by Amelia Shaw
“Don’t move. I’m doing some stitches here. I’m not gonna lie. When it heals, the scar isn’t going to be pretty.”
I snorted, and pain shot through me. “Chicks dig scars, right?”
He continued working. “So they say. Don’t move, so I don’t do an even worse job than I already am.”
“And exactly where did you get your medical degree, sir?”
He shook his head, ducking down to nudge the flashlight with his elbow. “Even with your guts falling out, you’ve got jokes. Why am I not surprised?”
Pain tugged near his fingers. It had to be the needle going into my skin. Thankfully, I couldn’t see it. For some reason, I assumed it would hurt more to watch.
“How’s Fin?” I asked, trying to catch sight of him without moving any more than necessary.
Something like a hum escaped the captain. “He’s passed out up above your head a few feet away. I think he’ll be okay. Your wound was a little more grave, plus I have bad news.”
“Oh, more bad news? Cool.” I winced at another sharp jab.
“You’ll have to do me when I finish here.”
“What, now you choose to hit on me? I don’t think I’m up for a roll in the hay with you, captain.”
He shook his head. The flashlight slid away. Finally, something I could do. I grasped it with shaking fingers and lifted it as high as possible to give him more of a view.
“Thanks, but don’t worry. You’re not my type.”
“What’s your type then?” I asked, keeping the conversation going. It helped distract me from the pain a little.
“Pretty much anyone with a penis.”
Ah, that cleared things up. I’d wondered, considering I could see how he felt about Fin. “Oh, well, we have similar taste then.”
He snorted. “You have no idea how right you are.”
Neither of us were going to touch that one. For now, we seemed to have a truce built around mutual survival. I could agree to that without argument for once.
He slid the needle into my skin again and I focused on keeping still. The urge to pull away from the pain was hard to resist. I concentrated on breathing in and out, careful to keep the inhale shallow so I wouldn’t mess up his work.
“Next time I ask if we can go home, can we just do that?” I asked.
He chuckled and then winced himself. “I wondered how long it would take you to get your I told you so in.”
“I got that in earlier,” I sputtered. “This one was just a follow up.”
He lay a couple of small pieces of tape across the wound and sat back. “All right, my turn. Are you able to do it or should I glue it and wait until I can get to a hospital?”
I huffed. “Glue was an option? Damn. I would have chosen that one.”
“Not for you. You were getting stitches whether you wanted them or not. Maybe glue, too. We’ll see what it looks like once you sit up.”
With both hands, he clasped mine and gently pulled me to sitting. I hissed out a breath and closed my eyes against it all, breathing heavily even though I did nothing more than haul my body weight forward.
“Okay. Your turn, I guess,” I whispered.
He handed me a curved needle, already threaded with a thick glossing black thread. Then he scooted forward so I could reach him without having to stretch myself forward. A long slice cut down his side, almost under his armpit. I helped push his shirt up onto his shoulder and then eyed the red seeping line.
“This is going to hurt,” I said, poising the sharp point against his flesh.
He angled the flashlight, and I dug the needle into one side of his skin, underneath, and then through the other side. It tugged, the needle not slipping easily but catching tight. I had to pinch the flesh to slide the needle cleanly with each pass.
He didn’t so much as flinch while I sewed his skin.
“I’m sorry that I’m not great at this,” I said. “You’ll likely have a worse scar than you gave me.”
When he took the needle back and slipped it into his field kit, exhaustion weighed his shoulders down, but his jaw held the same stubborn angle it always did. Like he didn’t know how to rest, even if he were offered the chance.
“What happened to Fin?” I asked.
He met my eyes, his height making it so he gazed down at me. While he glared, I gently pulled his shirt back down his shoulder and helped him slip his arm inside the hole.
“You didn’t feel it?” he asked.
“What?”
Shit. “I did something wrong, didn’t I?”
He slipped his kit into his cargo pocket. The etched lines around his eyes gave way to something else. Pity? Guilt?
When he met my eyes again, they were softer, less guarded. “It wasn’t your fault. I know that and when he wakes up, he’ll know that too.”
I dug my fingers into his forearm. “Just tell me what I did, please.”
“You were about to die,” he said, “and you yanked on the bond you had with Fin. You took too much too fast, and it caused a whiplash, like a wave slamming against a boat and then rebounding back outward. You took out everything, including us.”
I hung my head into my hands even though the motion burned through both my sides. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I only reached out and latched onto anything I could find. The magic was there, waiting, and I used it.”
He patted my arm gently, the nicest gesture he’d made toward me since we met. “Don’t worry about it. We’re alive for now, but we need to wake Fin and get him out of here. Regroup at home and come up with another plan.”
“Maybe listen to my insights this time?”
He narrowed his eyes and then he climbed to his feet as if I hadn’t sewn his skin together. He put the flashlight in his mouth and reached down to lift me up.
“Do I have to? Can I just crawl over to him?”
He huffed. “Crawling will hurt more, trust me. Just make it quick and the pain will come and go before you realize it’s there.”
Yeah, right. “Who are you trying to fool?”
