“Who said we only slash throats?” Lancaster’s eyes gleamed, a predator baiting his prey. My pulse thrummed, but not in fear.
I tightened my grip on the tweezers. “That’s right, you don’t. You brutalized innocent humans during those wars. You tormented them and dismembered them. Do you think I don’t know? I grew up hearing the horror stories.” I leaned closer and pressed the metal against his open wound. His jaw ticked, but he didn’t react. “The ones who got their throats slashed were theluckyones.”
“They were.” His tone was solemn, but I wouldn’t name the other thing within it. The one that almost sounded regretful.
“How can you say any of this?” I retorted. “You werecreatedto hunt the remaining humans who stood against your people.” I still didn’t know what that meant, but I ignored the curiosity. “Humans who had nothing to do with the wars, whose ancestors died so long ago, we don’t even know their names.”
“Another sorry fact of the short-lived.”Much like your existence, he didn’t need to add.
“Apparently humans are cleverer than you think,” I hissed. When he raised a skeptical brow, I roughly tugged a splinter from his side, taking extra care to prick the torn flesh and draw more blood. “It is unwise to insult the person with their hands in your open wound, faerie. Especially when they are someone as careless as a measly human.”
He growled as I jerked another splinter. “Perhaps not one so rash, at least.”
“Rash?”
“You do realize you’re only proving my point with this vindictive game.”
I simmered. He was right, of course. I was allowing my emotions to control how I healed him right now. Exactly as some hysterical, overly-sensitive, unable-to-make-wise-decisions human would.
Not at all how my mother taught me.
Swallowing the mix of indignation and longing that wrought within me, I cleared my throat and got back to work. “You imply that feeling human emotions is so bad, but I would rather feel than live centuries in a cold and cruel mind, serving a monstrous queen.”
“We don’t all have choices,” he muttered.
I breathed through the irritation still bubbling in my chest. Humans could be kind, humans could begoodand worthy of peaceful, passionate lives. I would not stoop to his games again.
“If that is the case, you’ll understand how so many humans feel, having had many of their choices taken away from them, too.” I removed another splinter—only a few left that I could see. “It is because of prejudiced beliefs such as yours that I’m leaving as soon as we find the last emblem.”
“Leaving?” he asked, uninterested.
“I’ll be traveling back to our human training camps and working with those who wish to no longer be defenseless.”
Lancaster cocked his head, hair slipping across his shoulders. He watched me, an indeterminable look in his narrowed eyes. “You are training them?”
“I am. Encouraging them,” I explained, a rush of pride warming my cheeks. “You say humans don’t understand our emotions and the consequences, but I’d argue we feel everythingso much deeper because we understand on the same level, yet it’s compacted into a much quicker, more heartfelt timespan.”
Heartbreaks were more monumental, deaths more life-altering, injuries more damaging because the years were so few.
Lancaster said, “When you live for thousands of years, you understand more than you care to.”
Ignoring the heavy presence of his stare on my face, I gently removed the last few splinters and straightened up, wiping my bloody hands on a damp cloth.
“There you go. Try your magic.”
Lancaster gritted his teeth, both of us watching the wound. After a long, tense moment, I gasped.
Before my eyes, the gash began to heal. In small stages, given that his magic was still recovering from the impact of the cypher spear, but I waited in stunned silence as ancient faerie power clotted the blood and slowly began restructuring the torn skin.
I’d never seen something like it. I’d always appreciated the beauty of healing, of the strenuous, precise work mending took. And while this magic alleviated a lot of what I found so satisfying about my practice, it added a new wonder to the art. Chills spread across my skin.
Eventually, Lancaster closed the wound.
“It’ll scar?” I asked, looking at the spot where a fresh white mark marred his torso.
His abdominal muscles tensed under my stare. “With the cypher’s curse, this one will.”
I studied the scar. It wasn’t a neat, stitched up disfigurement, but one with points stretching away from it, almost like a sun. It stood out among the numerous others covering his strong body.
