He stared at me for a heartbeat, then obeyed, dropping heavily to his side. It was more like collapsing than lying down, and I knew he wasn't getting back up on his own.

Gasping from the pain of the arrow, I planted my feet on his back, wrapped both hands around one of the stupid carbon-fiber arrows some asshole had stolen from my world to shoot into my prince, and ripped it out of Dain's back like I was yanking out a weed by the taproot.

Dain screamed, his back bowing and blood running down him to pool on the floor. I gave him no respite. I ripped out the second one while he was still reacting to the first one, and threw it to the side with a clatter. Then I pulled off my nice cashmere sweater, wadded it up, and shoved it into Dain's wing-hand.

He made a whimpering sound, his fingers closing around the sweater but doing nothing else with it.

"Put some pressure on the massive fucking holes in your chest, idiot," I snarled, pulling off my shirt. I shoved it up under Dain's shirt along the ridges of scales, got it over top of the wounds, grabbed two black spines and shoved my foot against his back. Where were the fucking guards?!

"Fuck," he groaned, doing something similar to his chest. "I hate arrows."

"Can't say I'm super duper fond of them myself," I replied, gritting my teeth. "How fucking long does it take the palace guard to respond to emergencies, Jesus fucking Christ!"

A wet cough broke the laugh that answered me, and I heard Dain spit blood again. "When it's me? Long enough that my mother won't feel as if they kept me alive."

I made a snarling sound that would have been more at home coming out of his mouth. "Fucking traitors."

"I told them not to come to my rescue, the first time a friend was executed for 'failing to preserve the safety of the crown prince,'" Dain said, his voice harsh. "My mother seems too afraid to offend the gods again to give me anything less than her heir deserves, but she knows how to give it teeth."

My skin went cold. I remembered her offering me a dagger to kill Dain with, and the way she spoke about him, like he was put in Faery to afflict her. Of course she punished people who helped him, paying lip service to what he deserved while hurting him in every way that she could.