“It was all I could find,” she says.
Yeah, so not going to help.
I set the Band-Aids aside and grab a towel. I use it to wipe some of the blood off Lorn’s face. Most of it is from a cut on his forehead, but his cheekbone is swollen to twice its normal size, and his lip is bleeding from more than one cut.
“Is he dead?” Kynlee asks. Lorn hasn’t moved since I shoved Nick off him.
“No,” I say, finally getting Lorn to uncurl from his fetal position. “Fae disappear when they die.”
“Disappear?”
The mix of fear and curiosity in Kynlee’s voice makes me look up.
“We’ll talk later, Kynlee,” Nick says gruffly. “Go to bed now.”
“We learned first aid in my health class,” she says. “I can help.”
“Go,” he repeats.
A chaos luster jumps across Lorn’s face. Weakly, he says, “You haven’t taught her anything, have you—”
“Lorn, let’s not antagonize our host.”
“—Nick Johnson?”
Nick Johnson? I frown at Nick. His last name is supposed to be Walker, but the way Lorn meets his gaze makes it clear he knows the human.
Nick is as still as glass.
“I’ve kept her safe,” Nick finally says in a cold whisper.
“Lorn,” I say, not taking my eyes off Nick. “Just in case you die”—or Nick kills him—“why don’t you tell me what you know about the false-blood?”
Lorn’s gaze swivels to me. “You’re becoming quite mercenary, McKenzie. Good for—” His last words are lost in a cough that makes him grow pale.
I take Lorn’s hand—the one not holding his stomach—and squeeze it. Despite my misgivings about his character and his involvement in this war, I have a soft spot for Lorn. I want him to be a good person. I definitely don’t want to see him in this much pain.
“Kyol is almost here,” I tell him.
“Kyol, the son of Taltrayn?” Nick asks.
When I say yes, Nick shoots to his feet.
“He knows you’re here?” he demands. “Who else knows?”
“No one,” I say.
“If Taltrayn knows, the king knows.”
“No one knows,” I say quickly. Then, when he takes a step toward the living room, I add, “The king is dead.”
He stops, looks over his shoulder. “Dead?”
I nod.
“And Taltrayn’s alive?”
I nod again.
“And Taltrayn hasn’t told anyone else where I live? That’s bullshit.”
“Oh, no,” Lorn says, a smile in his voice. “Not bullshit at all. I imagine it’s quite an interesting story, actually.”
I slap a damp cloth hard against the cut on Lorn’s forehead. When Nick looks at me, I just say, “It’s complicated.”
Lorn’s chuckle turns into a cough. Serves him right. He makes himself extremely difficult to like sometimes.
I wait on the Walkers’—or the Johnsons’—front porch for Kyol. It doesn’t take him long to find me. He does it in close to the same amount of time as it took me to drive here. Since he can fissure within line of sight, he can travel incredibly fast, faster than I was able to find him in Corrist. But the pull of the life-bond is the same, basically shining a beacon of light down on my location.
When he fissures one last time, exiting the In-Between a few feet in front of me, I say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to pull you away from what you were doing.”
“What’s happened?” he asks.
“It’s Lorn,” I say, my gaze scanning the street for any other slashes of light or sparks of blue chaos lusters darting across someone’s skin. “He gave my location to the false-blood.”
Kyol stiffens. “He did what?”
I wince at the iciness in his voice. Most people describe anger as being hot, but it’s not. Not with Kyol, at least. His anger is so cold I shiver.
“It’s okay. Well, it’s not okay, but he didn’t give the elari my location willingly. He’s hurt.”
“He’s inside?”
“Yes, but he needs—”
Kyol slams open the door.
Damn it. I hurry after him, but catch up only when he suddenly stops at the entrance to the sunroom. He’s not staring at Lorn, though. He’s staring at Nick, who slowly, silently rises to his feet.
If it wasn’t for the life-bond, I’d have no idea how surprised Kyol is. His face is a mask of stoic calmness. There’s no sign he’s startled or confused.
“Nick,” is all he says.
The human clenches his jaw. “Taltrayn.”
“I see you two remember each other,” Lorn says. Finally, Kyol’s gaze swings to the injured fae.
“He needs a healer,” I finish what I tried to tell him on the porch.
“Please,” Lorn adds.
Kyol angles his body slightly to look at me. “I left you only a few hours ago, and you’ve managed to find Lorn and Nick Johnson.”
“He’s Kynlee’s dad,” I say, nodding toward Nick Johnson or Walker or whoever he is. “And I didn’t find Lorn. He found me.” All I wanted to do when I got home was curl up under the blankets and sleep.
Kyol’s expression softens. He releases his grip on his sword hilt and places his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently.
“It’s okay, kaesha,” he says. I stiffen, expecting to feel some wave of regret for calling me kaesha, but there isn’t any. Roughly, the word translates into loved one, only, it’s so much more than that. For the last decade, it’s been Kyol’s way of telling me that he loves me. He used it rarely since we weren’t supposed to be together, but that only made it more special. It’s still special now.
He senses my confusion, my unease, and drops his hand.
“You’re safe here?” he asks. In other words, the false-blood doesn’t know I’m here.
“Yeah,” I say. He takes another look at Lorn, then at Nick. He must trust the human because he tells me he’ll bring back help before he walks out the back door to open his fissure. Even though a pane of glass separates us, I get caught up in his shadows and the warm mix of emotions tumbling through my stomach. I can’t tell if they’re mine or his. Both, most likely.
A headache starts hammering behind my eyes. My personal life is one big fucking mess. The guy I wanted for a decade would finally and fully return that love now, but I’ve fallen for someone else, someone who wants nothing to do with me.
And I hate this. I hate hurting someone I care so much about.
I ignore the look I get from Nick as I pull a burgundy throw off a nearby chair and drape it over Lorn.
We wait. I watch Lorn breathe. He answers a few simple questions with grunts, but his sarcastic humor is gone. I’m worried about him. I don’t know how long it will take Kyol to bring back help. Most fae know basic first aid, quite a few are the equivalent of techless doctors, but a healer is the only thing that can save Lorn’s life now.
He falls into a restless sleep.
Sometime later, two fissures split through the night air. Kyol and Lena. They both look regal, standing next to each other in Nick’s backyard.
Backyard? Why not fissure directly into the house?
I look at Nick. “You have silver here?”
He nods stiffly. “In the insulation.”
Kyol opens the back door for Lena. She enters, her gaze locked on Nick as she walks to Lorn’s side.
“You’re alive,” she says as she kneels.
Nick doesn’t respond. He just rises and leaves the room.
“You know him?” I ask when he’s gone.
Lena removes the throw and the bloodied towel that’s been doing a poor job of staunching Lorn’s bleeding. She looks at his side wound, then places her hand over it.
“He gave the throne to Atroth,” she says.
I glance at Kyol.