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Aside from poking him?

“I’m taking care of you.”

The moment I speak the words, it really registers.I’m helping the horseman recover.Helping him, when only a short while ago I was the person pulling the trigger. I can hardly believe it.

The shock on his face must mirror my own.

He catches my hand, his eyes burning bright as he looks at me. “I’m fine, Sara.”

He doesn’twantmy help. Didn’t see that one coming.

“No, you’re not. You got plugged with a small army’s worth of ammunition.”

He begins to sit up. “I’ve endured worse.”

Yeah, I know. I was there. Being burned alive has got to top the “Shitty Situations of the Year” list.

I head back to Trixie and, after flipping on a switch and watching the overhead light sputter to life, I begin rummaging through the horseman’s saddlebags. As I do so, one of the bullets drops out of his mount’s side, landing on the floor with a heavy clink. Poor horsie.

Eventually my hand wraps around a bottle of Red Label I lifted from one of our stops. It takes a little longer to find the roll of gauze, but once I do, I return to the couch where the horseman is sprawled out.

Pestilence’s eyes drop to the items in my hands.

“Those areyours,” he says pointedly, like he doesn’t want a thing to do with them.

Mayhap Pestilence is more afraid of my kindness than even I am of his.

“Well, tonight I feel like sharing,” I say, unraveling the gauze as I move back to him.

He begins to push himself up, but I don’t let him get very far. Grabbing his shoulder, I force him back down to the couch.

“I will heal on my own,” he insists, scowling first at the gauze, then the liquor that rest on the nearby coffee table.

“Yeah, you will.” I grab a chair from the kitchen and drag it over.

I sit down on the chair in front of him and unscrew the cap of the whiskey, my eyes trained on his wounds.

“I don’t agree with this,” he says, but he’s no longer trying to flee. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that I see curiosity sparkling in Pestilence’s eyes.

No one’s ever tended to him.

“I didn’t ask whether you did,” I say, grabbing the roll of gauze and pouring some of the whiskey onto it.

“Vexing woman.”

I lift my brows and begrudgingly nod in agreement. I can totally be vexing.

“Don’t you want me to suffer?” he asks ruefully, tracking each of my movements.

“I’ve never wanted you to suffer,” I say, “Not even when I shot you down.”

I move the alcohol-soaked linen to the first of his wounds.

He hisses as it comes in contact with his exposed flesh. “You lie, human.Thisis suffering.”

He gets shot up a dozen times, and yet he complains about a little alcohol in his wounds?

“This is disinfectant.”