Chapter 9
B y the time Nessa brought me clean clothes, three healers had checked every cut on my body twice.
They searched every inch of my skin for indigo lines. Fingers pressed along my throat, ribs, arms, and legs. They checked my hairline and the tender skin along the inside of my thighs, feeling for cold threads buried beneath my flesh.
One healer drew a thin line of Wild around each wound. Green light passed over the cut in my palm, the torn skin along my cheek, and the fresh stitches in my thigh.
The Wild moved through each wound and returned clean.
I carried no sign of the corruption; none of us did now, except for Rhian.
Nessa still checked again. “Hold out your hands.”
I lifted them, giving her a closer look at my middle fingers for good measure.
“Good, your hands still work. Now stop being a child.” She uncurled my fingers and turned my hands over, paying close attention to the fresh bandages wrapped around my palm.
Gold shone through the cloth in eight small points.
“Well, it’s not indigo.” She glanced toward the open passage, where Caelan, Xandros, and the fae healer were being examined in the next hollow.
“Yes, I am aware.”
Her eyes narrowed before she looked at my face. “Any chills?”
I shook my head.
“Pain in your chest?”
“No, but there is this one in my ass?—”
“I’m ignoring that for now.” She sighed. “Shortness of breath?”
“Only when someone asks me the same question six times.”
Nessa caught my chin and tipped my face toward the mosslight. “We should all count ourselves lucky that your poor sense of humor has remained intact despite…”
Despite Rhian nearly bleeding out beneath my hands. Despite a rupture tearing open between realms with one of our oldest enemies waiting on the other side. Despite indigo dust crawling through the infirmary in search of living power. Despite my very own star now burning beneath my skin.
“Very lucky indeed.”
A strained laugh scraped from my throat.
Bramble hooked his claws over the edge of the bathing pool and hauled himself out. He gave a vicious hiss, then shook hard enough to spray water across the hollow.
His wet fur clung flat over his ribs and stuck up in uneven spikes along his back.
His tail trailed behind him in a thin, bedraggled rope, and several whiskers bent toward his cheeks.
A young healer had searched beneath every patch of fur, checked his teeth and paws, then washed him twice after finding dried blood near his tail.
His anger burned through our bond.
“I want to feel sorry for you. I really do.” I reached for the clean leggings folded beside me and tugged them on. “But you were the one who rolled in it.”
Bramble turned his back on me and burrowed into a towel on the floor.
I pulled the clean tunic over my head and freed my damp braid from the collar. When I looked toward the passageway, the opening had vanished.
Thick roots sealed every passage leading out of the lower chambers.
The Circle had ordered a strict quarantine before Torren stopped shaking. No one could leave until the healers were certain the corruption had not found another host.
Nessa gathered the bloodied linens from the floor and dropped them into a clay basin. “I overheard Griffin speaking to Caelan before they sealed the outer chamber. The Circle is meeting in the sanctuary.”
My fingers tightened around the hem of my tunic. “About Torren?”
“About all of it.” She crossed to a second basin set into the wall, this one filled with clean water, and scrubbed her hands with crushed soapwort leaves.
“The Briar Moon. The ruptures. This corruption.” She gestured toward the thin wall between us and Torren’s room.
“Elder Maren ordered the old scrolls to be brought out of the vaults.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “They want to know how much time we have.”
She nodded once.
The thorns around the moon returned behind my eyes. Black hooks had spread across its pale face while warning whistles rose from every edge of the forest.
Every part of me fought being trapped below. My vow pushed me to check the walls, count the wounded, and make sure the Grove was safe. Bramble’s unease pulled east through our bond, and the same pull stirred inside me.
“There’s still stew left over from last night. You should eat. We may as well make ourselves comfortable. We’re going to be here for a while.”
“I’m not hungry.” My stomach growled loud enough to echo off the walls.
Nessa waited.
“This proves nothing.” I pressed a hand beneath my ribs.
“It proves you are a terrible liar.”
She crossed to the wooden door and pulled it open. A young healer waited in the passage with a wooden tray and two clay bowls balanced atop it. Nessa pressed one of the bowls against my chest.
The smell of hot stew filled my nose. Mushrooms, bitter greens, and roasted roots crowded the thick broth. A torn piece of dark bread rested along the rim.
Steam floated up against my chin, and my mouth began to water.
“I said I’m not hungry.”