I let him drag me up and the flash of pain poured through every nerve ending. I let out a stream of curses and limped toward Fin.
We crouched on one side of him, and then I listed over onto my ass and stayed down. The captain checked the pulse at Fin’s wrist and let out a sigh of relief. Fin must be stable enough. My shoulders relaxed a little.
The captain took his time searching for wounds, but only found a few scratches on Fin’s calves.
“Why won’t he wake up, if he’s all right?” I asked.
The captain glanced my way from under his brows.
I leaned in. “Do you know what to do here? How can I give the magic back and help him?”
The captain gently took my hands and placed one on top of Fin’s forehead and the other over his sternum. Fin’s heavily beating heart comforted me.
Anger, at myself for the way I’d been stumbling around not learning when I should have been, followed.
“Focus on these two points, and sort of nuzzle your magic back into him. It’ll go because the bond is a two-way street.”
I glanced up and searched his gaze. “Could he have blocked me from doing this? Did he let me take everything?”
The way the captain’s gaze slid away from mine told me everything I needed to know. Why would Fin let me do this? If he could have stopped it?
I took a long breath and closed my eyes. Pain swamped me, but I shoved it back and pinpointed that tether between us I had noticed earlier. It hummed there, the same as it had before but where it had been bright and shining earlier, now it stretched gray and fallow.
As gently as I could, I slid magic down the line. As it travelled, the tether brightened and lit up between us. The urge to throw it all back nudged my brain, but I feared hurting him, so I continued as slowly and steadily as possible.
“You’re doing great, Zoey. Keep doing that. You’re almost there,” the captain whispered.
It took time to put ba
ck enough for Fin’s eyes to flutter. When they shot open, I jerked my hands away. His arms flapped out, and the captain and I both jumped up to ease him back down. He fought, thrashed between us, until fresh blood seeped down my stitches and I knew I would have to endure another round under the captain’s embroidery skills.
“Fin, calm down,” the captain said, his voice even and strong. That calm poured over Fin, and he dropped his arms but kept his hands tightly bound in each of our grasps.
“Are you okay?” he asked, shifting his gaze between us.
We both nodded, and he let out a shuddered exhale and sank back onto the ground.
I pressed his hair back from his forehead and eased a tiny bit more magic into him.
“No, it’s okay.” He nudged me away.
The captain helped him to his feet then used both his hands to pull me up too. We stood in a circle and surveyed the bodies, and the fire.
I spotted the glint of the fire across my black steel blades on the ground nearby and went to retrieve them. It took me three tries to dip down and grab them. Then I shoved them back in the sheaths. I would clean them later when breathing didn’t hurt so much.
“Can either of you fly in this condition?” I asked, waving at them.
The captain shook his head. “I already called for a ride. They will be here soon. It’ll suck, but we’ll ride back, and the doctor will be waiting when we get to the house.”
“How much do you pay that guy to visit and deal with suspicious wounds?” I mused out loud.
Neither of them answered.
Instead of lingering near the mounds of dead goons, we hobbled back toward the helicopter, then past it toward the outskirts of the forest. Hopefully, a road would help. No doubt the captain would have a plan for vehicles not being able to reach us in the thick of the trees.
We were a sad group, the captain and I limping. Fin rubbed his head with his hand, back and forth.
Eventually, my side ached too much for me to continue. I stopped in the path and the men glanced back and halted.
“Just give me a moment. I’ll catch up.” I waved them on, but of course neither of them listened to me.
I pressed my hand into my side, my shirt sticking to the wound uncomfortably. The extra support made it a bit easier to breathe while I walked. I took another step and exhaled. It hurt a bit less. I caught up with the guys and continued walking with them.
We made it another few hundred feet until we met the edge of a gravel road.
“Convenient,” I said and stared down either side of the road.
No headlights, no lights at all. The heavy weight of the forest had dissipated when my feet hit the gravel, so I stepped into it and sighed.
“I’m assuming you called for a ride?”
The captain nodded. “They took off at the same time as we did, as back up. Shouldn’t be too far away now.”
Would I have to moderate my life around how magic affected me now? Could I block it? I glanced up at Fin, who looked anywhere but at me. That conversation would have to wait until all of us had a little recovery time.
We waited for a half hour until I almost dropped onto the side of the road just to get some relief from the ache in my side.
Headlights appeared in the distance, then one of Fin’s many black SUV’s pulled to a stop in front of Fin and we all piled inside. The driver came around and shut my door. The captain and Fin managed theirs.
I hated looking weak in front of anyone, especially people I’d started to become close to. Even more so, Fin.
I tipped my head against the window and stared out at the trees as they passed the window. Once the trees disappeared, I finally relaxed somewhat. It would be hours before we reached the house, and right now, a helicopter might not be such a bad idea.
No matter how I shifted, I couldn’t find a comfortable position.
“Do you want some morphine?” The captain asked from the front seat.
Neither of them took it, so I shook my head. “I’m good. I’ll be fine. Just make him drive fast.”
The captain and I were in a bad way. And Fin seemed furious at me.
