Hold Them, Ivy
? Roman ?
The pain arrives after the road is secure, which is how my body usually collects what command postpones.
It starts beneath my ribs, hot and deep, then spreads through my side with every breath I take. I keep my hand pressed against the wound because the moment I lift it, blood runs faster between my fingers.
Ivy is in front of me before I can straighten. Her face has gone pale beneath the dirt and smoke, and blood runs along her upper arm where the attacker caught her. She doesn’t seem to notice it. Her eyes stay on mine, then fall to my hand.
“Roman, look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“You’re barely standing.”
“That’s still standing.”
Before Nora reaches us, my free hand finds Ivy’s wrist.
I tell myself I’m checking for injury. Her pulse jumps beneath my thumb, quick and alive, and I know the lie for what it is. I only need to feel that she’s here. Her fingers close over mine.
“I’m here,” she says quietly.
Nora reaches us a second later and grips my other shoulder before I can shift away from her. She looks at the wound, then at the blood on my hand, and her face hardens.
“Sit down,” she says.
“The road isn’t secure.”
“The road can survive without you upright for five minutes.”
Dane comes through the guards with his sword still in hand.
The smoke has thinned enough that I can see the rear stone and the wolves working around it, though the road behind us remains blocked.
The fifth wagon is free now, its wheel wedged back onto solid ground, and Elden is keeping the horses steady while two guards check the medicine cases.
“The east side’s clear,” Dane says. “The ridge scouts found no movement past the second bend. We can push the wagons through the cut, but the rear stone will take at least an hour to clear enough for them to turn around.”
“Then the wagons go forward,” I say.
Nora turns on me. “You’re not deciding anything until I know where that knife went.”
“It went into me.”
“That’s the only useful thing you’ve said since I reached you.”
The movement of almost smiling pulls at the wound and turns the world sharp around the edges.
Dane looks between us. “Birch Hollow is still three hours ahead. Tamsin can travel with the medicine, and I’ll take twelve guards with the wagons. The remaining guards can stay here until we open a horse path around the rear stone.”
Nora is already pulling open the front of my coat. Her fingers press against the soaked fabric below my ribs, and I lock my jaw against the sound that tries to leave me.
“Not too deep,” I say.
She looks up at me with flat disgust. “Don’t tell me how deep a blade is when I’ve got blood soaking through both sides of your coat.”
Ivy lowers herself beside me as Nora guides me down against the wagon wheel. Her hand stays at my shoulder, steady but not holding me in place.
Before dawn, I watched that same shoulder rise from the blanket beside me. I remember the warmth of her against my chest, the half-sleep weight of her body tucked close, and the way she looked at me when I handed her a robe before Dane came through the door.
I refuse to let that be the last ordinary thing I remember.
“The medicine goes,” I say to Dane.
Dane doesn’t argue. He knows what Birch Hollow needs, and he knows what I’m asking him to carry.
“Tamsin goes with you,” Nora says. “She knows the fever batch and the dosage. Keep the wagons tight until you clear the cut, and send a rider back from Birch Hollow with every healer they can spare.”
“I’ll get them there,” Dane says.
“Take the prisoner too,” I say.
The bound attacker is dragged closer by two guards. His mouth is bloodied from Dane’s strike, and his eyes remain fixed on Ivy with the same ugly calculation he had when he tried to take her.
Dane’s grip tightens on the man’s shoulder. “He goes with the convoy?”
“He doesn’t stay near her.”
The prisoner smiles through split lips. “You won’t make the next road.”
Dane hits him in the stomach hard enough to fold him forward.
“That’s not a useful answer,” Dane says.
“Search him again,” I tell the guards. “Everything.”
One of them kneels behind the prisoner, removes his boot, and finds a folded strip of oilskin tucked beneath the heel. Dane takes it before the man can reach for it.
A rough sketch of Eastmere Cut is scratched across the inside. A narrow mark sits beside the fifth wagon. Another marks the rear stone. Beside both is the same blue freight symbol, a square crossed by a slanted line.
Three words are written beneath the sketch. Fifth watch. Rear stall.
I don’t know the code, but I know what it means.
They knew the convoy’s hour. They knew which wagon carried the medicine. They knew exactly where to break the road.
Ivy reads it over Nora’s shoulder. Her fingers press harder into my shoulder.
“Who gave them this?” she asks.
The prisoner spits blood into the dirt. “You think they told us names?”
Dane crouches in front of him. “You don’t need to know the name. You only need to know who paid you.” The man says nothing.
Dane folds the oilskin carefully and gives it to one of the guards staying with us. “This goes west with Roman’s return party. You put it in Holt’s hands and tell him nobody else touches it.”
The guard takes it at once.
“Get the medicine through,” I tell Dane. “Don’t chase anyone. Don’t leave the wagons for a prisoner or a fight.”
Dane’s eyes hold mine. “I’ll bring them through.”
Tamsin, Nora’s younger healer, mounts beside the medicine wagon with her bag tied close against her hip. Dane places the prisoner between two guards, then sends the line forward in a tight shielded column.
Elden guides the fifth wagon around the bend first, slow enough to protect the jars beneath the canvas.
The wounded guards are placed inside the second wagon where Tamsin can watch them, and Dane rides beside the medicine cases with one hand resting against the canvas as though he can keep the fever draught safe by force of will.
I watch until the wagons disappear around the eastern bend.
Only then does my body seem to understand that the work is no longer mine to hold. The pain rises fast.
Nora presses harder against the wound, and I feel blood warm against my side before the wind cools it.
“You can’t shift,” she says.
“I know.”