“Go.” She gestured toward the open door. “Find somewhere quiet to sit and eat all of it, or I’ll tell the First Thorn your wounds are more serious than we first thought.”
“Nessa—”
She closed the door before I could continue to argue.
Bramble slipped through at the last moment and raced past my boots, his wet tail held straight behind him.
“You are supposed to be on my side.”
He chirred without looking back.
The short passage led to a small resting room tucked beneath one of the Mother Tree’s larger roots. Moss softened the curved walls, and a plain wooden bench stood beside a stone basin filled with clean water.
It was empty. For the first time in days, I was alone. The quiet settled uncomfortably around my shoulders, and my grip tightened around the bowl.
I lowered myself onto the bench. Pain pulled through my thigh, and the stew shifted toward the rim before I steadied it against my knees.
Bramble climbed beside me, his dark eyes fixed on the bread.
“This is mine.”
He placed one paw on my leg.
“You already ate.”
His claws pressed through my trousers.
I had watched one of the healers feed him berry after berry to coax him into his bath. He had eaten every last one, then fought her with all four paws when she lowered him into the water.
I tore off a corner of bread and held it toward him. He snatched it from my fingers and hurried to the far end of the bench.
The first spoonful of stew burned my tongue. I swallowed anyway.
Warmth slid into my empty stomach. The next bite went down more easily. By the fourth, my hand had stopped shaking enough to keep the broth inside the bowl.
Bramble finished his bread and crept closer.
“No.”
His nose stretched toward a piece of mushroom, and one paw reached over the rim.
“You quite literally ate enough berries to feed a flock of birds.”
I moved the bowl out of reach.
A soft scrape came from the passage behind me, and my shoulders tightened.
Xandros Umbriel stood beneath the doorframe with a steaming bowl in hand.
Fresh linen wrapped the wound beneath his collar, and his pale hair hung damp around his face.
Someone had cleaned the blood from his temple and the ash from his skin.
And though dark shadows remained beneath his silver eyes, he was still striking, pale and sharp in the mosslight, as if a piece of the moon had stepped down into the room.
His gaze rested on the spoon halfway to my mouth.
Heat crawled from my neck up into my cheeks. “Have you been standing there long?”
The corner of his mouth tilted upward. “Long enough to see you lose a fight over bread.”
Bramble lifted his head, his lips pulled back from his teeth.
Xandros arched a dark eyebrow. “My mistake. The battle continues.”
My Kindred hissed. He scrambled across my lap and hid behind my hip, his ears twitching irritably.
“He doesn’t like you.”
The moon prince let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Neither do most of the people in your Grove.”
His fingers tightened once at his side before he crossed the hollow. Gold flashed beneath the skin of his knuckle, and the mark in my palm tingled.
I lowered the spoon and curled my fingers around the bandage to hide the gold shining through it. “Did the healers find anything?”
He shook his head, his mouth flattening. “Nothing. They were, however, very thorough.”
A laugh pressed against my throat. I covered it with a cough.
Xandros sat on the far end of the bench and set his bowl on his other side, but his attention stayed on the sealed passage behind us.
Until now, we had always had something separating us. A rupture. The living wall of the Grove. A ring of armed Thornwardens. Rhian and the healers...
Now there was only a few feet of wood and half a bowl of stew.
The memory of my own voice at the gate flashed through my mind. Then let him inside.
Rhian had been dying, and Xandros had been the only person who might slow the corruption. I had argued for necessity. But sitting this close to him now, with no wall or drawn weapons between us, made every risk easier to see.
Without his armor, his build was easier to judge. Lean muscle shifted beneath his sleeves, while thin white scars crossed his knuckles and vanished beneath his cuffs. Gold constellations glowed above his collar and along his hands, cutting through the thick calluses at the base of his fingers.
Sword calluses.
His hands rested loose over his knees, though his weight stayed balanced over his boots. If he wanted to, he could rise and form that blade of starlight before I reached the weapon Nessa had taken from me.
His gaze returned to mine. “You are staring.”
“I’m deciding how much trouble you could cause before the guards can reach us.”
He glanced toward the passage. “The four outside this room? Or the two at the next door?”
I lowered my spoon. “You counted them.”
“You didn’t?”
The answer pulled one corner of my mouth upward before I could stop it.
He had counted the guards, the exits, and the distance between himself and the nearest threat. The same things I had measured before he finished crossing the room.