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I thought only mates shared blood. Perhaps Scion could help. Since they were both mated to me, they were loosely connected by more than family. Ambrose, however, seemed out of nowhere.

I didn’t have the time to argue about it.

Suddenly, Bael coughed and sat up, his eyes opening. I let out a wail of surprise and misery, and forgot everything I’d been thinking about moments before. Any anger drained out of me, leaving only fear and the tiniest hint of hope behind.

“Don’t sit up,” Scion muttered, pushing Bael back to the floor. “We still have to pull these things out.”

Bael allowed himself to be pushed back to the floor. A sheen of sweat had appeared on his brow, and I knelt behind his head and pushed golden curls off his face while Ambrose went about figuring out how to remove the arrows.

Bael’s lips moved, and I leaned down desperately. “What did you say?”

“I said, don’t cry little monster,” he rasped.

“You’re an idiot,” I told him, still crying. “Completely insane. Why would you do that?”

He didn’t respond to my question, instead holding back a shout of pain as Scion tugged the first arrow from his chest.

It didn’t matter though. I didn’t need to hear his answer to know he’d done it for me, and would do it again in a heartbeat even if it killed him.

21

LONNIE

THE CUTTHROAT DISTRICT, INBETWIXT

“How do you feel?” Ambrose asked.

I grimaced and sat up, wiping sweat from my face with the back of my uninjured hand. “Like I’m dying.”

“You are.”

I felt my heartbeat speed up, almost in something like anticipation. Anxiety perhaps, that I was about to hear exactly what I’d been dreading for months.

The pain from the arrows was gone. Once the Source-forged steel that was poisonous to Fae was removed from my skin the wounds were able to close over quickly. Still, I felt weak and nauseous, and my head was pounding with yet another migraine.

After the arrows were removed and I’d consumed more blood than I’d ever even considered possible, we’d left the wine seller and returned to the heart of the thieves' den. I was now lying on my back in one of the slightly uncomfortable beds in thedormitory style barracks where the thieves usually slept when coming back from jobs.

Lonnie had laid in bed beside me for several hours, until finally Scion convinced her to wash the blood and grimy cave water from her skin. They’d left barely ten minutes ago, and I already missed both their presence.

“Did you hear me?” Ambrose asked roughly.

I looked up at Ambrose, who was leaning against the wall beside the door watching me. I didn’t hate him nearly as much as Scion did, but I also wasn’t at all comforted by my cousin looming over me. I wished he’d leave and let me sleep, but evidently he had something to say.

“Yeah, I fucking heard you,” I grumbled. “Did your healing not work?”

He shook his head, his expression flat and slightly distant. Despite everything else, I found myself slightly annoyed by his attitude. My cousin had the worst fucking bedside manner of anyone I’d ever met–which was saying a lot, as I’d grown up with Scion.

Then again, he’d saved my life, so I probably shouldn’t be so ungrateful.

I glanced down at my own chest, as if the arrow wounds might burst open and start bleeding once more. Before I could ask, Ambrose beat me to it.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said flatly. “Your wounds are fine, though I feel the need to point out it was stupid of you to allow yourself to get hit in the first place.”

“I didn’t allow myself to do anything,’ I snapped. “You weren’t there.”

He raised an eyebrow, giving me a maddeningly superior look. “You’re very decisive, you know.”

I glared at him. “What?”