He knelt on the worn gray carpet before her, tucking his wings in tight to keep them from tangling with the beer cans that littered the coffee table.

She kept staring at nothing as he cleaned out her bloody ears.

He didn’t have med-magic like a witch, but he knew enough battlefield healing to assess her arched ears. The Fae hearing would have made that explosion horrific—the human bloodline then slowing down the healing process. Mercifully, he found no signs of continued bleeding or damage.

He started on the left ear. And when he’d finished, he noticed her knees were scraped raw, with shards of stone embedded in them.

“Juniper stands a shot of being promoted to principal,” Bryce rasped at last. “The first faun ever. The summer season starts soon—she’s an understudy for the main roles in two of the ballets. A soloist in all five of them. This season is crucial. If she got injured, it could interfere.”

“She made the Drop. She would have bounced back quickly.” He pulled a pair of tweezers from the kit.

“Still.”

She hissed as he carefully pried out some shards of metal and stone from her knee. She’d hit the ground hard. Even with the club exploding, he’d seen her move.

She’d thrown herself right over Juniper, shielding her from the blast.

“This will sting,” he told her, frowning at the bottle of healing solution. Fancy, high-priced stuff. Surprising that it was even here, given that the prince and his roommates had all made the Drop. “But it’ll keep it from scarring.”

She shrugged, studying the massive, dark television screen over his shoulder.

Hunt doused her leg with the solution, and she jerked. He gripped her calf hard enough to keep her down, even as she cursed. “I warned you.”

She pushed a breath out between clenched teeth. The hem of her already short dress had ridden up with her movements, and Hunt told himself he looked only to assess if there were other injuries, but—

The thick, angry scar cut across an otherwise sleek, unnervingly perfect thigh.

Hunt stilled. She’d never gotten it healed.

And every limp he’d sometimes caught her making from the corner of his eye … Not from her dumb fucking shoes. But from this. From him. From his clumsy battlefield instincts to staple her up like a soldier.

“When males are kneeling between my legs, Athalar,” she said, “they’re not usually grimacing.”

“What?” But her words registered, just at the moment he realized his hand still gripped her calf, the silky skin beneath brushing against the calluses on his palms. Just as he realized that he was indeed kneeling between her thighs, and had leaned closer to her lap to see that scar.

Hunt reeled back, unable to help the heat rising to his face. He removed his hand from her leg. “Sorry,” he ground out.