Chapter 5 Everly #2
Not around me. Not past me. Over me, his shoe landing inches from my blood-soaked hand, and he walks toward the exit.
"You should be more careful," he says without turning around.
And then he's gone.
The room is very quiet for a moment. Then Marigny says, "Son of a bitch," and starts barking orders for the first aid kit.
Miranda hasn't moved. She's staring at the doorway where Ren disappeared with an expression I can't place—shock, maybe, or something more complicated. Even for Nyxhaven, what just happened was cold and cruel.
Marigny crouches beside me with gauze and antiseptic. "Hold still. This is going to sting."
"More than the giant hole in my arm?"
"You'd be surprised." She wraps the wound with efficient, unsympathetic hands. The gauze turns red immediately. "You need stitches. I'm sending you to the infirmary."
"Can't someone just—" I gesture vaguely with my good hand, meaning magic it better.
"Sanguis healing requires a willing Sanguis practitioner." Her jaw tightens. "And since our only one just walked out..."
"Right."
"I'll take her."
Brittany. Standing in the doorway with her bag over her shoulder, black nails and blacker expression, looking like she's been here exactly long enough to see what happened.
"You're not in this class, Leigh."
"I was passing by and I heard the commotion." She looks at my arm. Then at the exit Ren used. "That's fucked up even for Sanguis."
Marigny opens her mouth—to argue, probably—then closes it. "Fine. Get her to the infirmary. And Grey?"
"Yeah?"
"Next week, I'll pair you with someone who isn't trying to earn extra credit through bodily harm."
The infirmary is in the basement of the main building, a long room with white walls and the chemical smell of antiseptic that doesn't quite mask the underlying scent of old magic.
The healer on duty is a tired woman named Nurse Kellerman who takes one look at my arm, sighs like I'm the eighth bleeding student she's seen today, and starts stitching.
Without magic. With a needle and thread, like a mundane doctor.
"Sanguis healers are reserved for emergencies," she explains when I ask. Which apparently doesn't include a gash deep enough to see muscle.
Brittany sits on the next cot over, legs crossed, watching Kellerman work with a flat, unreadable expression. But I can tell she's angry. It's in the way her jaw is set, the way her black nails are digging into the edge of the mattress.
Twelve stitches. Kellerman wraps the wound in clean white bandages, tells me to keep it dry, come back if it starts to swell or smell, and maybe try not to fall on rusty metal anymore. I thank her and we leave.
Outside, the late afternoon sun hits me like a slap to the face, which I would’ve preferred to the beat down I just got.
I sit down on the stone steps of the main building and cradle my arm, still throbbing with my heartbeat.
Brittany drops down next to me, pulls a pack of tissues from her jacket—black, little skulls on them, because of course—and hands me one without being asked.
"You healed me," I say.
She doesn't look at me. "What?"
"Day three. After the storm. My hands were all cut up from the sphere and you just—you didn't even hesitate. You pricked your finger and healed me like it was nothing."
"It was nothing. Healing cuts is basic. First thing they teach you in Sanguis." She picks at a thread on her jeans. "That's what I'm saying. What he did—or didn't do—that's not normal. For any blood mage, but especially not for him."
"What do you mean, especially not for him?"
She's quiet for a second, like she's deciding how much to give me.
"Sanguis magic is about connection. Blood to blood.
When you heal someone, you feel what they feel—their pain, their heartbeat, the way their body's trying to fix itself.
It's intimate." She says the word like it tastes sour.
"Most of us get used to it, but it's always there.
This pull, when someone near you is bleeding.
Like a magnet in your chest. You want to fix it. It's instinct."
"So refusing to heal someone..."
"Is like holding your breath. You can do it, but your body fights you the whole time.
Every Sanguis student in that room would have felt your blood hit the sand.
Their magic would have been screaming at them to help.
It's what we do." She meets my eyes. "And Ren Ashford—whatever else he is—he's the strongest blood mage on this campus.
If I felt it from the doorway, he felt it ten times worse.
He stood right next to you, bleeding out, and he overrode every instinct his magic was giving him. "
I let that sink in. "You're saying it would have been easier for him to heal me than to walk away."
"I'm saying walking away from that much blood, when you're that powerful, is like—" She searches for the comparison. "Like hearing someone scream for help and choosing to cover your ears. Not because you can't hear them. Because you can hear them perfectly, and you're choosing not to answer."
The afternoon is warm, but I feel cold.
"Why?" I ask. "Why would he do that?"
"I don't know. Ren's always been—" She stops.
Starts again. "Within Sanguis, he has a reputation.
He's generous with healing. Too generous, even.
He'll stay late after combat training to fix bruises.
He heals people in the hallway who haven't even asked.
First-years worship him because he's the guy who makes the pain go away.
" She picks at her nails. "But there's this thing.
Every now and then, someone comes along that he just..
. won't touch. Won't heal. Won't go near. And nobody knows why."
"Someone like me."
"I don't know if it's a you thing or a general thing.
But I saw his face, Everly. When he looked at you.
" She pauses. "That wasn't disgust. That wasn't strategy.
The other three—Callum's calculating, Atlas is angry, Felix was running his little experiment.
But Ren looked at you like you were a wound he couldn't close. "
"That's poetic for someone who claims she doesn't care."
"Fuck off. I'm making an observation." But her voice is softer than usual. "What I'm saying is, the other three are doing things to you. Ren is doing something to himself. And I don't know which one is scarier."
I look out across the quad. From here I can see the dining hall where a cluster of Mors students in silver are gathered on the steps, all sharp cheekbones and expensive haircuts.
A group of Tempest girls jog past in matching athletic gear, ponytails swinging.
Two Tumult students sit under a tree playing some kind of card game that keeps making the grass around them change color.
Normal. All of it looks normal. Like a regular college campus on a regular Friday afternoon, except for the occasional flash of shadow or spark of electricity or the fact that one of the trees is definitely screaming softly.
"Brittany?"
"What."
"You healed me without being asked. On day three. You barely knew me."
"Don't read into it."
"I'm just saying. You're Sanguis too. And you didn't fight your instincts. You just... helped."
Something flickers across her face—too fast to catch, gone before I can name it.
"Yeah, well. I'm not Ren Ashford." She stands, brushes off her jeans.
"Come on. I have emergency ramen in the room and you need to eat something before you pass out and make me drag your unconscious body up two flights of stairs. "
"You'd drag me?"
"I'd consider it. Then I'd probably just put a blanket over you and go to bed."
I laugh. It hurts my arm, which makes me wince, which makes Brittany roll her eyes, which makes me laugh again.
I've got twelve stitches, a combat class I'm definitely going to fail, and four fraternity presidents who've each found their own special way to make my life hell. Callum with his threats. Atlas with his lightning. Felix with his loaded dice. And now Ren, with a deliberate cruelty that somehow hurt worse than everything that’s come before.
Four down. Nobody left to disappoint me.
But I keep thinking about what Brittany said. That healing is instinct for Sanguis. That refusing to heal someone who's bleeding right in front of you is an act of war against your own magic. That Ren felt my blood hit the sand, felt the pull to fix it, and chose not to.
Not because he didn't care.
Because he cared too much about something else.
I just don't know what yet.