“If you shift with that wound open, you’ll tear it wider. You’ll bleed faster, and I won’t be able to keep you alive long enough for us to reach shelter.”
Ivy’s fingers close around mine. The words don’t frighten me as much as they should. I’ve heard worse assessments in war camps, from healers who already knew their patients wouldn’t see morning.
What frightens me is the way Ivy stops beside me.
She has faced Grant, Jace, her sister, and every ugly truth they tried to place at her feet. She hasn’t gone still for any of them.
“Roman,” she says quietly.
Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t cry. She never gives fear more power than it has earned.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m trying.”
“Tell me the truth.”
The pass blurs around her. I can smell smoke in her hair, blood on the air, and beneath both of them the clean warmth that still reminds me of the bed we left before dawn.
“I’m afraid,” I say.
Her mouth trembles once before she settles it. She lifts her free hand to my face, her thumb brushing soot from my cheek as though that small touch can put me back together.
“So am I,” she says. “Don’t leave me alone with it.”
I turn into her palm before pride can stop me.
“You promised you’d tell me when you were afraid,” she whispers.
“I am.”
“Then stay long enough to tell me again.”
The pressure in her voice touches my skin before she can pull it back. It isn’t a full command, but I feel the edge of it anyway. The instinct to answer rises in me, deep and immediate, and then pain cuts through it. Nora catches Ivy’s wrist.
“Don’t use your command on him,” she says.
Ivy turns toward her, anger and fear rising together. “He’s bleeding.”
“I know. It won’t mend flesh, and it’ll tear you apart trying.”
Ivy looks back at me. For one second, I see the thought cross her face. If she pushes hard enough, if she reaches far enough into that new power everyone fears, perhaps she can make my body obey her and refuse to die.
“Don’t spend yourself on me,” I say.
Her fingers tighten around mine.
“I’m not doing this for you,” she says. “I’m here with you.”
Nora cuts away the soaked fabric around my side and works quickly, her hands steady even while her voice sharpens at the guards who hover too close.
“Boiled water,” she says. “The dark bottle from my kit, not the clear one. I need clean cloth, and I need the litter ready as soon as that rear path opens.”
One guard runs. Another brings her bag.
The world begins slipping in and out at the edges while Nora works.
Every breath catches beneath my ribs. The wagon wheel presses cold against my back, and the pass moves around me in pieces: a horse stamping, a guard calling for more rope, stone scraping against stone as wolves cut a narrow path around the rear block. Ivy doesn’t leave.
Her hand remains wrapped around mine, our wrists pressed together where the vow marks sit beneath the skin. Her thumb moves once over the mark on my wrist, not asking anything from me, only letting me know she’s still there.
At first, I think the warmth comes from blood loss. Then my pulse stutters.
It doesn’t stop. It simply loses its shape for one terrible moment, as though my body has forgotten what comes next. Ivy’s fingers tighten. The marks between us burn.
The heat isn’t painful. It isn’t like the old scar running up from my ribs, left by the crown when it tried to force obedience through me.
This warmth moves through my hand and up my arm with no order behind it, no demand, and no voice trying to make me useful.
Then I hear a heartbeat. It isn’t my own.
Ivy’s pulse moves through me, steady and fierce, not in my ears but beneath my ribs where my body is trying to fail. The sound gives me something to follow. One beat, then another. My lungs drag in air. Nora freezes.
She turns toward the young healer kneeling beside her open supply bag. “Hold pressure here. Don’t let him roll.”
The healer does as she’s told.
Every trace of irritation has left Nora’s face when she looks at our joined hands.
“That’s not a vow response,” she says.
Ivy swallows. “What’s it?”
“I don’t know yet.” Nora looks toward the guards standing closest to us. “Keep them together.”
Nobody asks what she means. They don’t need to.
The blood hasn’t stopped. The wound hasn’t closed. My side still feels wrong beneath Nora’s hands, and every breath hurts badly enough to make the world narrow. But my pulse doesn’t slip away again while Ivy’s hand stays in mine.
Nora packs the wound, wraps my ribs tight, and gives me something bitter that burns down my throat.
“It’ll keep you awake long enough to move,” she says.
“I don’t want to be awake.”
“That makes two of us.”
Ivy lets out a small, broken sound that almost becomes a laugh. I look at her again.
Her hair has fallen loose from its tie. Dried blood marks her arm, and dirt shadows one cheek. She’s hurt too. She has been hurt since the moment the attack began, and she’s still holding my hand as though I’m the one thing she refuses to lose.
I want to tell her she isn’t allowed to look at me like that.
I want to tell her I’m not dying. Neither sentence would be true.
A guard approaches Nora from the rear stone. “The path is open enough for the litter.”
Nora checks the bandage at my side, then looks at Ivy.
“He can’t ride.”
“I can walk,” I say.
“You can barely argue.”
“I can still do both.”
She leans closer. “You’ll lie on the litter, Roman. That’s not a request.”
I’m too tired to fight her properly.
The rear stone has been chipped back enough to leave a narrow path along the edge of the pass, barely wide enough for two horses to move beside one another. The litter waits near the wagon, tied between a pair of steady mounts, while the remaining guards form around us.
Ivy helps them lower me onto it.
The moment my body shifts, pain cuts through me so violently that my vision goes black.
I hear Ivy say my name.
I hear Nora answer her, though I can’t make out the words.
Then the heartbeat finds me again.
It comes through Ivy’s hand where she hasn’t let go, steady beneath my wrist, giving me something to follow while the dark closes over the road.
I don’t know how long I can hold on.
I only know that Ivy is there when I try.