Fire swallowed. She’d been trying not to think about this particular bleakness. “It makes no difference. I can’t play fiddle, either, or harp or flute or any of my instruments. I have no need to leave home.”

“We’ll send word to your students.” He sighed and rubbed his neck. “And I’ll see whom I can place in their houses in your stead. Until you heal, we’ll be forced to trust our neighbors without the help of your insight.” For trust was not assumed these days, even among long-standing neighbors, and one of Fire’s jobs as she gave music lessons was to keep her eyes and ears open. Occasionally she learned something—information, conversation, the sense of something wrong—that was a help to Archer and his father, Brocker, both loyal allies of the king.

It was also a long time for Fire to live without the comfort of her own music. She closed her eyes again and breathed slowly. These were always the worst injuries, the ones that left her unable to play her fiddle.

She hummed to herself, a song they both knew about the northern Dells, a song that Archer’s father always liked her to play when she sat with him.

Archer took the hand of her uninjured arm, and kissed it. He kissed her fingers, her wrist. His lips brushed her forearm.

She stopped humming. She opened her eyes to the sight of his, mischievous and brown, smiling into hers.

You can’t be serious, she thought to him.

He touched her hair, which shone against the blankets. “You look unhappy.”

Archer. It hurts to move.

“You don’t have to move. And I can erase your pain.”

She smiled, despite herself, and spoke aloud. “No doubt. But so can sleep. Go home, Archer. I’m sure you can find someone else’s pain to erase.”

“So callous,” he said teasingly, “when you know how worried I was for you today.”

She did know how worried. She merely doubted that the worry had changed his nature.

OF COURSE, AFTER he’d gone, she did not sleep. She tried, but nightmares brought her awake over and over again. Her nightmares were always worse on days when she’d spent time down among the cages, for that was where her father had died.

Cansrel, her beautiful monster father. Monsters in the Dells came from monsters. A monster could breed with a non-monster of its species—her mother had not been a monster—but the progeny was always monstrous. Cansrel had had glittery silver hair with glints of blue, and deep, dark blue eyes. His body, his face breathtaking, smooth and beautifully cut, like crystal reflecting light, glowing with that intangible something that all monsters have. He had been the most stunning man alive when he’d lived, or at least Fire had found him so. He had been better than she at controlling the minds of humans. He had had a great deal more practice.

Fire lay in her bed and fought off the dream memory. The growling leopard monster, midnight blue with gold spots, astride her father. The smell of her father’s blood, his gorgeous eyes on her, disbelieving. Dying.