Page 118 of Falling Princess

“I fucked up a little.”

Cata’s brow furrowed. “I guess we’ll find out how much. You got back okay. Now’s the time to get our alibis straight. We’ll tell Raina what we want her to know, and nothing more.”

She pressed a cloth to his side. It immediately turned red. Soaked through. Worry slashed through me.

“How can I help?”

Cata glanced at me. “Get the first aid kit out. Not the kitchen version. The real one. It’s in the hall closet upstairs, middle shelf.”

She went back to cleaning his wound. I can’t look at it without gagging. Clearly, I am not cut out for a career in medicine.

“Why do we need Raina?” I know she’s studying pre-med, but she’s not exactly a doctor. I want him to have the best care possible, not some amateur practicing half-assed field medicine. No offense to my friend.

“She’s been stitching up your boy here since he was a kid. Trying to keep Lorcan’s hide in one piece is how she got interested in medicine.” Cata dropped another bloodied gauze into a bowl.

“You don’t have to watch, Zosia,” Lorcan said tightly. “This gets pretty gross.”

Instead of leaving, I moved closer. I smoothed his hair and planted a kiss on his head when Cata wasn’t looking. Lorcan took my hand and squeezed it. He didn’t let go. I stayed with him until Cata finished cleaning the wound.

Raina burst in the front door, wide-eyed and worried. “Where is he? What’s he done now?”

“Laceration on the ribs. Needs stitches.” Cata dropped the last piece of gauze and peeled off her gloves.

Raina made a face. “I thought we were past this, Lorcan.”

“I got sloppy.”

He sounded pained, but unapologetic. Raina got to work scrubbing her hands before pulling on gloves and a mask. She knelt on the floor to examine the wound, with Cata holding a torch for better lighting.

“Good job cleaning it out. Here comes the lidocaine,” Raina said. Lorcan stoically accepted the shots, though I flinched, watching her administer them. Next, Raina poked at the laceration, opening it wider to look inside. I crushed Lorcan’s hand and squeezed my eyes closed. When I opened them, his eyes were crinkled with humor at my reaction.

“No underlying damage, which is great. How are you this lucky?” Raina used a bulb apparatus to irrigate it. Then she threaded a wicked-looking crescent-shaped needle.

“I can’t watch this.” I felt myself blanch.

“It’s not so bad,” Raina said absently. “Quit wiggling. This is an awkward angle. I should’ve made you stand up.”

Lorcan eased off the stool and leaned over the counter. Raina bent and made quick work of the actual stitching. At last, she tied off the surgical thread and snipped it with a small pair of scissors. She covered the whole mess with clear stickers marked Steri-Strip.

“All patched up.”

It’s not pretty, but Lorcan seemed satisfied. Cata gave him two giant pills to swallow, one yellow, one white. He eyed them skeptically.

“Antibiotics and painkillers. Just take them,” Raina huffed.

The mood shifted quickly after that.

I helped clean up the mess of bloody medical waste. Cata took it out back. I smelled smoke.

Lorcan gingerly pulled on the fresh T-shirt I brought down for him. “Thanks, Raina. I owe you. Again.”

“How did you learn to do that?” I asked her.

“I learned field medicine when I was younger, mostly because I was always worried about Lorcan. This is basic stuff. I’m learning more complicated techniques now, not that you’d want me to do brain surgery or anything.” She laughed. “With luck, we won’t need any surgeons, because Auralia doesn’t have any medical specialists of that caliber. All we have is that weird operating theatre underneath the Sun Temple.”

Nobody knows what it does, exactly. It’s supposed to be some kind of last-ditch treatment for the royal family, but it’s at least five hundred years old, and like everything else from that period, any documentation is long gone. It fills with a diluted form of the glowing blue liquid that powers the Sentinels. That’s where the control panel for them is located, too. A bunker. Refuge of last resort.

I helped Lorcan to his bedroom while Raina and Cata finished sterilizing the kitchen.

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