Chapter 1 #2
“Architect help me,” I murmured. I’d seen worse in my time here, but a man who ignored a blade in his belly was enough to foreshadow the trouble he’d give me. “Get on the bed.”
“You first.” He smirked, then winced and grasped his side.
I leveled a look at him. “How much blood have you lost?”
“Less than the other lads.” He slowly shifted himself across the stretcher. I remained close, helping him lie on his back while a knife handle stuck out his side.
I had a rising suspicion that the others he spoke of were dead and being shoved on a cart, but I wasn’t about to discuss other patients with this man. Whatever he did in his free time was no concern of mine.
“You’re going to need more than just stitches.
” I sighed, glancing at the clock. I could make a start on treating the wound, and Bernard could finish up when he came to find me, but that would mean cutting it close with the delivery.
I wiped my bloody hands on my smock before heading to the sink to wash away the rest. When I returned to his bedside, I assessed him better in the bright light.
“Dr. Broussard?” I called back to the hall. Why wasn’t he done yet?
“Having a bad night?” The patient glanced at my smock before returning his gaze to mine.
“Not as bad as yours.”
“It’s getting a little better.” The stubborn grin on his face pulled at a cut on his lip.
His side wasn’t the only part of him with injuries, I realized.
There were obvious signs of a fight marring his face.
A split brow, a bruised cheek. He watched with careful attention while I prepared my table, collecting clean gauze, surgical scissors, and a pack of small, silver tools.
“Hope you don’t like this shirt.”
He winced. “Why?”
I made a tear in the bottom seam before ripping it in half. He jumped slightly, caught unaware.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I’m kind of in a rush. And I want to get this thing out of you.”
A nervous laugh slipped from his cracked lips. “Usually, I make people buy me dinner first.”
“You bleed all over my front desk, then ask for dinner? Bold of you.” His bare chest gleamed in a mix of sweat and blood. I dragged a wet cloth across the sculpted muscle of his chest, carefully avoiding the knife. “I’m willing to consider it, if you promise not to die on me.”
A flame sparked in his amber eyes. “Before you start.” He licked his lips, tongue darting through gritted teeth. “I have to warn you—I hate needles.”
“There’s something much bigger than a needle in your side,” I remarked.
He swallowed hard, unamused. “It’s different.”
“I understand,” I told him, though I didn’t.
This man had scars along his arms where his sleeves were pulled up, across his chest, and littering every inch of him that I could assess.
He’d faced much worse than my precision blades and suture needles, but fear was a devil that worked in strange ways. “We’ll take it slow.”
“I thought you were in a rush,” he breathed.
I blinked, recalling the cursed clock, the bodies in the back, the surgeon stuffing a cart with herbs and other aromatics, to distract anyone who stopped me to ask questions. “It’s fine,” I said too quickly.
The copper color of his eyes was molten in the white light of the surgery—eyes that tracked my every movement. My skin burned beneath his gaze, a slow flush creeping across my neck where his attention seemed to linger.
I wasn’t drawn to patients. My discipline was a solid wall most days, cold and clinical, dividing duty and desire.
But something about the man on the table made my work feel intimate.
Was I just exhausted from back-to-back surgeries, or were these lights giving me heatstroke?
There was nothing clinical or calculated in the way I touched him, swiping blood from the broad planes of his chest where muscle coiled beneath old wounds.
Each time I reached for him anew, he tensed, as if expecting pain. “I’m just cleaning the area. I’ll warn you before I do anything.”
He dipped his chin in acknowledgment. I tried to keep talking, if only to distract myself from other wandering thoughts. The poor man was still impaled, for hell’s sake.
“Do you find yourself in this position often?” I asked.
“Being stripped down and bathed? Not often enough.”
Heat swarmed my cheeks. “I meant stabbed.”
He nodded once. “More than I’d like.”
A smile inched across my cheeks. “You aren’t from the Fissures. You’re an outsider.” If this were a regular occurrence, I was sure he would have found himself on my table more often. I would have remembered a face—and body—so divinely made.
“What gave it away?”
I shrugged. “I would have remembered you, with eyes like yours. I… I’ve never seen anything like them.” His lips parted, as if to say something. I spoke before he could find the words. “You’re not in any trouble, are you?”
“No.” His head rocked from side to side on the stretcher. “But you’re right, I’m not from around here. Just visiting from across the canal. I was tracking something that was stolen from me.”
On the other side of the canal was the better half of Valveron.
The New City was built on higher ground or lifted above the waterline on taller pylons.
The roads there were paved, weaving between the estates of the rich merchant families, all under the towering buildings of the Academy.
“Why didn’t you just ask a constable for help?
Those bastards are everywhere in the New City. ”
His throat convulsed in a hard swallow. “I… They don’t help people like me.”
“What do you…” Before I could ask, he bared his teeth, revealing sharp, elongated canines that branded him as Cursed. “Ah.”
So he wasn’t part of the merchant groups at all. He came from the Dredges, the downtown district of the New City. Where the Cursed lived and thrived, running shadow businesses and brothels and importing a constant flow of drugs that leaked over into my side of the city.
No, a copper wouldn’t have helped someone like him.
He lowered his lips, letting out a soft sigh. “Exactly.”
“They do more harm than good anyways,” I started, trying to ease the tension. At least he would heal quickly from his wounds. All Cursed had that advantage. “Did you at least find what was taken from you?”
“No. The fuckers stabbed me before running off. Got a good swipe at them both, but I passed out and lost them. When I came round, I followed their blood trail. It led me here.”
After I’d finished cleaning around the blade, I changed my gloves and readied the clamps and cauterizer, testing the metal to make sure it was hot enough.
The knife was set deep inside him, and I was sure he’d need some surgical intervention before I could suture him shut.
“What was stolen from you… you’re willing to die for it? ”
His hands flexed into fists. “Worse. I’d kill for it.”
My gaze slipped, glancing at him. The Cursed had adept senses, could smell and hear and taste beyond the average limitations.
I wondered if he could scent the beggar’s blood on my smock as the same blood under his fingernails—if he could hear the race of my heart as our eyes met.
The dice in my pocket had a new weight, then.
If he knew I’d kept them from him, I’d end up in a similar position on Bernard’s table.
But if I gave them back… I’d miss a profitable opportunity.
I was already risking my life for one payoff. This was a simple con compared to the body trade.
I cleared my throat to hide the quiver of my nerves. “I have a friend who operates out of Opal’s tavern near the Grand Canal. If you’ve lost anything worth selling on the streets here, it’s more than likely someone will have taken it to her.”
“Oh, it’s worth selling,” he murmured. “You sure he didn’t have anything on him?”
“On who?” I feigned confusion. “I don’t know what you mean.” It was a lie, a terrible one. But I had no intention of just handing him the dice. If he wanted them back so badly, he could buy them from Bria. After I got paid.
He stared hard at me again, like he could see through my act. To distract him, I reached for the knife.
He snatched my wrist with a bloody hand, stopping me. Sweat beaded at his temples. “Wait—”
“You can’t keep it.”
“I know, just…” He sucked a breath, staring up at me.
“I can give you something to numb the experience, though you might have to stay all night. It’ll keep you groggy till morning at least.”
He clenched his jaw, taking longer breaths. “Will you be here?”
I shook my head slowly. “I have somewhere to be tonight.”
The fingers warm around my wrist went loose, falling back to the table. “Of course you do. No, it’s fine. Just get it over with.”