“Oh, they won’t die. They’ll be wretchedly sick for a few days. Their stomachs will be properly ravaged. But they shouldn’t die.” His brow furrowed. “I don’t think. I tried not to put in enough to . . .”
He trailed off. “It’s hard to get the quantities right. It’s like all cooking: trial and error. A dash of knowledge and a pinch of intuition.” He paused. “Not that killing is like cooking.”
“But cooking is often killing, isn’t it? Before we eat the meat, we must slaughter it.”
“Cooking is an act of love. To cook is to care for someone. It isn’t . . .”
He stumbled forward.
“Quin?”
His cheeks were too pink. He tripped again, then hooked his arm around a tree branch. Woozy, he sank into the snow, clutching his left shoulder.
The arrow. She had once again forgotten. How many times would she forget? She was reckless, asinine, an absolute travesty of a—
“Help me,” he said, and then collapsed.
Mia fell to her knees and ripped open his shirt.
The wound was festering. Tristan had made it angry; now it oozed with white and yellow pus. Quin’s whole shoulder was inflamed and distended. When she touched the swollen skin, he moaned.
Could she heal infected blood? She didn’t know how far her powers extended. She had mended Quin’s arrow wound, goaded the tissue along its natural path of repair and recovery, but that was a single site of aggravated trauma. She had knit skin back together, not repaired an entire system of flagging organs. Quin’s body was rallying against him. His brain. His heart.
“I’m going to lay you down,” she said. He was still unconscious, but maybe he would be comforted by the sound of her voice. She eased him onto his back and hastily arranged a pile of soft needles under his head.
She tore open the satchel. In their hasty retreat, Quin had thrown a handful of things into the bag, but the sheath knife wasn’t among them. Gone was the smooth, sleek blade; instead they’d inherited the cook’s corroded chopping knife. It might as well have been a rusted tent spike, not to mention crusted with animalcule from years of carving up raw meat. If Quin’s blood weren’t infected already, it surely would be.
She pushed the thought from her mind. She had two tasks:
Extract the fragment of the arrow.
Heal the infection.
Quin had saved her life; now she would save his.
His face shone beneath a patina of sickly sweat. He slipped in and out of consciousness, mumbling the same song: “Under the plums, if it’s meant to be. You’ll come to me, under the snow plum tree.”
“Shh. Save your strength.”
Mia took a breath, resurrecting the Wound Man plate in her mind. She felt a wash of sudden calm—after all, she’d done this before. This time she’d do it better. She braced her hand against his sternum and eased the rusty knife into the wound.
His body jerked, an instinctual reaction. She kept digging. The blunt chopper made precise movements impossible, so when the incision was big enough, she slipped a finger beneath the skin. His flesh was warm and spongy, and she felt the stone immediately, tiny and ice cold.
As she extracted the last shiver of arrowhead, Quin’s body shuddered and went still.
Mia pressed both hands to the wound. She could feel it—his blood clotting, slowing, thickening. She felt her own blood thicken in response. Her body tingled, her fingers losing sensation. Fatigue drew a shroud over her eyes.
This time it was harder. She could feel the animalcules screaming through his veins. She was furious that his blood was battling hers—that his body would kill itself in an absurd plot to save itself. Were human beings really so flawed? So defective?
Mia bit her lip so hard she tasted copper. Back in the tunnels, she wanted for the prince not to die. This time, she wanted him to live.
His heart raged in an explosive frenzy, and hers raged, too, contraction for contraction, expansion for expansion. She heard her father: Magic relies on a cruel, unruly heart. She didn’t care. Quin’s body hummed a song that she recognized. The tremendous hurt he’d suffered at the hands of his family. His fury over being trapped in a life he didn’t want. A deep, perplexing shame.
How was she feeling Quin’s feelings? She was so tired. She was the heaviest mountain. She was weightless, a skip of air.
And then it was over. Her hands slid off his chest, skidding into the pillow of swyn needles. She collapsed on top of him, spent, his body smooth beneath her, his chest warm. Her curls were strewn over his face, and she worried she was crushing him, but she didn’t want to leave. Not until she felt him breathing.
He inhaled sharply, and she wanted to shout for joy. His hands moved over her arms, smooth and steady, sending little vibrations up her spine. His chest and stomach were taut as he pressed himself into her hips, and a shiver trembled through her, starting in the pit of her belly and flowing outward in rippled waves, like silk unspooling.
His lips were soft against her neck.
“The lady wins,” he murmured.
Mia was woozy. Was it possible to fall when you were already lying down? Quin shifted beneath her, and she felt the hard cut of his hip bones, then his strong hands at her waist. His body heat spread through her. She had him pinioned to the earth, but from the way he ran his fingertips up her skin, singeing her flesh, she didn’t think he minded.
But she was wrong about that, too, because suddenly she was being pushed aside. She realized what he was doing and scrambled off him, embarrassed. He lifted himself to a seat and pressed his long back into a tree. She crouched on her heels.
“I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful. It’s just . . .”
“You don’t want me to accidentally kill you.”
“That, among other things.”
His face was a stormlit sky, streaked with indecipherable emotions, like a book written in a language she couldn’t read.
“What do you mean, other things?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
She nodded.
“What happened to your mother?”
“She . . . she was killed by a Gwyrach.”
“And did you find this Gwyrach?”
“Not yet. But I will.”
Instinctually she touched her chest, but the ruby wren wasn’t there. Mia was stricken. The journal and the key were back at their camp, sitting by the abandoned stew. She ached to retrace her steps and go back for it, but that would take hours, and who knew when the dogs would snap out of their enchantment? The last fragment of her mother was lost to her forever.
How would Mia know where to go? The fire kingdom was an archipelago of hundreds of islands. Without the map, she was truly lost.
“How do you know your father didn’t do it?” Quin said.
“I told you, my father is not a killer. He’s a Hunter. He only hunts—”
“Gwyrach. Yes, I know.” He looked at her pointedly. “Isn’t it obvious, Mia? Your mother was a Gwyrach, just like you.”
“I won’t believe that. I can’t believe it. My mother was good. She was the kindest, warmest, gentlest woman I knew. She would never—”
“Use magic to heal someone?” He gestured toward his shoulder. “The way you’ve used yours to heal me twice? How truly atrocious, you saving my life.”
Mia shook her head sharply, unable to accept it. Her father had woven a dark web of lies, but her mother was no better, with her veiled secrets. Was Wynna a Gwyrach? Even if she were, Griffin had not killed her with a sword or arrow. Mia had seen and held her mother’s lifeless body: no blood, no bruises, no broken bones.
She shuddered, remembering the dry pop of Tristan’s fingers.
“Mia.” Quin touched her chin lightly with his fingertips. She felt a rush of cold, but his face was free of hatred. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think you’re as wicked as you think.”
He smiled faintly. “And I’m in a unique position to say so, as someone you’ve ensorcelled.”
Ensorcelled. Who used words like that outside of books? A smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
But the smile faded as quickly as it had come. A dog howled in the distance. Two dogs.
Quin rose unsteadily. Mia stood, too . . . and would have fallen flat on her face if he hadn’t caught her by the arm.