Chapter 25
It lasts a whole thirty seconds before Jarek charges through the front door.
His shirt is ripped and burnt-looking above the elbow, and the flash of raw, exposed muscle I catch through the fabric makes my pulse jump. He pauses, glares around the kitchen, and drops into a chair. “You will treat my arm.”
“I’m not allowed to practice my former trade,” I say, slipping an uncharacteristic challenge into my voice.
“You will treat my arm,” he roars.
I’d prefer to let him suffer. Pity that I’m a healer, and to leave a patient in such a condition would betray my most dearly held beliefs.
I’m already moving toward the stove. I bring another pot to boil, pull scissors, bandages, and salve from the cupboard, and turn to cut away the rest of his sleeve. “What happened?”
He grabs my hands, crushing them. I look up, startled. His pupils are dilated. He’s obviously in great pain. “No questions,” he says hoarsely.
I yank my hands free. “I can treat you better if I know what I’m looking at. Is it a burn? A cut?”
He grunts.
I bite my tongue and finish slicing away the shirt, exposing a wound unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
The skin in his upper arm is blistering in a circle the size of my fist. At its center is a small puncture.
I inspect the back of the arm. My breath grows thick.
The trauma goes all the way out the other side, like someone shoved a thin rod straight through him.
Only Guardians are allowed weapons. They have swords, and bows and arrows.
Neither of those made this injury.
My brain is whirring. One bizarre weapon that leaves holes in bodies, three victims: my mother, the Potters’ son, and now Jarek. I still can’t explain the particularly gruesome nature of Peter’s passing, but the pattern’s there, written in torn flesh.
Which means Jarek knows who the killer is! Did he get this injury trying to stop them?
“Is there anything inside the wound?” I ask, hoping my voice doesn’t betray my realization.
Jarek had been still as I examined him, but at my question, his jaw clenches. “Your mother would have this treated by now.”
His words are a punch to my gut. People in agony sometimes lash out when you treat them.
I’m used to that, but the pain Jarek just inflicted was intentional—he meant for me to be ashamed of my curiosity.
In a flash of awareness, I think I understand something about what it would be like to have this man as a father.
I feel a burst of cold sorrow on Gryphon’s behalf.
Because Jarek’s wound isn’t actively bleeding, there’s time to run over to my old house and obtain materials for his comfort, powerful herbs that numb flesh and muscle.
I’m not going to do that.
Instead, I return to the stove with unhurried steps and drop a spoon into the now-boiling water.
Then I remove the pot from the heat and open the oven a crack so the oat biscuits stay warm but don’t burn.
While the spoon sterilizes, I slowly, thoroughly, wash my hands.
Continuing my leisurely pace, I use tongs to remove the molten instrument, setting it on a towel next to Jarek.
I could tell him what I’m about to do will hurt.
Instead, I walk over and jab my pointer finger as far into the hole as I can to make sure there’s nothing inside.
He makes an involuntary cry before biting short the noise.
I almost smile. As expected, I don’t encounter anything except the suctioning murk of rent flesh.
I retract my finger and use the tongs to pick up the spoon. The metal is still unbearably hot.
I maintain eye contact as I insert the spoon’s searing handle into Jarek’s wound, not flinching at the smell of freshly cooked meat. If the wound wasn’t entirely cauterized before, it is now.
This is for Wendy’s finger.
Jarek’s eyes blaze on mine and his mouth twists, but he doesn’t cry out this time, even as sweat beads across his forehead.
Tapping the nub of spoon that has emerged from the back of his arm, I say, “It’s as clean as I can get it.
” I yank out the spoon, speaking matter-of-factly.
“But I can’t stitch you. A wound this deep needs to heal from the inside out.
I’ll pack it with comfrey salve and dress it.
You’ll need to apply more salve and change the dressing every other day.
If you don’t keep it clean, you might lose use of that arm. ”
Jarek nods curtly.
I sterilize and bandage his wound. When I’m done, he wobbles to his feet, using the table to steady himself. Lightheadedness is a perfectly natural reaction in his condition, but I sense he’d hate for me to see it.
