Lily swung her body from her burning shoulder, biting her lip to keep herself from screaming. On the third try she managed to haul herself up enough to reach Tristan’s outstretched hand.
Rowan and Tristan pulled her up on top of the train, both of them holding her in a tight huddle. Una and Breakfast had started running down the length of the train when they saw Lily fall and finally reached them, their faces panicked.
“Her shoulder’s dislocated,” Rowan snarled over the sound of the wind. “I should have insisted we wait until she was strong enough.”
“We had no choice,” Una replied, trying to calm Rowan down. “Can’t we heal her?”
“Without a fire? Not completely,” Rowan said. “We’ll either have to break into one of the private cars to do it, or wait until the train stops.”
“I’ll make it,” Lily said, gritting her teeth. She felt her mechanics exchange another rapid conversation in mindspeak. Being left out, coupled with the pain of her shoulder and her still aching head, annoyed her. “It’s too risky,” she snapped. “We’re lucky there isn’t a conductor up here as it is. We’ll have to wait until the train stops.”
Rowan tilted Lily’s face up to his. “I still have to put it back,” he said grimly. “Your shoulder. We can’t leave it dislocated all night or it will set like that.”
Lily swallowed hard and met his eyes. “Just do it.”
Without another word, Rowan pushed Lily onto her back and pressed his knee into her sternum. With both hands he took her injured arm and held it in front of her, bent at the elbow. He then pushed it down in an L shape next to her head. Lily kept her lips pressed together and screamed behind her teeth while Rowan pulled her arm swiftly up alongside her ear. She heard a grinding pop, and the pain was so intense she felt nauseous with it.
Rowan eased off her chest and she saw his willstone flare with light. The pain slackened, and Lily rolled onto her uninjured side, moaning quietly to herself through tight breaths. She saw Tristan’s stone glow, and the pain lessened some more. She heard Rowan giving her mechanics instructions in mindspeak.
Encourage the fluid to circulate. Keep the blood moving to help heal the site of injury. Repress the pain signals from the nerves. Easy. We don’t want her to go numb, we just want to block the pain. Use your own stores of energy and take nothing from our witch. It will make you tired, but not as tired as she is.
Lily took a deep breath and sighed it out, tears tracing a hot path into her hairline.
“Damn,” she heard Una murmur. “Are you okay?”
Lily laughed unevenly, catching her breath. Her shoulder was still a mess, but at least she couldn’t feel it anymore. “I’ve been through worse.”
CHAPTER
11
Carrick followed their trail through the woods. At one of their camps he found blood in the snow. He tasted it just to make sure, and spit it out when he confirmed it was Woven’s blood. They’d made good time on their journey. His little brother had pushed the pace, almost as if he knew they were being followed. Maybe Rowan did know, somehow. As Carrick came upon the end of the forest and the edge of Providence’s Killing Fields he imagined his brother running in front of him. Hounded.
Carrick licked his lips and looked out across the Killing Fields of Providence, thinking of the glory days when the Killing Fields had earned their name. Every one of the Thirteen Cities was surrounded by a huge meadow where many had died. Witches loved nothing more than fighting a bloody battle right in front of their cities. In the Age of Strife, when witches regularly sent out their armies to slaughter each other, the Killing Fields were soaked with so much blood that the buildup of salt from that blood left the soil sterile for decades. Even now, trees would not grow.
Rowan’s trail led Carrick to an exhumed metal plate at the edge of the forest. His little brother had gone into the train tunnels for shelter. Carrick knew that if he followed, the tons of earth might cut him off from his witch, giving his quarry the advantage.