That snaps me out of my daze for a moment. “Yes, I shot myself with an arrow.”
“Okay, okay.” She hands me a shirt from the bed and then goes out of the room. I press the fabric against my wound, hoping to slow the bleeding.
When she gets back, she’s holding white thread and a needle. That thread is not going to be white for long.
“Okay,” I say, trying to concentrate. “You want to hold or sew?”
“Hold,” she says, looking at me as though she wished there was a third option. “Don’t you think I should get Taryn?”
“The night before her wedding? Absolutely not.” I try to thread the needle, but my hands are shaking badly enough that it’s difficult. “Okay, now push the sides of the wound together.”
Vivi kneels down and does, making a face. I gasp and try not to pass out. Just a few more minutes and I can sit down and relax, I promise myself. Just a few more minutes and it will be like this never happened.
I stitch. It hurts. It hurts and hurts and hurts. After I’m done, I wash the leg with more water and rip off the cleanest section of the shirt to wrap around it.
She comes closer. “Can you stand?”
“In a minute.” I shake my head.
“What about Madoc?” she asks. “We could tell—”
“No one,” I say, and, gripping the edge of the tub, kick my leg over, biting back a scream.
Vivi turns on the taps, and water splashes out, washing away the blood. “Your clothes are soaked,” she says, frowning.
“Hand me a dress from over there,” I say. “Look for something sack-like.”
I force myself to limp over to a chair and sink into it. Then I pull off my jacket and the shirt underneath it. Naked to my waist, I can’t go any further without pain stopping me.
Vivi brings over a dress—one so old that Taryn didn’t bother to bring it to me—and bunches it up so she can guide it over my head, then guides my hands through the arm holes as though I were a child. Gently, she takes off my boots and the remains of my pants.
“You could lie down,” she says. “Rest. Heather and I can distract Taryn.”
“I am going to be fine,” I say.
“You don’t have to do anything else, is all I’m saying.” Vivi looks as though she’s reconsidering my warnings about coming here. “Who did this?”
“Seven riders—maybe knights. But who was actually behind the attack? I don’t know.”
Vivi gives a long sigh. “Jude, come back to the human world with me. This doesn’t have to be normal. This isn’t normal.”
I get up out of the chair. I would rather walk on the wounded leg than listen to more of this.
“What would have happened if I hadn’t come in here?” she demands.
Now that I am up, I have to keep moving or lose momentum. I head for the door. “I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know this. Danger can find me in the mortal world, too. My being here lets me make sure you and Oak have guards watching you there. Look, I get that you think what I am doing is stupid. But don’t act like it’s useless.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she says, but by then I am in the hall. I jerk open the door to Taryn’s room to find her and Heather laughing at something. They stop when we come in.
“Jude?” Taryn asks.
“I fell off my horse,” I tell her, and Vivi doesn’t contradict me. “What are we talking about?”
Taryn is nervous, roaming around the room to touch the gauzy gown she will wear tomorrow, to hold up the circlet woven with greenery grown in goblin gardens and fresh as the moment they were plucked.
I realize that the earrings I bought for Taryn are gone, lost with the rest of the pack. Scattered among leaves and underbrush.
Servants bring wine and cakes, and I lick the sweet icing and let the conversation wash over me. The pain in my leg is distracting, but more distracting yet is the memory of the riders laughing, the memory of their closing in beneath the tree. The memory of being wounded and frightened and all alone.
When I wake the day of Taryn’s wedding, it is in the bed of my childhood. It feels like coming up from a deep dream, and, for a moment, it’s not that I don’t know where I am—it’s that I don’t remember who I am. For those few moments, blinking in the late-afternoon sunlight, I am Madoc’s loyal daughter, dreaming of becoming a knight in the Court. Then the last half year comes back to me like the now-familiar taste of poison in my mouth.
Like the sting of the sloppily done stitches.
I push myself up and unwrap the cloth to look at the wound. It’s ugly and swollen, and the needlework is poor. My leg is stiff, too.
Gnarbone, an enormous servant with long ears and a tail, comes into my room with a belated knock. He is carrying a tray with breakfast on it. Quickly, I flip the blankets over my lower body.
He puts the tray on the bed without comment and goes into the bath area. I hear the rush of water and smell crushed herbs. I sit there, braced, until he leaves.