A cold tingling started along the back of my arm. I returned the knife to the drawer. “I don’t see why I should help you,” I said. “You weren’t exactly grateful last time.”

“I will forget that you were going to kill me.”

The grandfather clock ticked with my pulse. Finally, I looked over my shoulder. He looked back at me, the light ebbing from his eyes.

I crossed the room, slowly, and placed the items on the nightstand. “What did this?” I said.

“You know.” Warden pressed his back against the headboard, his jaw rigid. “You did the research.”

“Emite.”

“Yes.”

The confirmation chilled my blood. Working in silence, I mixed the salt and water in the bowl. Warden watched me. Once I’d soaked and wrung out a square of linen, I leaned across to his right shoulder. The sight and smell of the wound made me jerk back.

“This is necrotic,” I said.

The wound had darkened to a rotten, oozing gray. His skin was hot as coal. I guessed his temperature was probably around twice what it should be in humans, so hot I could feel it through the gloves. The flesh around the bite was beginning to die. What I needed was an antipyretic. I didn’t have any quinine, which was what Nick usually used to crank down our temperatures. It was easy to sneak out of oxygen bars—they used it for fluorescence—but I doubted I could find it here. Saline and good luck would have to do.

I squeezed some water into the wound. The muscles in his arm hardened, and the tendons of his hand pushed out.

“Sorry,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. He wasn’t sorry when he watched me get branded, or when Seb died. He wasn’t sorry for anything.

“Speak,” he said.

I looked at him. “What?”

“I am in pain. Some idle distraction would be helpful.”

“Like you’re interested in anything I say.” The words came out before I could stop them.

“I am,” he said. He was pretty damn calm, considering his condition. “I am interested to know about the person with whom I share quarters. I know you are a murderer”—I tensed—“but there must be more to you than that. If not, I have made a very poor choice in claiming you.”

“I never asked you to claim me.”

“Yet I did.”

I kept sluicing away at the wound, pressing a little too hard. I saw no reason to be gentle with him.

“I was born in Ireland,” I said, “in a town called Clonmel. My mother was English. She ran away from Scion.”