Chapter 24
Harper
As we come toward the fortress, Lucien and Alaric are carrying Sevrin between them.
Once he’d gone fully unconscious, he’d become too heavy for me to carry.
There’s a rumble, and we all tense as a flood of dragon riders come out the doors.
My men ready their swords, and my entire body tenses, expecting another attack, but suddenly Kaelen Windcrest pushes to the front, and I almost collapse in relief.
The dragon riders of Gore Rock!
“Kaelen!” Gareth greets warmly, lowering his sword.
Kaelen looks ready for a fight. “Your Highness. Now, where are those bastards?”
“Outside on their dragons, and Elder Thorne, the coward, is somewhere in the fortress.”
The scar on Kaelen’s face dances with his narrowed eyes. “We’ll take care of them.”
“Then we’ll take of our injured man,” Gareth says, nodding to Sevrin.
Kaelen gives him a grim smile. “And tomorrow, we hang the traitors.”
I shiver as he shouts orders to his men, and they go pouring outside and around us. The battle might be finished, but the killings certainly aren’t.
“This way to the healer’s room,” Lucien says, beginning to drag Sevrin in one direction.
The princes carry Sevrin into a small stone room, an infirmary with a single narrow cot and shelves lined with dusty jars.
No one is in the room. No one follows us inside.
Lucien herds me in after them, closing the door behind us.
The world narrows to just this one space: the bed, Sevrin’s limp body, the three men I’d trust with anything.
Gareth lays Sevrin on the cot, propping his head with a bunched-up blanket.
Sevrin’s skin is gray. Every inch of him is wounded but the worst one is at his his throat, which is thickly coated with blood.
The wound is a crescent moon, ragged and ugly, still seeping.
All his other wounds are no better. His eyes are closed, and I can only hope he’s found enough peace to sleep.
I push past Alaric and Lucien, nearly falling across Sevrin’s body. My knees hit the stone. “He’s barely breathing,” I whisper.
I can feel the slow rise and fall of his chest, but it’s so weak, it might as well be nothing.
Alaric tries to guide me away, but I shake him off, reaching for the shelf. “Water. I need water. And cloth. And—” The words trip and tumble, all the knowledge I ever had about healing trying to melt away under panic. “Honey. Yarrow. I know what to do.”
Lucien’s hands are on my shoulders again, but lighter this time, steadying instead of restraining. “Harper. You’re hurt. We should be taking care of you. We can find someone else–”
“I’m fine,” I lie, even knowing that I’m not. My side is a white-hot spike. I’m fairly certain at least one rib is broken, and every breath is painful. “He needs me.”
Gareth finds a battered wooden bucket and pours clean water into a pot that’s placed over the fire.
Alaric grabs a handful of rags from a cupboard and lines them up beside me, neat and orderly.
Lucien goes to the fire in the fireplace, with embers barely burning, and builds it up until the room is brighter, and the water can boil.
I lean over Sevrin, hands hovering above his chest. I’m shaking so bad I can barely control the movement. “Hey,” I murmur, and my voice cracks. “You’re going to be okay. We’re here. We’re going to take care of you.”
Lucien hands me a knife. I don’t question how he knows what I need, but I appreciate it. I slice the linen into strips, hands working on muscle memory. “Get the honey,” I tell Alaric. He grabs a jar from the shelf and brings it over, unscrewing the lid.
“And I need the yarrow,” I say, pointing at the correct pot of flowers.
Gareth brings over the yarrow, a dusty bundle of dried stems and leaves, and sets it beside the water. “I don’t know what else you need,” he says, voice rough.
“This is it. For now,” I say, not looking up.
“I need the water. Has it boiled?”
Lucien checks. “It has.”
“Poor it in this bowl and keep the bowl full of clean water as I work.”
“Okay,” he says, doing as I ordered.
I let the water cool as I gather all my supplies and organize them. I’m ready. It has to be now. “Hold him down.”
“What?”
I glance up at the three of them, my vision suddenly sharp as a knife. “He might fight me. We have to be prepared.”
Lucien moves to Sevrin’s head, palms cupping either side of his jaw. “Got him,” he says.
Gareth takes one arm, Alaric the other. Together, they pin him to the cot.
