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“I need you to sit up,” he says, his voice intense enough I know something’s wrong.

He helps me pivot my hips into a sitting position. I bite my lip so hard I draw blood when my stomach muscles automatically flex around the wound, sending my nerve endings writhing. I feel a vague pressure at my back, and then the healer lays me back down.

“What is it?” I say. “Tell me. I know something’s wrong.”

“It’s more like what’s right,” he says. Before I can ask him what he means, he’s calling another healer over.

“Look at this,” he says, as she steps up to the cot I’m lying in. “Crossbow got her right through the abdomen, nicked about three organs.”

“And she’s still awake?” the woman asks, sounding incredulous.

“Yes, I’m still awake,” I rasp, still able to feel annoyed that she’s talking about me like I’m not here.

“Will you help me with the extraction?” he asks his colleague.

I know what comes next. I’ve seen my mom dig enough pieces of farm equipment out of people to be prepared, but it still doesn’t stop my heart thudding with fear.

“Can you give me some kind of pain relief?” I mutter. “Is there a spell for that?”

“There is.” The male healer shrugs. “But at this point it can only really take the edge off.” From the way he says it, I can tell asking for pain management isn’t most Unseelie’s priority and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Typical.

“Well, I’ll take whatever’s going at this point.”

The healer performs the spell, and the sharpness in my side dulls a few notches. Then he starts the extraction.

Even with the spell, the removal of the bolt is like being laid out on a burning hot pan on one side, and then being blistered by the sun on the other. Agony lances through me and I give up trying not to scream, letting my lungs burn with the rest of me. At last, darkness swallows me up, my body choosing to give me some relief through unconsciousness.

When I wake, my left side feels oddly rigid, like it’s been frozen. I shift, and there’s a series of pops, like the cracking of knuckles, only its coming from my abdomen. I immediately stop moving, terrified I might have damaged something. But the pain? It’s mostly gone. I breathe in and out, staring once more at the crags of the ceiling, trying to assess every sensation.

“It’s okay, you can move,” a voice says.

I shift my neck and see the male healer to my right.

“I can?” I croak. “But it feels weird.”

“It’s just the new muscle. You haven’t used it before so it’s a bit stiff.”

I gradually lean up onto my elbows and immediately catch sight of Ruskin asleep in a seat beside my cot. He looks ridiculously out of place there—a beautiful fae prince slumped in the sparse environment of the healer wing. It’s like he’s been ripped from a painting and dumped here by mistake. I examine the angular planes of his face, the jet black of his long lashes, taking comfort in the details of him.

“We had to knit together a part of your intestine too,” the healer says, drawing my attention away from Ruskin. “We’ve done the essential work—your body will do the rest for you. You’re lucky you have magic, and that it’s so strong. You should be fine in a few days.”

“Wow,” I say, gingerly lifting the cotton shirt they’ve changed me into. There’s a pale circle of skin where the crossbow bolt once was, with a few lines radiating out from it, making it look a little like a sun. I wasn’t awake to tell them to remove the scar. Now, looking at it, I find I don’t mind. I went through something today. It would be strange not to want some evidence of it.

“Is that it, then?” I ask, amazed at how different I feel now from the agony of before.

The healer looks unsure.

“What?” I demand, glancing over at Ruskin, who is still fast asleep. He better not be faking it. If there’s bad news, I want to be the one to tell him.

“It’s just interesting, your case,” the healer says.

I narrow my eyes. “How so?”

“That wound…you hadn’t realized, but the bolt had gone right through you. The tip had lodged itself in the back of your riding leathers.”

“Well, that explains why it hurt so much,” I say, only half serious.

“It should have killed you, Lady Thorn. No ordinary human being would have survived that injury. They would’ve been dead within the hour.”