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“He must have gone to join Lucais’s group in the forest,” another whispered.

And then, finally, one of them stepped forward and said, “I can help.”

If I had access to my magic, I might have sent a blast of power out to knock the rest of them onto their asses. But I didn’t have time to wrestle my magic free from the chains I had locked around it, so I extended my hand towards the woman and nodded my head.

I didn’t even have time to question if the High Fae who had volunteered was really qualified to help, considering she looked no older than ten years of age. The girl took my hand, and we vanished, sucked up into a gust of calming wind, and evanesced into my bedroom doorway.

“Move,” she commanded, and Batre obeyed.

I remained in the doorway, gripping its worn wooden edges for dear life as Batre retreated to the corner of the room and the girl began to work.

She healed Wren the same way that he had healed my mother, by holding her hands above his wound and letting tendrils of light magic flow between them. I didn’t need to move any closer to know that she was stitching his skin back together with nothing more than a concentrated thought.

Batre had specifically told me to ask for a healer, and part of me wondered if it was a particular skill set unique to certain faeries—and if so, how Wren had managed to lay claim to such a wide variety of power.

He was unconscious, his head resting on my pillow and his arms lying limp at his sides, and I stared at the half of his face visible to me as the healer put her magic to work.

I almost screamed when flames burst out across his clothes, but Batre shot me a warning look, so I dug my teeth into my bottom lip and pressed my cheek into the grooves in the doorframe.

The fire wasn’t hurting him; it was removing obstacles, like the bloody washcloths and his torn shirt. It blazed without smoke, controlled and calm, and didn’t singe the linen on my bed as it wrapped itself around his limbs and magically cleared away the part of his shirt trapped against the coverlet beneath his back.

Wren’s features softened as the healer worked, the one sign that his pain was lessening.

Mine only increased.

It is her fault.

I’m so in love with you, it’s made me sick.

“The antidote, please,” the healer said, one hand hovering above his stomach as she extended the other behind her.

Batre looked at me, her mouth stretched into a tight and apprehensive grimace. “It’s your blood, Aura.”

But I was already moving towards the bed, craning my head around the healer’s body, following the line of ink that had appeared on Wren’s skin as the last of his sleeve burned away and the fire went out.

The fire went out.

Like the light in my eyes as they traced the swirls of tattoos up and down his arms.

The scar from the golden manacle, twin to my own, may have escaped my notice previously. I had a distinct memory of studying his arms, though. I’d traced the corded muscle with my eyes along clear, unmarked skin.

It wasn’t clear anymore.

And I no longer cared that the scar from the manacle was, in fact, still on his wrist, like a matching friendship bracelet carved in flesh.

Or that, on the silver chain around his neck, the round Belgrave insignia that rested atop the middle of his chest was identical to the one on mine.

I no longer cared about anything as I saw Wren’s naked arms for the very first time.

He had two sleeves of tattoos, and if I had never seen them before, there was a chance that I might have been convinced it was part of the healing ritual, but Ihadseen them before.

In my dreams every single night for three long months.

When the healer explained why my blood was needed to counteract the poison in his system, it was too late.

It had already clicked.

“I can make a tonic if you have a blood phobia,” she grumbled, “but his mate’s lifeblood is the quickest and easiest way to cure him.”