It still scared her, how unexplainable it was. The connection between them forged in forest. Earlier, when she tried to grow the ivy, she’d been thinking of Neve and violence, of carnage she couldn’t control. But then there’d been the vision, proof that the way she and Eammon had tied themselves together made her stronger. And now, when the task before her was meaningful— when she wanted him safe, both because of that strange caring and because she feared what might happen to all of them if he wasn’t— she could treat her magic like a tool to be used rather than something to contain.
Intention clear, Red took hold of her power, opened herself to it. And she didn’t drown.
It flowed, rich and heady, deep green. A thin tendril, winding through muscle and bone like a root snaking toward the sun, waiting for her will.
The wounds burned under her hands. Slowly, carefully, Red let them in.
If there was pain, she didn’t feel it. The beat of power was steady, sure, a flow that matched her pulse. For the first time, this felt right, and the feeling was intoxicating. She took a little, then a little more, pushing herself—
“Red, stop!”
Her hands were empty. Red’s eyes opened, face sweaty and breath labored.
Eammon’s hand hovered above her cheek. He pulled back as her eyes opened, cold air replacing his warmth.
“You took too much.” His eyes were clearer than they’d been since the breach. “Dammit, Red.”
She looked down. Crimson bloomed across her abdomen, barely visible through the thin fabric of her nightgown. A wound, but not nearly as awful as his had been— she’d taken only part, not the whole. Still, as if the sight sparked her nerves to working, pain seared across the cuts, brought a hiss to her teeth. “Shit.” She sat back, hand pressed against her stomach. “You’ve lived with this all day? More than this?”
Eammon pushed off the wall, brow furrowed, legs shaky. “That was too much,” he said again, almost to himself.
“But it worked.” After the initial burn, the wounds weren’t so bad. Pain had to go somewhere, yes, but it seemed to come in a quick flare, all of it at once. Gingerly, Red lifted her hand from her middle, noticing as she did that her veins were traced in brilliant emerald, not just her wrists, but all the way up her arm. They faded almost immediately, ran blue again. “You’re . . . well, not good as new. But better. No more mangled insides.”
Eammon hung his hands on his hips, glowering down at her. Triple stripes of faint red with white-scarred lines in their centers marked his chest and stomach. “Less mangled.” Then, lower: “Thank you.”
Silence fell, their fragile camaraderie overshadowed by awkwardness. Eammon unhooked a poker from over the hearth and halfheartedly stirred up the embers, banishing the chill from the open windows. “You can put your cloak in the wardrobe,” he said to the fire. “If you want.”
The tattered fabric lay on the floor where she’d dropped it, distracted by Eammon’s bleeding. She picked it up, padded across the room. There was plenty of space in the wardrobe, since most of Eammon’s clothes seemed to live on the floor. The clothes that had made it inside were darkly colored and scented like leaves. Red tucked her scarlet cloak next to a stack of Eammon’s shirts.
She crossed back to the fireplace and sat on the floor, wrapped her arms around her knees. “It made you taller,” she said after a moment, quietly. “I mean, it made you taller, and then it didn’t go away.”
Eammon stiffened, pausing a moment in his stirring of the fire. His eyes flickered down, as if taking stock of himself, before closing. “So it did.”
“Has that happened before?” She kept her arms around her knees and her voice lightly conversational, but worry gnawed at her stomach. “A change from the magic staying permanently?”
One more stir of the embers, a spiral of sparks in the cold air. “No,” he said curtly, replacing the poker on the mantel.
The worry grew sharper teeth, bit deeper.
“It was a lot of power.” Quiet, meant as much for himself as for her. “More even than I’ve used healing a sentinel before. That’s probably why. I just harnessed more than normal. Let more in.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Should’ve at least tried blood, though it wouldn’t have been enough.”
“No pleasant options available, I guess.”
An affirmative grunt.
Red watched him from the corner of her eye, how his tense shoulders tapered to his hips, how his midnight hair fell across his brow. The scar on his stomach was a mirror image of hers, just like the Bargainer’s Mark. There was a strange intimacy in it, one that sharpened the alchemy of worry and guilt clawing up her insides.