her, she either folds to him or comes to us weakened."
"We can't operate there without her. And she left without a word."
