Dain made another soft sound, his chest rising and falling more easily, though his whole body was still tense, his wing-arm trembling as he pressed my sweater against his chest with it. "I like that, too," he said quietly.

"Being my soulmate?"

"That you'll call yourself my soulmate," Dain said. "Not many people claim me as their anything."

"You're worth claiming," I told him, meaning every word. Dain had, without hesitation, taken arrows for me and stood in the way of swords he could have evaded to keep me safe. He was fascinating and intelligent and complicated, and there was a good man under all the blood. He wasn't anything like people thought. "I know you know I've got my issues with the whole soulmate thing, but they have nothing to do with you. If I had to get soulmated, you're the best person I can imagine for the job."

Whatever response he might have made was lost in the shouting and clatter as the palace guard came for us at last. I relinquished my hold on Dain and was finally able to remember the arrow still lodged in the meat of my calf, angled in a grotesque parody of an arrow piercing a valentine's heart, dripping with blood.

24. The Good Stuff

Chapter 24

The Good Stuff

The healers could do approximately nothing for Dain. Fae really hate iron, and wounds made by iron or steel in fae bodies can't be healed with their magic.

I was fine on that count; my body didn't give a shit whether a hole got made by iron or anything else. But by the time we got carried to the hospital, the wound in my leg had gone necrotic, the flesh turning black around the wooden shaft of the arrow. It didn't hurt, which was almost worse than seeing the creeping death in my leg, or the way the hair on the healer's arms stood up.

"What's wrong with me?" I said in a quavering voice, staring at the spreading red halo around the rotting hole in my leg. "What—What—" The panic started rising, a screaming horrible whirlwind in my chest, as if a nest of wasps had been broken open and they were all boiling out of it.

The healer put his fingers against my temples, and my panic vanished. All my emotions did. I looked at the hole in my leg, in all its gory glory, and all I could think was, Huh. That sure is a hole.

"Blood poison," he said, in a grim voice. "Someone really doesn't like you, your highness. Only blood magic can make something like this."

"Blood magic?" I asked, not even curious, just filling the airspace.