“Don’t touch,” the healer snapped. “The stitches are fresh. And my medicines only go so far on a human.”
I steadied my breath, following the threads fanning out around me. They came into focus slowly, and brought with them a blindingly powerful headache, but I was just relieved to grasp my surroundings again. For a few terrifying moments back there, it had felt like I’d been cut away from the only thing that tethered me to the world.
I was back at camp, in a tent—mine? Atrius’s? It was still so hard to grasp. The healer, a vampire woman, knelt beside me. Her presence radiated sadness and exhaustion.
I turned my head, which was slightly elevated, and realized that I lay against Atrius’s lap.
When the memories from before I was injured filtered back, the first was Atrius’s voice as I faded.
And then the explosions, and the bodies, and— The bodies.
I bit my tongue hard, right over that old scar tissue. I still nearly drew blood. It didn’t help.
If I had been lucky, the wave of rage I’d felt in my final moments of consciousness would have been a symptom of my delirious state. If I had been lucky, I would have woken up the steadfast, calm Arachessen I had been trained to be.
I was not lucky.
The healer stood and said something to Atrius in Obitraen, to which he responded with a nod and a few curt words. She left the tent, leaving the two of us alone.
It was Atrius’s tent, I realized now. He’d brought me back to his.
I sat up again—slowly this time.
“She said to be careful,” Atrius snapped.
“I am being careful.”
I turned to face him. His weariness seeped from him like a stubborn scent. His walls were heavier than usual—they felt more forced, and like it was taking him more effort to hold them up.
But I could still sense what lay behind them.
I gingerly touched my wound. No, the vampire healer had not been able to help me the way an Arachessen healer could have, but she still did a damned good job. The wound hurt, and it would still bleed if I pulled the stitches, but it was far from life-threatening. Interesting that Nyaxia’s magic could be used to heal humans, too, albeit imperfectly.
“How many?” I choked out.
The terrible, ironic echo in those words didn’t hit me until they left my lips. But Atrius heard it immediately, and his face fell.
“Too many,” he murmured. “Too many.”
His answer twisted in my heart, right into the secret wound that had bled there for twenty years.
I knew it was coming. I knew that those people hanging in the trees were already dead, whether their hearts still pumped weak amounts of blood or not. But that did nothing to lessen the shards of anger inside me at Atrius’s answer.
Outside the tent, voices collected. The amount of rage and grief in the presences around us left me dizzy.
“How long have—”
“We killed all of the Pythora King’s men.” Atrius’s lip twitched into a sneer, weakly, as if this bloodshed was barely enough to bring him satisfaction. “Not a single human soldier made it off that island alive. We ensured that. Even if we had to pay heavily for it.”
A small victory. It didn’t feel like much. The Pythora King would have only sent a small group to the island, knowing they would be sacrifices. Those lives were a small consolation for the number they had taken.
“We took back all the wounded we could,” Atrius went on. “Including you. But there are many more.”
A strange flicker over his face—something I couldn’t quite decipher.
He stood.
“You rest. I need to—”
But I started to stand, too.
He caught my arm when I was halfway up. “What are you going?”
“I’m no great healer,” I said, “but I’m not useless—”
“No.”
“I’m not going to argue with you.”
I stood up and was greeted with a wave of dizziness. Atrius didn’t loosen his hold on my arm.
The threads were alight with activity outside. Pulling him along with me, I staggered to the tent flap and thrust it open.
Weaver help me.
Atrius’s army had been destroyed.
To one side, dozens of bodies lay lined up, wrapped up in white fabric. An entire swath of tents to the east had been destroyed. Everywhere around us, warriors hurried to help their injured comrades.
A ragged breath left my lips.
“This isn’t just from the island.”
Too many injured here. Far more than Atrius had brought to Veratas.
“No.” His voice was low. Thick with anger.
Slowly, I pieced the truth together.
The Pythora King had somehow learned of the island. Attacked it. Used it as bait.
And then, when the most capable of Atrius’s forces were gone, he had struck—the island, and the camp.
At least here, Atrius’s men appeared to have been able to hold their position—if only barely. But the Pythora King’s goal probably had not been to destroy them. What was the fun in that? No, his goal was to break them, because that’s how he had won his country, too. By breaking the people within it.
I yanked my arm away from Atrius and started forward. He reached to stop me, but I snapped, “Would you want to sit in there and do nothing?”
His mouth closed. Understanding flickered across his face—as if recognizing something familiar in me.
He let his hand fall to his side.
“Know your limits,” he said. “Be careful.”
I nodded, and he straightened his back, and the two of us threw ourselves into the fight against the inevitable.
34
The hours wore on fast. I could move, albeit slowly and a bit painfully. My headache was far worse than my wounds. I followed the direction of the healer, attending to those she couldn’t get to quickly enough. My healing magic was weak, especially for vampires, but I could ease pain until she arrived.
I did not stop working. When the sun rose, we moved to tents and continued our work. When the sun set again, we moved outside once more.
With every body I leaned over, every soldier who, in the throes of delirium, asked about their wife or husband or child, with every suffering person who knew their death was near, with every one who slipped away despite our best efforts, the steady beat of rage beneath my skin grew louder.
Eventually, after countless hours—Weaver, countless days—I turned to the healer and asked, “Who’s next?”
She wiped the blood from her hands. “No one.”
At first, I didn’t understand what she meant.
“No one is left,” she said. “We’ve done all that we can do. Now we wait.” She went to the tent flap and opened it. “Sleep. That’s what I’m going to do.”
I did go back to my tent, because where else would I go? But immediately, I knew I couldn’t stay there, no matter how exhausted I was. The idea of sitting alone with the pained echoes in the threads was sickening.