I wasn’t sure what was worse. The pain in my body or the ache in my heart.
How was I going to survive the blows that just kept coming?
Chapter Fifteen
If someone looked up the word ‘tense’ in the dictionary, there would be a picture of the inside of our SUV. The captain sat up front in the passenger seat, hunched to the side toward the window. He was almost as hurt as I was. My posture was similar; I basically lay canted toward the window.
In any other circumstances, I would have leaned on Fin, let him take my weight and some pressure off the sloppy stitches the captain had given me. Not that I could complain, since they were currently holding my insides on the inside. He’d had a couple of shots of antibiotics in his field kit so that was currently working its way through my system now too, but I would have to top up and see a proper doctor once we reached civilization again.
Every time I closed my eyes longer than a couple of blinks, the captain barked at me to wake the hell up and keep it together.
Fin had erected a major ‘don’t even look at me’ sign once we got into the car. I didn’t know what he was upset about, but considering my pain level I didn’t have the brainpower to process his hurt feelings. He didn’t seem to want to clear the air, so for right now, fuck him and the horse, I’m glad we didn’t have to ride home on.
The captain yelled at me again. “Wake up, Zoey. If you don’t stay awake, I’m going to drag you into my lap and yell into your ear for the next hour until we make it back to the manor.”
I grumbled what I thought was a fuck you, but he didn’t hear me, and I didn’t have the energy to yell.
Fin shuffled on his side of the car, knocking his head in the window, and then cursed.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, and I shook my head. Why did I even bother? Men were such babies when their pride took a hit.
“Well, if you bump your head again, we might need to line your side of the car with a pool noodle to keep you safe,” I said.
“I’m not in the mood, Zoey,” he said, his voice low and gravel laden.
I shifted to look at him, even though every single inch I moved rocked pain through me. “No one is ever in the mood for me. I stopped taking it personally a long time ago. But that doesn’t tell me what crawled up your ass.”
“No,” he said.
“No, what?”
He refused to look at me, continuing to stare out the window.
“No, we aren’t going to talk about this right now?” I asked. “Or, did you mean, no, I’m going to hurt your feelings and even though I’m livid with you, I don’t want to say something either of us will regret?”
He didn’t get to blame any failings he possessed on me. Especially when I told him over and over we shouldn’t have walked into that forest. Damn it. I wanted to rage and throw things, but thanks to the fucking ambush we had in the woods, I could barely move for fear of fucking dying.
I glared at him. “When I can stand up straight again, I’m going to kick your ass. No mats, no stupid sparring. I’m going to straight up punch you in your too proud chin.”
“Keep it civil, boys and girls,” the captain said from the front seat.
Fin twisted around to face me, fire in his eyes. “I’m proud?”
This was the first time I’d truly seen him angry, and of course, he directed it my way. It was only a matter of time; it always was with the people in my life.
Instead of answering him, I lay my face against the frosty glass and closed my eyes. This time, the captain didn’t shout at me.
I dozed in and out until the SUV finally stopped outside Fin’s house. I stared at the door handle and then the driveway through the window. Even the thought of moving shot pain through my system.
I considered it for too long. Fin opened the door, and I whimpered as I fell out the door.
Fin caught me easily, lifted me into his arms, and carried me toward the manor.
We ended up on separate gurneys in his office. The doctor bustled around the room, readying an IV and a tray of instruments. Fin stood off to the side, eyeing both me and the captain laid side-by-side in matching blue hospital gowns.
The doctor looked at me first, declared my stitches adequate, then wrapped my ribs in a thick gauze and tucked me under a warming blanket.
“Is this necessary?” I asked, lifting the reflective material toward him.
He narrowed his beady eyes at me. His moustache twitched. “While your teeth are chattering, yes. I also warmed the IV. Lay back and let it work.”
I huffed but did as instructed, ignoring Fin’s presence when he hovered closer and closer.
He stepped up to my side and stared down at me. Some irritation had leached from his features, but there was still a hard set to his jaw I didn’t like.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“I think that doctor slipped some pain killers into that IV as well,” I said, my words slipping as my focus did on his face.
Fin clutched my hand to his chest. “You could have gotten yourself killed. All of us killed. What were you thinking?”
I blinked a few times at him. “Are you really confronting me, while I’m doped up and can’t defend myself?”
“Maybe for once you’ll listen when you can’t drop a wisecrack.”
I slowly sat up, but he pressed me back down. When my back reached the gurney again, I slapped his hand away.
“No, that’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, princess. Deal with it. What were you thinking sucking all that magic into you? I’m surprised you didn’t overload yourself and drop dead on the spot.”
Anger cut through some of the brain fog. “Well, if someone had taken the time to explain this vow he made to me, then maybe I wouldn’t have. You can’t just throw car keys at a person and tell them to drive on the highway. Especially when they are screaming at you they don’t want to be there in the first place.”
He dropped my hand, then crossed the distance to the front of his desk. “You signed up for this, agreed to help me. I didn’t force you into the helicopter. All mages are the same, taking more than they need, grabbing whatever they can get.”