I race over and drop to my knees. “What do we need?”

“Water,” Lucien croaks, rolling up his sleeves. His own neck is bloodied so badly, it looks like a butcher shop, but he ignores it. “So I can heat it. And a rabbit, if you can find it. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Uh, why a rabbit?” Malachite asks.

“Less talking.” Lucien pulls off his covering and drapes it over Fione’s blue-lipped body. “More doing.”

Malachite and I share a look.

“Dibs on the rabbit,” I say.

“Always giving me the boring jobs.” He sighs, both of us splitting off in a blink. It doesn’t take long for me to find a burrow, and it takes even less time to dig into the earth with all my claws.

“Sorry,” I murmur.

When I get back, Malachite’s already there with the water, his drinking skin bulging as he offers it to Lucien. The prince’s fingers turn dark as he holds it, and a small trail of steam suddenly wafts from the skin’s spout. He tears his shirt and offers me the cloth.

“Wet it with the water and clean her wounds, if you would. Gingerly.”

I nod. My fingers work as fast as “gingerly” will let me, and my eyes roam over Fione’s face. Her skin is sallow, her breathing so thin, I barely hear it. She’s not awake, thank the gods, because Lucien cuts her wrist with his blade out of nowhere.

“Shit!” Malachite snarls. “She’s already lost enough blood! What are you—”

“Rabbit,” Lucien demands from me, and I hand it over. He slits the thing’s broken neck, his fingers deep midnight up to the knuckles as he holds the wounds together—rabbit to girl, skin to skin.

It happens slowly at first and then quickly, like all magic. The blood from the rabbit oozes out like a hedging worm, like a thing burrowing out of winter to peek at spring. A pure liquid-red worm, thick and long, moving without spilling a drop. It almost seeks Fione’s wound—drawn by the blood—and when it finds it, it burrows. With a sickening squelch and a slow pump, the rabbit’s blood empties into Fione’s cut, but not without cost. Lucien makes a snarling noise, his brow dripping sweat onto the ground.

“Can’t—can’t you just heal her?” Malachite asks.

“Sh-She needs blood first,” Lucien says. “Or her body will reject the spell.”

“Use a human’s, maybe?” I offer. “I have plenty—”

“Do you see any humans around here?” he snaps.

“You—”

“I’m not human anymore. I’m witch. You’re a Heartless, Mal is a beneather. All incompatible.”

“Are you—” I gulp, watching the rabbit blood move into her arm, writhing like a live thing just below her skin. “Are you turning the rabbit’s blood…into human blood?”