“Help me take off his shirt and coat, and lay him on his stomach” I said. “Then find something to dress the wound.”
Together we removed his clothing, and Ben spread his own coat on the ground before carefully shifting Henry from my lap. Another deep laceration marked his forearm, but this would be attended to later. Once he was properly situated, Ben went to the carriage in search of bandages.
Not daring to waste another second, I placed my hands on Henry’s back to inspect the damage. Closing my eyes, I followed the trajectory of the shot past torn muscle and cracked ribs to where I found it lodged well inside his lung. Ben returned with strips of neatly torn linen, and I sent him off again to begin clearing the tree from the road.
“This may hurt,” I murmured softly. With a deep breath I summoned my strength, letting the rush of warmth spread down my arms into his back.
Henry groaned as my mind took hold of the ball, dislodging it from the spongy tissue of his lungs. I then began pulling it backwards along a path of torn muscle and fragmented bone, and no doubt making him feel like he was being shot in reverse. When a glint of silver peeked up through the surface of his skin, I picked the ball out with my fingertips and dropped it to the ground. Having finished the worst of it, I turned my attention to his other injuries: the lung had to be drained and mended and the cracked ribs set. I would leave the rest to nature and Henry’s own body to heal.
My mother had taught me the importance of restraint in my earliest training—do what was necessary to preserve life. Then let the body take over. Though it often proved tempting to fix everything, it was a lesson hard learned to always leave enough to be convincing. To this day it’s unclear how many of my ancestors had been burned at the stake or driven from their homes because they had ignored this simple precept and went beyond the basic charge.
But the remaining wounds could become infected and fester, making additional knowledge essential. So while other children were busy with nursery rhymes, I had been learning anatomy and the various herbs and remedies essential for conventional healing. Now that Henry was out of mortal danger, his wounds would be cleaned and stitched once we arrived at the next inn. Over the years, I had also become adept at guiding people to see their wounds differently than they had first appeared. Henry would be sore enough to believe the ball merely glanced off the bones without actually breaking anything.
Ben returned from clearing the tree as I tied off the last of the bandages. “Will he live?” he asked, looking skeptically down at Henry.
I rested my hand over the strips of linen and felt the slow rise and fall of his chest. “He lost a lot of blood, but I think he’s out of danger.”
“He’s breathing easier,” Ben said, raising one eyebrow. “I could have sworn he’d taken the ball in the lung.”
“His lungs are fine,” I said, carefully choosing my words to avoid lying outright. “Help him to the carriage so we can be away from this place.”
“I’ve got some cleaning up to do once you’re settled,” Ben said. I assumed he meant dragging four bodies into the woods. Not that I cared if they rotted in plain sight after what they had done.
While healing Henry, I had been able to forget about being so violently attacked, but with the crisis averted my eyes strayed to the lifeless form of the redheaded demon. He was lying no more than a few feet away, his face settled into an evil sneer. My stomach would be tender for days from his blow, and I shuddered at how close I had come to being raped.
*
A sharp whistle sent the carriage lurching forward. Henry lay across the bench on his back with his legs off to the side to accommodate for his height. I sat on the floor beside him to guard against his being overly jostled or knocked from the seat altogether as Ben drove the horses hard the remaining distance to the inn.
Henry’s black hair ribbon had come undone during the fight, and his hair fell like silk around his shoulders. A stray lock played across one cheek, and I reached up to move it aside. Taking one of the unused strips of linen, I gently dried the sweat from his brow. I wet another strip with water from a leather skin to wipe away the smudges of dirt and blood.
Even wounded and fast asleep he was distractingly handsome, and I felt a sudden urge to touch him again, but without the piece of linen beneath my fingers this time. Assuring myself he would be none the wiser in his present state, I traced a finger along the fine angles of his face, around his ear and down along the strong jaw. He stirred, and I yanked my hand away.