The Sharpest Blade

Page 40

I look over my shoulder. She’s standing in the sunroom’s doorway, holding something that looks like a glass of milk.
“Yeah,” Nick says. He rises to take the glass from her, then he hands it to me. “She drinks it when she gets migraines. Prop his head up.”
He throws a decorative pillow on the floor. I pick it up, then slide it under Lorn’s head. Before I give him the drink, I sniff it. Um, definitely not milk.
“Hey,” I say, gently. “I need you to drink this.”
I place the brim of the glass on his busted bottom lip and tilt it back. Pretty much all the liquid trickles down his chin.
“You need to drink,” I tell him. This time, he murmurs something—Lena’s name again?—and I use the opportunity to pour the liquid into his mouth. He chokes on it, coughing and wincing and, eventually, opening his eyes to glare at me.
“Poison?” he asks.
Smiling, I say, “I hope not. Here.”
I make him drink more. After a few sips, he shoves my hand away. I take that as a good sign. A few minutes ago, I don’t think he had the strength to lift a finger.
He closes his eyes in a wince as a wave of pain passes over him. “Should have gone straight to Lena.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t,” I say.
“If the false-blood killed you, I wouldn’t get my revenge.”
“He sounds like he’s worth saving,” Nick mutters, grabbing Lorn’s wrist to lift his hand away from his stomach wound.
Lorn hisses in a breath and starts to curl to the side, but I hold his shoulder down, keeping him in place.
“What else can I do?” Kynlee asks from the doorway.
“Scissors. Towels,” her dad says.
Kynlee nods, starts to leave.
“The whole medicine cabinet.”
She stops, frowns. “Really? Everything?”
Nick’s jaw tightens. “Just the hydrogen peroxide and any gauze or bandages we might have.”
“Need a healer,” Lorn says. “Not human medicine.” His voice is raspy, like he has liquid in his lungs, but he’s alive. I think he’d be dead by now if some really crucial organ were injured. It’s him bleeding to death we need to worry about.
“Stop talking, Lorn.”
Suddenly, Nick’s gaze snaps to me. “Lorn? As in . . . the Lorn?”
I think I see a tiny smile bend one corner of Lorn’s mouth. If Nick hasn’t been to the Realm since Kynlee was a baby, Lorn’s been around a long time.
“That’s his name,” is all I say.
Nick drops Lorn’s hand.
“How, exactly, did you come in possession of a tor’um?” Lorn asks. I’m surprised he’s cognizant enough to ask the question.
Nick goes still, then, after a handful of heartbeats, he presses the heel of his hand into the fae’s wound. Lorn cries out.
“Hey!” I say, trying to shove Nick away.
“She’s my daughter, asshole,” Nick says, leaning toward Lorn’s face. “Not a possession or something for you to condescend to.”
“Nick, stop!” He’s not listening. I ram my shoulder into him and manage to knock him off Lorn. He falls onto his back, but he looks ready to kill.
“I have the stuff,” Kynlee says. Perfect timing.
Nick doesn’t acknowledge her, so I do, motioning her in. She drops her armful of towels down beside me. The small pile is topped by a pair of scissors, hydrogen peroxide, and . . . a box of Disney Princess Band-Aids.
I pick up the latter, raise an eyebrow.
“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.”