Page 52 of The Devil in Oxford
My eyes stung as I rubbed my face on the rough shoulder of my coat, hoping the girl couldn’t see the truth written across my face.
Annabelle whimpered.
Surely someone had to have heard the struggle. In desperation, I shouted out for help, my voice hoarse. Once. Then twice. Her hot blood soaked through the fabric. I did not feel the growing wetness on my cheeks, or the slowing of her pulse beneath my hands. Nor did I hear the quiet footsteps behind me on the rug. It wasn’t until Ruan crouched beside me on the ground alongside the girl’s body that I realized that we were no longer alone.
Hehad come.
Of course he had.
Ruan touched my shoulder softly, before setting his old British Expeditionary Force haversack down beside him.
“How did you…” But there was no sense finishing the question. It did not matter if he’d followed me or if he’d heard my panic with that strange ability of his.
“You’ve done well…” he murmured, rummaging around in his bag for an orangish brown concoction. He tilted it into the light, confirming the contents before removing the lid.
The familiar scent jolted me to attention. “Acriflavine?” I hadn’t smelled that since the war. An antiseptic solution that had been used frequently on wounds.
“I keep some on me. Though I don’t know what good it’ll do her with a knife in her belly—but I can try. It’s all I can do.”
A strange coldness radiated from the girl’s body to my own fingers as the room filled with the scent of a summer storm—the same electric sharpness that once terrified me now reassured me. The room was thick with it. My gaze shot to Ruan.
He was calling upon his abilities already—long before he’d evenlaid hands on her. But this time was different. This time, I couldfeelhim reaching for his power. It echoed within my own body in a way it never had before. Previously, I’d only seen it in the silver flecks fleeing his eyes, smelled it in the air, felt its coldness upon me—but never like this. Never before had it run through me like a lightning rod.
“What are you doing?”
He raised a brow, confusion in his expression. “Preparing supplies.… We don’t have time to get her to a surgeon.”
He did not even know he was doing it. I stared at him in disbelief.How could he not know?He told me once in Cornwall that he had little understanding of how to control his abilities, that it came and went as it willed. I watched as he slowly and methodically removed items from his haversack and sat them on a nearby tea tray. “I’m going to have to be quick.Very quickso she doesn’t bleed out. I also need to be certain none of her vital organs have been damaged.”
I nodded numbly—after all, surgery on the parlor floor occurs every day, does it not?
“Are you ready?” His voice was soft and sure, lending me confidence I did not possess. “She has minutes at most. We cannot get her to a hospital in this condition, though the gods know I would prefer it. When I remove the knife, we’ll have even less time. A matter of seconds.”
I wasn’t ready at all, but I was going to have to be.
Ruan began talking to himself in Cornish as he set about laying out his forceps and catgut sutures. He laid the cloth soaked in the antiseptic acriflavine solution on the tea tray near my left hand. “You must remove the knife quickly when I say. Straight up and out. You understand me?”
“It’ll kill her.”
“It’s the only way. She’ll die on her own if you don’t—or we can give her a chance by trying to fix what’s been done to her.”
My hands grew slippery with her blood as I wrapped my fingers around the knife’s handle. “Have you done this before?”
“Not with such a clean wound.”
Did… did they live?
“Now, Ruby…”
Without a thought. Without a prayer to my mother’s beloved saints, I did exactly what he said, watching as Ruan swiftly probed the wound, examining the damage. He gave me quiet instructions, swift and calm as any formally trained medical officer I’d aided before. And just as I had during the war, I complied without question. Ruan made quick work of tying off a small ligature of the large vein that had been severed before confirming the wound itself clear of any foreign materials.
Before I realized what had happened, he was finishing up the stitches on her abdomen. The whole episode took what… a minute or two at most? A life reduced to mere seconds on a clock, ticking silently down one by one while Ruan staved off her death until another day. Refusing the grave by the sheer force of his iron will.
I remained transfixed by his hands as he worked—scarred and strong, but with a delicate grace and speed that I’d not expected. He’d used those hands on me, fixing me. Taking care of me—but I’d never watched him work on another. There was a reason he was revered in Cornwall, why people would travel for miles to seek his help.
It was the same reason I loved him beyond all reason. Ruan was the last truly good thing in this world, and I would be damned if I’d let him walk away because of my stubbornness.
Ruan made a soft sound in his chest. “We need to get her out of here.Now.”
