Page 91 of Crowned By the Fae King

"No. I can handle that much," Cass said with another weak laugh. His shoulders slumped, ears dropping down. "Not well, but…"

The space between us ached to be closed. It stood there like a barrier, one we both wanted crossed, but he was sure it wouldn't be welcome and I didn't want to take what wasn't mine to take.

He was fae, though. Bargains were in his lifeblood. We'd made a bargain for touch, as much an intimate exchange of access as giving someone a copy of the key to your apartment, and it was a bridge I could use to span that distance.

"Is it midnight yet?" I asked softly.

Cass looked over at me with an expression of stunned hope slanting his brows and tensing his mouth. There was only one reason why I would care. Midnight to midnight was the term of our deal. "It's almost an hour past," he said, his voice going rough.

I wet my lips. "Would you be able to focus better with me on your lap? Like when we found my buried man together?"

He let out a heavy pant, yearning sharpening the edge. "So much better," he said. Cass kept looking at me like he'd found water in the desert, his breaths growing heavy and heart beating harder.

I smiled at him, because he needed a smile and he was mine to smile for, and held out my hand. "Then let's go sit on a throne and get a little help from our Court for that scratch."

His warm fingers slowly closed around mine. We were already so entangled that the contact only heightened what was already there. The fears of his wounded heart tugged at me—is this too much, am I too much, can you still love me?

"Come on," I said, getting to my feet and tugging him to follow. "Hold me for awhile."

"As you desire," Cass said. He stood with care, holding his wounded arm up against his chest, his eyes never leaving my face.

He didn't make any move towards the throne, so I walked backwards across the snow, leading him there. Cass followed with his eyes on my face and ears canted towards me. I could have led him off a cliff. It didn't matter where I went. He would come with me.

Cass sat with the same expression of disbelieving hope, moving in slow motion. His wings settled behind him, framing the narrow back of the throne.

"Good boy," I said pertly, and hopped up onto his lap.

It startled him into a laugh. Cass wrapped his right arm around me, holding me against his chest, and carefully settled his injured arm across my lap. "I don't know that I've been a particularly good boy this past day," he murmured, resting his cheek on the top of my head. "Or, truly, for a long while. I saw how much you were doing, but it was such a relief to not worry about it that I told myself that I was doing you a favor by letting you be the one people came to. After all, you seem to like it, and I… don't."

I ran my fingers along his paralyzed ones. "I do like it," I said, keeping my voice soft. "I'd rather do it as a team, though." I paused, then added, "Can you feel that?"

His arm tightened around me. "Only the way I feel you touch my feathers."

"Do you think you can fix it?" I asked.

"I should be able to," Cass said cautiously. "One of the major nerves is severed, but I've had some success with making the body attack iron injuries. Once the necrosis progresses past the iron taint, I can usually work directly with the injury again."

Nausea twisted my gut. "That sounds risky."

"It is." His warm breath stirred my hair as he sighed. "If Dani had better control, I would ask her for help, but while she can make clean cuts in pure materials like metals, with something like this…" Cass stroked his thumb along my collarbone in a gentle caress. "My mageling likely won't be able to duplicate the control she has with Vaduin on anyone else for years. It's not even been a year since she came into her power, and I've worn a lot of wounds. I'd be lucky if she didn't shatter me open trying to cut away the iron taint."

"What about a scalpel?" I craned my head up to look at him. "Could you do surgery?"

"Not with one hand, and I don't believe any of the healers in the palace know how," he said wryly. "It's not a skill most healers are trained in, since it's primarily used for cosmetic mutilation." At my horrified expression, Cass made a face, one ear flicking in disgust. "It's common in cities. People have wildling traits like horns and tails surgically removed from themselves or their children, usually with obsidian blades, and the wounds healed over. It's a disgusting practice. I'm not unhappy that my ascension reverted many of those surgeries, nor that I had the power to ban the practice in Mercy."

I rubbed my head back against him. "See?" I said. "Good boy."

He snorted. "Fine. I'll allow it," he said, in the way of someone making a great concession, though I could feel him relaxing underneath me. Cass buried his face against my hair, inhaling against my scalp. "Are you sure you want me to do this while you're here? This sort of healing is messy."

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else." I traced a heart on the back of his paralyzed hand. "I could maybe even help, if you were willing to let me try?" I offered, my heart rate picking up. "Mercy likes my mortality. When I killed those bandits, it sped up the process of rot so it took seconds instead of years. I can even rust iron and steel."

Cass went still in the focused-predator way he did. "You can touch iron?" He sounded incredulous.

"Not directly," I said, feeling self-conscious about it. "I can just make it older." I kept tracing the heart, over and over, bleeding off the anxiety.

"Do you think you could do that to the traces of iron in me without affecting the rest of the wound?" he asked in a hesitant voice. "Worked iron and steel is brutal enough for faery bodies, but star-iron is much worse. There's more than a millimeter of flesh I can't touch right now on either side of the wound. I know that probably doesn't sound like much, but for nerves that's a significant distance." Cass hooked one canine over his lower lip. "Given how much control Dani has over her power with Vad, you might be able to do something that fine-scale in me. Rust will slice me up, but it won't poison me the way iron does."

I stilled, the combination of his anxiety trembling under his skin and his yearning hope and trust making my ribs tight and breath shallow. "You trust me to try?" I asked, setting my fingers gently on the cloth wrapped around his wounded arm.

---