“I’ll do it.” I could ease her pain with my magic, at least, until we found someone who could help her.
Branok helped me undress her, the clinical side taking over, and dress her wounds. I was bandaging the gouges across her back when I heard a gasp.
I looked up to find Hanna in the doorway.
“Has Jaik come yet?” Branok demanded, betraying how much he was fretting over Jaik’s late arrival.
She shook her head, tears spilling onto her cheeks. Blood stained her gown, although I wasn’t sure if it were hers or not.
“Branok,” I said quietly.
He glanced at me, frowning, and that frown only deepened when he realized what I was asking.
“Hanna, with me,” he growled. He headed out of the room, and she stared after him with a stunned expression on her face.
Honor’s little sister wasn’t accustomed to following orders.
Shocker. Honor didn’t seem to be either.
But despite looking perplexed, she followed Branok. I said a silent prayer for both, hoping they’d survive their time together.
When Honor’s back was dressed, I lifted her from the bed to the sofa in the corner. Her hand slid up my chest to my shoulder in her sleep, her eyes still closed. She looked sweet in sleep, without the usual mischief ever-present in those gorgeous eyes, and I could’ve pressed my lips to her forehead to kiss her goodnight, trying to soothe her back to sleep.
“What are you doing?” Jaik demanded from the doorway.
I laid her down and straightened. “Changing her sheets.”
Jaik glanced at the blood-soaked sheets and his jaw tightened. “Do you even know how to change sheets?”
“I’m assuming we’re relatively intelligent men. We can figure out how to do chores.”
Jaik didn’t protest being included in the we. He helped me tear off the bloodstained sheets and replace them with fresh ones we found in a closet.
“I’ll put her back into bed,” he said.
“How did things go with Pend?”
“Well as ever.” He scooped to gather Honor into his arms.
He didn’t want to talk about it. That was never a great sign.
I nodded and left, having the feeling he’d want to be alone with her.
But when I was closing the door behind me, I heard him murmur to her, “Stay with me, Honor. I need you.”
He’d never say those words to her when she was awake.
He really should.
Chapter
Three
Branok
Lynx had made it clear I needed to get Hanna away from Honor while he tried to ease her pain. The healer was useless; Arren had turned and disappeared from the house in pursuit of a better one as soon as the first failed.
Lynx would make sure the healer made it back safely to his village even though the rest of us would have left him to walk through the snow. Lynx was one of the best, kindest people I knew—which often left us disappointed in him.
But I knew he was often disappointed in me too.
“Come on,” I told Hanna when she finally stepped into the hall. “Let me see to your wounds.”
She glanced at me suspiciously, and I said stiffly, “I’m not incompetent.”
She huffed. “I’m under the impression you’re a lot more competent at causing wounds than fixing them.”
“Fair enough. But I’m middling decent at the fixing too.”
She was all cool now on the surface, but the memory of the way she’d blazed into the room, blades in hand, ready to fight for her sister clung to me. Would Alina come to help me like that? She hated me almost as much as she hated our father now.
“Come,” I ordered, and she finally did, looking over her shoulder at Honor one last time. When she turned back to me, her eyes were wet, and she lowered her head so I wouldn’t see a beat too late.
I didn’t know what to do with those tears. It was an obvious wound I could use to whittle into her secrets if I chose to. She felt she’d caused Honor’s injuries. I liked digging out other’s secrets; they were my treasures to hoard. But Hanna was just a child. She didn’t have many secrets to offer, and none I needed now.
I took her down the long hallway and unlocked the workshop I shared with Lynx. It was a mess. My brother had many great qualities, but tidiness wasn’t one of them. She stared around the workshop in curiosity. “Which one of you…”
I wasn’t interested in discussing my workshop with her. I patted the clear space on one of the tables. “Where are your wounds?”
She flashed me a skeptical look, but boosted herself up onto the edge of the table. “You’re as bossy as Honor.”
“Mm.” Normally I would’ve said she seemed to require bossing—much like her cheerful disaster of a sister, if Honor’s affect wasn’t a disguise—but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings when she was guilt-stricken. “Where does it hurt?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. You’re pale and sweating, and resisting medical attention is hardly as brave as people like to think it is. We don’t know what the Elder Royals will throw at us; we need you on your feet.”
She glared at me, but seemed to soften a little at my words anyway. She needed to be needed.
“It’s my shoulder,” she admitted, pulling the collar of her dress aside to reveal the wound, which made her wince. I’d guessed where her injury was from the blood-soaked fabric.
“What happened?”
“I attacked a guard.”
“You’re the precious spawn of that castle, are you not? Yet the guard stabbed you?”
“I’d made him feel very surly beforehand.”
“I see.”
She chewed her lower lip as I disinfected the wound, her brow scrunching in pain.
“When the healer comes, he’ll be able to patch you up quickly,” I said, already regretting having turned the first one out so quickly. Arren had been very displeased by his inability to help Honor.
“I don’t care.”
I scoffed. She didn’t care, because she felt guilty and responsible. “Martyr yourself, then, that will help Honor. Or you could be ready to fight again instead of marinating in guilt.”
She glared at me all over. “I can fight and marinate, thank you very much.”
“What did Henrick and Alis want from Honor?”
“I don’t know. They said they were punishing me, but…” She shrugged, then winced at the motion.
“I see. Well, your parents might have been evil, but they didn’t get you and Honor to turn on each other. That’s the worst thing parents can do.” Pend had ruined Jaik and Caldren’s brotherhood.
Joachim could have destroyed my relationship with Lynx, but Lynx was too good, too level-headed, to be turned hateful by Joachim’s cruelty. I couldn’t say the same, but Lynx had saved us both.
She looked up at me with her blue eyes too bright with tears, and I regretted ever saying anything.
“No one could ever make me turn on Honor,” she said in a rush. “She’s a hero. She’d do anything to protect me, to protect anyone. She’s so brave. Why don’t you like her?”
“Hero worship always makes me uncomfortable when it’s directed any way but mine,” I said wryly.