Page 32 of Thorns from the Fall

“Can he even swallow?” I ask, not knowing if that muscle could have been impacted by his injury. My stress doesn’t abate as Sasha crawls over him, her wailing beginning to hurt my ears.

I’m thankful for the privacy wards I bought to use on my property. Prying eyes—and ears—won’t know what’s going on here tonight, and no well-intending or nosy neighbor will be able to interrupt things.

Hale’s motions are slow, and his eyes go glassy. I don’t think he’s able to drink nor does he have any understanding of what’s going on, so I order Nico to make the cut on his wrist bigger.

My friend sighs, doing as he’s told, and then holds his wrist to the sorcerer’s mouth. His own blood pours freely, and Hale willchoke on it if he doesn’t drink soon. Eventually, between his own blood and Nico’s, it dribbles over his lower lip.

I can’t threaten to kill someone already dying, so I do the next best thing.

“Hale, if you don’t swallow that blood, I’ll kill Gwyn. I’ll kill Sasha. I’ll even kill the fucking dog. Because if you don’t live, then Remy doesn’t live, and then there’s no point to any of them living. So if you don’t swallow right fucking now?—”

And then he does.

Slowly at first, just barely sucking on Nico’s skin, and then ravenously. He uses both hands to hold the blood supply to his mouth, and he draws deep.

Sasha cries tears of relief, sprawled across Hale’s stomach, and I listen to his thready pulse grow weaker and slower, even as Hale continues to gulp Nico’s blood. His heart stops beating altogether.

He groans when his heart starts up again—slow and steady. And alive.

“Oh, fuck,” I say, swiping my hand over my mouth as I put my hands on my head and walk a circle around my yard. The pain of Gwyn’s silver bullet stuck between flesh and bone keeps my relief from being too potent. It reminds me of what I stand to lose.

Will it be enough, I wonder? Will Gwyn be content with this?

I find out far sooner than I thought I would.

“What the fuck are you doing?” her voice asks, cold and quiet. I turn around, and she’s pushing her body up from where she’d been laying. Her long hair has fallen around her face, and I don’t know how she can even see what’s happening. Finally, she sits up. She rubs her temple, as if she’s sore. If she hurt herself falling to the ground, it certainly would have healed by now, but she squints as if she’s confused. I wonder if the spell Caitriona put upon her made things hazy.

“He was going to die,” I say, and Gwyn’s head snaps toward mine. Perhaps she simply needed her hatred to center her. Like a hawk, golden eyes flare with fury before she narrows her gaze on me—and then past me.

She must see Emile’s body where it lays—something I’m trying to ignore—because she heaves a sigh of relief. And then she goes still. Painfully fucking slowly, she draws her gaze to mine. Gwyn doesn’t say a word, but she knows this was me. She swallows and breathes through her mouth before looking away.

“Did he say it was okay?” she asks, directing her question toward Sasha. Gwyn stands and gathers her balance for a second, before moving toward her sister on wobbly legs. Sasha is still sobbing as she lays across Hale. He’s drinking with a fervor, and I don’t know how much longer it will be before he tries to bend Nico over in front of us.

Thank god my friend has been around long enough to grow bored with eternity and broaden his sexual horizons to include men. He hasn’t brought anyone back to the compound in a while, something Margot has teased him about, so maybe it won’t be that much of a sacrifice for him.

I give my friend a look, and all he does is shrug. I don’t really know what the fuck to do with that. I have the faint notion that somehow I’ve pimped out Nico by allowing him to turn Hale. But I don’t have time to ponder it before Gwyn and her sister start arguing. Gwyn’s aggravated tone is enough to make me pay attention.

“What do you mean he didn’t say?—”

“Gwyn, this wasn’t a choice. He was going to die,” Sasha argues, looking up at her sister. The moonlight reveals tracks of tears that she’s shed, and her curls are stuck to her cheeks in places.

“Yeah, but he might not have wanted…” Gwyn trails off, sitting down beside her sister. “This is my fault.”

“Actually, this—” Sasha’s voice is soft, easily drowned out by Gwyn’s increasing volume.

“I shouldn’t have let you guys come here. I shouldn’t have let you guys leave the?—”

Raw and restrained, Sasha grits words out through clenched teeth. “For once, this isn’t fucking about you. Maybe we shouldn’t have been here, but that was our choice to make. But I fucked up, okay. I wasn’t paying attention and we got separated while we were following the stupid pendulum to find Emile, and then and then—” Sasha moves, inching closer to Hale. He’s slowed down, almost as if he’s falling asleep—or dying. It’s not what happened with Gwyn. Once her heart restarted, she was…I don’t let myself think about it. I know something isn’t right though. Nico urges Hale to continue, and Sasha rubs a hand over his arm. He doesn’t stop drinking, but the urgency doesn’t return. “It doesn’t matter.”

I think about Nico and the fact he supposedly distracted Sasha, but I wonder if there was something else to it because she doesn’t seem as ashamed as I’d think she’d be if it were mere distraction. I say nothing, unsure of what to do. Maybe clean up my uncle’s body? But I don’t exactly want to do that either. I’ll have to burn him, just to make sure there’s nothing left for his heart to grow back into. I don’t think resurrections like that are common, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. Because if there’s one thing I’m certain about, it’s me who killed him. My choices killed one of my only remaining relatives.

But I’d do it all over again for Remy if I had to.

“This wasmyfault, not yours, and it was my responsibility to fucking fix it. He’s… Hale is my best friend, and it’s my fault.” Sasha cries.

But it’s Gwyn who seems like she’s in pain. She sits back on her heels, and her face loses all emotion. But I see it in her eyes. Iwish I didn’t, because it means I still know parts of her. Some of her lies had been aged in truth, and it pisses me off.

Because I still want her, and that’s the reason why. Because some parts of her are true. And then other parts aren’t, and I want to slide a blade between her ribs and root out the rot.

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