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Everything hurt. Every muscle, every cell.

Mistlewick venom was painful and long-lasting, so when Taly immediately began fussing, he let her. She brought him trays of food and made him take faeflower and pain tonic, and when he asked if her new mender training had come with a uniform, and could she wear it (please), she just rolled her eyes, telling him that if he kept talking, she would start lacing the tonics with sleeping draught.

And then, of course, there was Calcifer. The mimic—whatever the hell that was. All Skye knewso far was that it was large and grumpy and had been shadowing Taly around the apartment ever since she returned from the kitchen.

Oh, and it didn’t like him. At all. It growled every time he so much as looked at Taly and kept trying to push her away when she sat down beside him to check his bandages. And then when she had coaxed it up onto the bed beside him, it had“yawned.”Which was to say it had opened its mouth just so he could see what massive teeth it had.

“I think it wants to eat me,” Skye said, lying flat on his back—that was the position that hurt the least—and eyeing the gangly cat-thing lounging on the opposite side of the mercifully large bed.

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Taly asked from beside him. She was resting on her side with one leg slung across his beneath the blankets. Over her shoulder, the beast glared at him, its large bat-like ears folded against its head.

“Other people have said this?”

Taly shrugged and turned the page. “Only Azura. And to be fair, he does feed on time aether, but he’s never taken more than what I give him.”

“Wait. What?”

“Time aether,” Taly said as if it was perfectly normal and not something utterly bone-chilling. Behind her, the beast twitched its long tail. “He prefers straight aether, but sometimes I give him spells linked to crystals.”

Skye just gaped until she looked up. “I think you might be crazy.”

“He’s not going to eat you.”

“No, it’s going to eatyou, and then it’s going to kill me out of pure contempt.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Taly, it’s growling at me.” And then just to prove his point, Skye lifted the hand she’d been resting on his bare chest, setting it off to the side.

The growling stopped.

Picking her hand up again and cursing every part of him that still ached, he placed it back on his chest.

The beast gave a dangerous snarl.

Taly reached behind her and scratched behind one of the monster’s too-large ears, and it immediately gave a huff and settled, resting its head in the crook of her neck. “He’s just cranky,” she said and turned back to her book. Skye felt her bare foot graze his calf beneath the blanket in a way that was meant to be soothing. “After all, he had to sleep downstairs last night, and now there’s a strange man in his bed.”

“His bed?”

“Yes, and you’re on his side.”

Well, that explained the black fur on his pillow.

“Taly—” A yawn cut him off as a sudden wave of exhaustion crashed into him. “We’re not taking that thing home with us.” Even if they could figure out a way to get it back into the city, he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was bringing along a creature that fed on his mate’s aether.

Looking up, Taly gave him a small smile—the one that let him know that he had already lost, and there was no use fighting. “Why don’t we talk about this tonight after you’ve gotten some rest.” Translated, that meant the issue would never come up again, defaulting her a victory.

Skye gave another yawn, every muscle in his body protesting the movement. Why was he sotired? It’s almost like— “You gave me sleeping draught.”

She smoothed the edge of the bandage taped to his abdomen. There was blood leaking through the white linen. “Just a little,” she said unapologetically. “You keep moving around, and I went to a lot of trouble trying to patch you up. I can’t have you undoing all my hard work.”

Skye relaxed into the pillow, humming contentedly when Taly leaned over and brushed a kiss to his mouth. The one good thing about sleeping draught was that it also numbed the pain. “Shards, woman,” he mumbled. “It’s like you’ve been taking notes from Sarina.”

By the next morning, Skye’s aether was still close to depleted, and his wounds were only newly healed, still scabbing though it looked like there wouldn’t be any scars. His torso was covered in bruises, and every part of him ached. Which might explain why Taly had just stared at him like he’d grown a second head when he asked where to find the training grounds.

Though slower to provoke, fey females were as protective and territorial as their male counterparts, and even more impossible to negotiate with once those instincts had been triggered. But after he’d explained that exercise would help him metabolize the remaining toxins in his system, she’d pointed the way. Grudgingly. And with a promise that if he collapsed, she wasn’t going to drag his limp body back to bed.

And that was fair. He still couldn’t take a step without wincing. But he didn’t want to spend another day in bed. He was antsy. Restless. And there were too many thoughts, too many worries swirling around in his head.