I get to work.
First, I select the correct jars: willow bark and meadowsweet.
I crush them together with a stone pestle, mixing the powder with a few drops of water until it’s a gritty paste.
I pry open Sevrin’s mouth, ignoring the blood, and rub the mixture against his tongue and the inside of his cheeks.
“It’ll help with the pain,” I say aloud, more for me than for him. “Even if it tastes like hell.”
Sevrin’s throat bobs, his jaw twitching. For a second, I think he might bite me, but then his mouth slackens and he sags back against Lucien’s hands.
Next are the wounds themselves. They’re oozing, and I know I have to clean them before I can do anything else.
I dip a cloth in the honeyed water, sprinkle it with yarrow, and press it to the largest of the cuts that’s at his throat.
Sevrin spasms, body arching off the cot, as pain races through him.
Gareth and Alaric hold him firm. He screams, raw and inhuman, and my heart shatters a little more.
“Almost done,” I murmur, working in small, steady circles over the cut and then moving across his arms and his chest. Whenever it’s needed, I wring out the rag and soak it in more clean honeyed water and yarrow. Then I remove his pants to clean the wounds there as well. “Almost done. Almost done.”
The blood slows. The pink edges of the wounds turn yellow-white as the honey and yarrow work their way in. I keep cleaning, washing the cloth every few minutes, until the water runs clear and the wounds are flushed of grit and dirt.
I find the needle and thread. My hands never shake, even though I feel on the edge of collapsing.
I run the needle through the flame of a candle, then jab it through Sevrin’s skin at the base of the largest wound at his throat.
He jerks, hissing through his teeth. Lucien murmurs soft, steady nonsense, stroking Sevrin’s hair, and Gareth and Alaric keep their grips.
I sew the cut closed, one tiny stitch at a time, talking to Sevrin the entire way.
Then I move on to all the other cuts that require stitching.
“When we get back home, we’re going to have breakfast in bed every morning, and we’re going to snuggle whenever we want…
” The words dissolve as the last stitch pulls tight and the skin puckers together.
It’s not my finest work, but he’s whole.
I tie off the thread. My hands are slick with blood, but I barely notice.
“Comfrey,” I say, glancing at Gareth as I point to what I need, then wash my hands.
“Smash it into a paste. It goes over the bruising.” He does, mashing the dark leaves in the pewter until it’s a greenish sludge.
When he’s done, I spread it over Sevrin’s ribs, where the skin is already turning black.
The cool mash seeps into his skin in a thin layer on nearly his entire body, which is pretty much just one big bruise.
Sevrin’s breathing slows.
“Now more yarrow,” I tell Alaric. He sprinkles it over the stitched cuts, and the smaller ones that didn’t need to be sewn, the yellow powder settling like pollen on fresh earth.
“More willow bark?” I ask.
“Right away,” Lucien says, hurrying to get it for me.
“Just a little.” I repeat the dose, making him swallow. He doesn’t react this time.
“Linen,” I tell them. “We need to wrap him up tight.”
The three of them work together, bandaging Sevrin’s chest, side, legs, and arms. I watch, bone-tired, vision tunneling in and out. When it’s done, I take a small sachet of lavender and chamomile from the shelf—someone, at some point, believed in comfort—and tuck it beneath his cheek.
Sevrin stirs. His eyes open, the gold so faded it’s nearly gone. He finds me, focuses, and his lips twitch into something like a smile. “My Heart,” he says, so soft I almost miss it.
I lean in, brush his hair back, and kiss him just above the brow, where the skin is warm and unharmed. “Rest,” I whisper. “You’re going to be okay.”
His eyes close, and his body relaxes.
I try to stand, but the world tilts and I pitch forward. Lucien is there, catching me before I hit the floor. His arms are warm, his voice frantic in my ear.
“You’re hurt,” he says.
“I’ll live,” I whisper.
Lucien lifts me up into his arms, holding me close. Gareth and Alaric come to stand beside me.
“We’ve got you,” Gareth says, voice raw.
“You’re hurt too,” I protest.
“Rest. We can wait. You’re safe,” Alaric whispers.
And for the first time tonight, I know I am. I close my eyes, the smell of lavender and blood thick in the air, and let the world fall away.