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The Warsword made a noise of confirmation. ‘My breastplate is a piece of shit.’

‘Isn’t it supposed to be impenetrable? You get special armour from Delmira, don’t you?’

‘Every Warsword before me did,’ he supplied with a grimace. ‘By the time I completed the Great Rite, Delmira had fallen and its supplies had been exhausted. I got stuck with a poor imitation from Harenth.’

‘Oh.’

Hawthorne gave Malik a pointed look. ‘If he wasn’t such a great hulking giant, I could have borrowed his.’

Malik seemed pleased by the jab.

‘What of your vial from Aveum? It has healing properties, doesn’t it? That could have cured this…’ Thea ventured.

‘I’m saving it.’

‘For what?’

‘Something worse than a scratch, Alchemist.’

‘Gods, you’re stubborn.’ Thea wiped her hands on her own filthy shirt and returned the tin to her satchel. ‘But this should help stave off that looming infection before you go to the infirmary.’

‘The infirmary is full. I don’t need —’

‘Yes, you do.’ Thea didn’t know where all this command in her voice had come from, but she liked it. She especially liked it when he didn’t argue back.

Slowly, she placed a patch of gauze over the wound and started bandaging him. All the while, she could feel Malik’s eyes on her, onthem…

‘So you took my advice…’ Wilder ventured.

‘What advice?’

‘The bit about knowing how to treat wounds.’

‘Perhaps you should have taken it yourself.’

‘I know plenty.’

‘This wound begs to differ…’ Thea scoffed. ‘But yes. I asked Farissa to teach us, me and the other alchemists. Figured it wasn’t an entirely useless suggestion. Besides,’ she added,stepping back and surveying her handiwork, while also trying to ignore the sculpted grooves of his torso. ‘Now we’re even.’

Hawthorne drew his lower lip between his teeth as his gaze travelled over her. ‘I suppose we are.’

Suddenly self-conscious, Thea packed away Wren’s dwindling supplies, fiddling unnecessarily with the cork of one of the vials to distract herself from the weighted silence between them.

Hawthorne was the first to break it, clearing his throat. ‘Now you can leave.’

Thea’s brows shot up. ‘That’s not much of a thank you.’

The Warsword shrugged. ‘Like you said, now we’re even.’

‘Glad to see you’re back to your usual self,’ Thea snapped. But then she eyed Malik, who seemed a little unsettled.

Hawthorne noted her hesitation. ‘I’ll keep him company. I like that he doesn’t talk.’

Thea could have sworn she saw amusement in Malik's eyes.

The Warsword motioned to the door. ‘Go on, get out. For once, I need some peace without you.’

‘Bastard,’ she muttered and went to the exit. Gods, she was done with his moods. But something made her linger in the doorway, a strange tingling at the base of her neck, and she glanced over her shoulder.