“I didn’t get it all,” she said.
Her own failure walloped her in the face. She’d been cocksure, absolutely certain she’d extracted all pieces of the arrowhead, but how closely had she looked? Not closely enough. She’d tossed the arrow aside in the tunnels and never given it a second thought.
Mia knew enough about wound theory to recognize the warning signs. A fragment of the arrowhead had broken off in Quin’s chest, lodged in the tender tissue above his heart. The body, in an attempt to fight off microscopic animalcule, triggered an inflammatory response. But over the last week, infection had crept in. The wound had gone septic.
Dread sank its hooks. Quin’s body would turn on itself, waging war on his organs, collapsing the pressure of his blood, and ultimately ravaging his brain.
If the sepsis was not treated, he would die.
“It’s fine,” he said brusquely. “I’m fine.”
Sulfyr was a natural antiseptic. Quin’s soak in the hot spring might have been curative, but Mia feared it was too late: once the infection had spread into his bloodstream, any cursory cleaning of the wound site was futile, like tying a green blade of grass around a shattered bone.
Gingerly she grazed the wound with her fingertips. He gasped in pain—and ducked out of reach.
“We have to get it out, Quin.”
“I know you’re trying to help, but you might kill me instead.”
She opened her mouth to voice an objection, but none was forthcoming. He was right.
“To be perfectly honest,” he went on, “I think you may have been enthralling me just now.”
“All I’ve been thinking about was how not to enthrall you. I haven’t touched you once.”
“Maybe we’ve been wrong about magic. Maybe it’s not bound to touch.” He combed his fingers through his wet curls. “Just now, the way you were looking at me . . . my body was behaving strangely.”
“So was mine. We are divested of our garments in a hot spring, Quin. I think ‘strange’ is a matter of perspective.” She sighed. “I don’t ever want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you can’t go blaming my magic every time you feel something.”
And yet, hadn’t she been doing exactly that? Blaming her magic for every spike or drop in body temperature, every flash of cold or spark of desire?
“It isn’t fair you have this power.”
“What’s fair about any of this? I don’t want to control you. I want you to feel the way you’re feeling because you feel it. Because it’s real. And right now I want to get that arrow out, before—”
“Mia.”
“I do!”
“Mia.”
He’d gone stark white. She felt the blood thrumming down her backbone a moment too late, as a shadow unfurled behind her.
“A supper of vermin and a dip in a bubbly tub.” The voice was rough, familiar. “What a magical honeymoon.”
Cousin Tristan, flanked by two giant white hounds and three of the king’s guards, stepped out of the Twisted Forest.
Chapter 27
Because a King Can
“FANCY SEEING YOU HERE, Cousin.”
Quin had reverted to his cold, formal tone, the one he used in Kaer Killian. Mia hadn’t realized how much his voice had changed in the woods; he had abandoned his haughty cadence for a warm, lower register.
Tristan’s hounds chomped their massive jaws.
“You can drop the pleasantries.” The duke motioned to his men. “Seize them.”
The wiriest of the three guards came toward Mia. With his lean frame, blazing white skin, and bright shock of ginger hair, he reminded her of a maple tree in autumn, the kind that might snap in a ferocious storm.
But he was stronger and meaner than any maple, and wearing coarse bullock gloves. He grabbed Mia under her arms and dragged her across the ground. She felt painfully vulnerable as she was wrenched from the water, her soaked undergarments like an oozing second skin. The boiling headache, which had granted her clemency over the last week, was back with a vengeance, roasting the tender bones of her skull.
The other two guards wrestled Quin to the ground. He was wearing undergarments after all. He was also furious.
“Unhand her,” he spat. “I command you let us go.”
Tristan crouched, pinching Mia’s dirty smock between his fingers with obvious disgust. He flung it aside. He had grown a week’s worth of scruff, but it was patchy and uneven, dark-brown stubble carving jagged lines across his pasty skin. His blue irises had vanished completely, and his pupils were dilated to an unnatural degree, painting his eyes an eerie, solid black.
“Here’s the thing, Cousin. You’re dead. Or so the rest of the river kingdom believes. And a dead man can’t very well give commands, can he?” He turned to the guards. “Tie them to the swyn.”
Mia reached for her trousers, but one of Tristan’s hounds snapped at her hand.
“Can I please get dressed?”
“Why?” The duke was droll. “Must you be dressed to die?”
“This is absurd.” Quin’s voice was cool with disdain. “I’m not dead. Good news all around. I’m sure my father will be happy to see me alive and well, along with my wife.”
Wife. The word jarred. Mia knew what Quin was doing, though she wasn’t sure how effective it would be. Safe to say the duke didn’t have much invested in their nuptials.
The guards bound Mia to a tree, lashing Quin to a trunk a few feet away. She was intimately aware of his body, the breath in his lungs, the blood in his limbs. The cold blew off him barbed and brittle, giving credence to her theory: hate was cold.
She felt Tristan’s eyes scratch over her bare skin. “I’ve never seen you in the flesh before. A pity to execute a thing so pretty.”
“She’s not a thing,” Quin growled.
“A demon, then.”
They both froze. Tristan looked pleased.
“Did you take me for a fool? There’s enough blood in the tunnels for a virgin sacrifice. But virgin isn’t exactly the right word, is it?” He kicked the tree the prince was bound to. Mia felt Quin flinch. “It seems you have unsavory tastes, Cousin. Your wife is a Gwyrach.”
The duke scraped a knife from his scabbard and crouched in front of the prince. “You do know what happens to men who marry demons, don’t you?”
Quin roared. The sensation ricocheted through Mia’s body; Tristan had pierced the infected arrow wound with his blade. Cutting down the line of the scar, snapping the thin threads of cartilage. Quin gasped, and though she couldn’t see him, she could feel his jaw clench, his teeth grit against the pain. Whatever bond her magic had woven between them, she felt his body as her own.
But Tristan didn’t plunge the blade deep. Mia heard the knife slide back into the scabbard.
“So close to the heart,” said the duke. “I do believe your little demon saved your life.”
He stood. “I’ve been tracking you for days. My hounds had no trouble finding your scent.” He tossed two large beef bones to his dogs and smiled as they tore into them with bloodthirsty ferocity, red chunks of flesh flecking their white fur.
“We left you a hare. Did you enjoy it? Some nice crisp firewood, too. It seemed the least we could do; a last supper fit for a king.” He laughed. “It was disappointingly easy. Like luring two starving animals into a cage.”
Mia cursed herself. All her instincts—the splash of gold in the river, the hound baying at the moon, even her hunch about the hare—had been spot-on. Why hadn’t she listened? Perhaps because never in her life had she done anything “on a hunch.” She was not a hunch kind of girl.
If she made it out of this alive, she resolved to be better at listening to her intuition. Though it seemed unlikely she would make it out of this alive.
The prince was inhaling and exhaling in short, sharp bursts, trying to regulate his breathing. The colors of his suffering painted themselves across Mia’s mind in too-bright strokes.
If they had any chance of getting out of this alive, she needed to keep Tristan talking. She lifted her chin.