All That Falls

27 A Wound That Heals

Lark and the twins had left the very next morning. He had looked at me in a way that made my heart go out to him. I knew he wanted to talk to me, to ask questions, but I wasn't ready to answer them and he knew that. So he took the twins and they left to continue their hunt for the gorgon with the key to Hellscape and Cass stayed home with me. But that monstrous orange apartment was too small to hold everything I was feeling so I took my chance to get out of it once a day when the market opened and Cass had made a list of what we would need to nourish ourselves for the next few hours.

On the first day, I had only retrieved a quarter of the list before all the stares had gotten to me and I had rushed back to the apartment in a full-blown panic attack and Cass had to finish the list herself. It was the gray, I knew it. I had opted for the gray color scheme that signaled I did not belong to any court ever since Lark had told me what had really happened with my mother. I couldn't stomach the thought of wearing brown. But the gray stuck out even more in a sea of orange and that first day I had let that sense of unbelonging get to me.

The second day I returned, it was with my head held high. I was determined to finish the list, to not let the stares get to me. They did but I finished the list anyway and rushed home as soon as I did. By now, three days since I'd begun, I was browsing the market stalls at my own pace, feeling the discomfort of the stares and letting it pass on through me like a warm breeze on a summer day. I enjoyed the few precious moments of the day in which I escaped that apartment. It wasn't Cass. She was doing well to treat me normally, not to hover over me too much or give me too many pitying glances. It was the feeling of freedom, no matter how small.

I was aware now, more than ever before, of the threats I faced. Both from my mother and from external sources as well. The Court of Friends had tried to abduct me. The King of the Bone Court had held me hostage for weeks. I needed to be careful about where I went and who I spoke to. But I also needed to get out into the world. I needed not to feel like I was a captive anymore. I needed to make my own decisions.

I didn't necessarily want to go to the market. I just wanted to be able to say I was going to the market and have no one stop me. And Cass hadn't. I was grateful to her for that, more grateful than she would ever know.

We were unpacking the produce that I had purchased late that morning when the door to the apartment burst open and Lark and Pollux came through carrying an injured Rook. Cass threw down the vegetables and ran to assist them as they lowered him onto the couch and he let out a yelp of pain.

"I've summoned a healer we can trust," Lark was saying, rapidly, as he pulled away from Rook who was bleeding from a long gash in his left leg. Cass had fashioned a strip of fabric from thin air and was replacing the blood-soaked tourniquet the men had placed around Rook's thigh with a new one of her own.

"What happened?" Cass snapped, not daring to look away from the wound as she pulled the knot tight.

"We found the gorgon," Pollux grumbled.

Cass' eyes snapped up to her brother's but Lark just kept his jaw clenched, gaze firmly on his injured friend. Rook was pale, his breaths becoming shallower.

"Move," I snapped, stepping forward to examine the wound. I wasn't an expert by any means but I had spent a few years following around a med student I had a bit of a crush on in my early twenties and had learned proper field protocol from the soldiers I spent time with at the camps under the rifts.

"A healer is coming," Lark repeated.

"We have to stop the bleeding or he won't make it that long," I snapped and Pollux's lips parted in shock. I jerked my head in the direction of the fireplace behind us. "Light that fire. Cass, get me the cooking weight from the kitchen."