Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(96)

"There was monkshood on the Unseelie's arrow," Nene said when she was done cleaning the wound. She held her hand out for a bandage and began wrapping Kieran's slender torso. He had been undressed and re-dressed in clean trousers, a shirt folded on the bed next to him. There were scars on Kieran's back, not unlike the ones on Mark's, and they stretched to the tops of his arms and down his forearms, too. He was thin but strong-looking, with clear lines of muscles in his arms and across his chest. "If you were a human or even ordinary fey, it would have killed you, but Hunters have their own protection. You will live."

"Yes," Kieran said, an arrogant tilt to his chin. But Cristina wondered. He didn't say, Yes, I knew I would live. He had doubted, she suspected. He had feared he would die.

She rather admired his bravery. She couldn't help it.

Nene rolled her eyes, finishing with the bandages. She tapped Cristina's shoulder as Kieran shrugged his shirt on, doing the buttons up with slow, shaking fingers, and indicated a shallow marble dish on the nightstand, filled with damp cloths swimming in a greenish liquid. "Those are poultices to prevent infection. Put a new one on the wound every two hours."

Cristina nodded. She wasn't sure how she would set an alarm or wake up every two hours, or if she was simply meant to stay awake through the night, but she would manage, either way.

"Here," Nene said, leaning down to Kieran with another vial. "Drink this. It will not harm you, only help you."

After a moment, Kieran drank. Suddenly he pushed the vial away, coughing. "How dare you-" he began, and then his eyes rolled back and he sank down to the pillows. Mark caught him before his wounded back could touch the bed, and helped Nene carefully roll him onto his side.

"Don't feel bad," Mark said, noticing Nene's set jaw. "He always falls asleep yelling that."

"He needed to rest," was all Nene said. She swept from the room.

Mark watched her go, his face troubled. "She is not what I imagined, when I dreamed that I might have family in Faerie," he said. "For so many years I looked and asked, and there was no sign of them. I had given up."

"She went out of her way to find you and save you," said Cristina. "She clearly cares for you."

"She doesn't know me," said Mark. "Faeries feel very strongly about blood. She could not leave me to fall into the hands of the Unseelie King. What happens to one member of a family reflects upon the others of that bloodline."

She touched your hair, Cristina wanted to say. She had seen it only very quickly: As Nene had reached to bandage Kieran's back, her fingers had brushed the fine edges of Mark's pale hair. He hadn't noticed, and Cristina wondered now, if she told him, if he would even believe her.



       
         
       
        

Cristina sat down on the foot of the bed. Kieran had curled up, his dark hair tangled beneath his restless head. Mark was leaning back against the headboard. His bare feet were on the bed, only a few inches from Cristina; his arm lay outstretched, his fingers nearly touching hers.

But his gaze was on Kieran. "He doesn't remember," he said.

"Kieran? What doesn't he remember?"

Mark pulled his knees up to his chest. In his torn and bloody shirt and trousers, he looked more like the ragged figure he'd been when the Wild Hunt had let him go. "The Unseelie Court beat him and tortured him," he said. "I expected it. It's what they do to their prisoners. After I untied him, as soon as I got him out of the clearing, I realized they'd done him some kind of damage that meant he didn't remember killing Iarlath. He doesn't remember anything since that night he saw us talking in the kitchen."

"He doesn't remember the whipping, what happened with Jules and Emma-?"

"He doesn't remember it happening, or that I left him over it," Mark said grimly. "He said he knew I would come for him. As if we were still-what we were."

"What were you?" Cristina realized she'd never asked. "Did you exchange promises? Did you have a word for it, like novio?"

"Boyfriend?" Mark echoed. "No, nothing like that. But it was something and then it was nothing. Because I was angry." He looked at Cristina wretchedly. "But how can I be angry at someone who doesn't even remember what he did?"

"Your feelings are your feelings. Kieran did do those things. He did them even if he does not remember them." Cristina frowned. "Do I sound harsh? I don't mean to. But I sat with Emma, after. I helped bandage her whip cuts."