Swallow it down, she told herself, compressing acid over rings of muscle, through a tight throat, a burning chest, a churning stomach. Maybe bile would dissolve the feeling. Hopefully there wasn’t a wound. No rough edges, nothing to fester.

She had James to think about. He was sitting up in bed, very at home in a white-and-gold embarrassment of pillows and throws.

“Hello!” he cried, cheeks pink with health. “I hear you all wept over me. How fun!”

Vel trembled from his very large feet to his high-up head. “Can I touch you?”

“I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

Scratch dutifully stood back as Vel launched himself into the bed, devolving immediately into quiet, shaking sobs. She dug her heels into the wooden floor. Loneliness spread before her, a crevasse.

There were two fingers on her elbow, warm, a centimeter deep in an arm she hadn’t realized was shaking. Brella looked down at her with unblinking amber eyes. Scratch turned away.

“You almost had us, idiot,” Scratch croaked, because the air was stifling and if she didn’t use her voice, she couldn’t be sure she still had one. “If it weren’t for—” she gestured around the room “—you’d be dead.”

James held out the arm not teeming with Vel. “Come here, fool.”

She hesitated. He rolled his eyes.

“Come on.”

So she did, settling in to his other side. The bed was wide enough, and though her skin prickled at being so close to the large and weepy man who had claimed her best friend, she didn’t bolt.

Brella flopped down in a round, sculpted chair beside the bed, the seat so low her legs popped off the ground, crablike.

“What’s the prognosis, Nana?”

“He requires rest,” Nana said meaningfully. James blushed, wriggling into the sea of down. “But the bond will hopefully accelerate the recovery.”

James let loose a carefree smile that Scratch could only envy. “The blood bond? We’re doing that now?”

Nana nodded. “It’s the only way to keep you safe. Vel and Umbrella have certain protections in these woods. You do not. There’s only so much that being beside them can do without the bond in place.”

“Ooh, is there a ritual?” James’s eyebrows danced like a pair of voles engaged in a mating dance. “Robes? Candles? Sacred symbols drawn on the floor?”

“Ah, humans!” Nana clapped her hands, her bosom bouncing jovially. “You always have such funny ideas. No, all you need for this is a knife, a good friend, and a few sacred words.”

Nana pulled two scraps of parchment from her apron, handing one each to Scratch and James.