“Feeling feeble?” I ask, enjoying myself. “You’ll want to give it a moment.”
He frowns. “I don’t have a moment. Misia and Gryphon will be here soon.” He nods toward the pot of chowder. “You’ll serve us when they return.”
Of course, is what I should say. As you wish.
It would be the polite thing. The perfect example of the harmonious words that we’re encouraged to always choose. I’m about to utter them sarcastically when instead, I surprise myself with a realization so sudden, so powerful, that I gasp as it lands.
“You’ve gone outside the Wall.”
It’s many pieces coming together as one: Seeing up close this strange wound made by no weapon of Noah’s Valley.
Gryphon suggesting there might be a way to make it in the Beyond.
The green sweet Jarek had me taste. The ornate mirror in the Tzu home.
I’ve been so busy enacting petty revenge that I’ve missed the obvious: the Guardians are somehow exploring outside the Wall.
“Heresy,” Jarek says, his tone sharp. “Our Founders ensured the only way out of the Valley was over Eden’s Gate.”
Despite his injury, he’s fully capable of hurting me if I don’t walk back my words. I don’t care about the danger he presents, though. There’s only one thing that matters to me.
If our Guardians can survive Beyond, Jonas might still be alive, too.
Marina said some of those who were Harvested survived.
I’d been confident she was messing with me, but then Gryphon conceded it was possible before breaking my heart by letting me know Jonas would have never stood a chance.
But if the Guardians are going outside and returning, that’s no longer true!
I lunge toward the door, but even injured, Jarek is too fast, too strong.
I haven’t made it a foot before his good arm wraps around my waist like iron. His other hand, the one attached to the arm I just fixed, is clamped to my neck, striking a nerve that paralyzes the right side of my body. The left side twists and claws, but I can’t land any strikes.
“There, there, little piglet,” Jarek coos into my hair.
In a surge of anger, I manage to swing my left arm around to his bandaged wound and twist the skin just above the puncture.
Jarek grunts and drops me.
Gryphon walks in just then, a cloth-wrapped bundle tucked under one arm. His face goes to stone as he takes in the scene. Me in a pile on the floor, heaving with adrenaline, my hair loosening from its two buns. His father, hands clenched into fists, towering over me.
Jarek glares at Gryphon. “Don’t look at me like that, boy,” he growls. “If you don’t want her, I certainly don’t.”
It takes me a beat to realize what this would look like to someone who’d just walked in. My cheeks burn. I note with pleasure the blood seeping through Jarek’s bandage.
“Do…not…speak of her that way,” Gryphon snarls.
Jarek’s eyebrows shoot up. “You care now? You humiliated her in front of the entire village in chapel this morning.”
I hate that Jarek has made a fair point. Gryphon’s gaze jerks to me. Fury rages inside him, but for once, it’s not directed at me. “Apologize,” he orders his father.
My mouth drops open.
Jarek laughs. It sounds like river ice cracking underfoot. “First you shoot me, and now you tell me how to behave?”
I stifle a gasp, suspecting Jarek has just divulged something important, even if I don’t quite understand his meaning.
I zero in on the wrapped cloth Gryphon carries.
The way he’s holding it, I can tell it has some heft.
The weapon used to make the hole in Jarek’s arm?
And perhaps the Potter boy and my mother, as well?
But that makes no sense. Gryphon may be no friend of mine, but he’s not a murderer.
“Dock it in the charging station,” Jarek says, nodding at the object.
“I need to speak to the Engineer about its capacity.” Then his whole demeanor changes.
He swivels to face me where I still kneel on the floor, drawing his heels together and bending at the waist in a quick, smart bow.
“So sorry if I hurt your feelings,” he says, his voice gone buttery the same way it did right before he chopped off Wendy’s finger.
“We can’t all be the loving gentleman your husband-to-be is. ”
I stare from Jarek to Gryphon, trying to understand the game.
Jarek strides from the cottage before I can.