Page 128 of Crowned By the Fae King

"What do I do, Cassie?" I sobbed out, holding my hand against my bleeding side. "What do I do?"

He grabbed the sword by the blade and pulled it out, inch by inch. "Arrows," he said, gasping the word. "Take them out. I… I…"

Can't heal, I finished in my head, but I was already moving. I already knew. Had known from the moment I'd seen the blood soaking his back.

I'd never removed an arrow before, but I'd been out fishing before, and an arrow was kind of like a really big fishhook. The barbs held it in, and you only ever ripped them out if you were fishing for keeps. Ripping a fishhook out of a fish's gullet was a death sentence. I didn't have one of those lovely metal graspers people used to take fishhooks out, but that didn't matter. I was a resourceful girl.

My hands didn't shake. I snapped off the ends of two of the arrows, jammed them into the first wound, and prised his torn flesh open. A wash of blood flowed down my side.

Cass screamed in pain, an animalistic sound that echoed up the valley. Voices answered, fast and frightened and not nearly far enough away. No one could know how badly he was hurt. They would only do it again—better this time.

I gripped the arrow in my teeth, arms trembling from the force required to keep Cass' body from clinging to the tines of the arrowhead, and pulled it out of my soulmate.

He cried out for the second. Sobbed on the third. Was silent for the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh.

He didn't stop bleeding.

It soaked the ground, pooled around us, so much; too much. His skin was ashen and cold. He wouldn't make it until a healer could be found. He wouldn't make it at all.

No, I thought viciously, focusing on the Court. You cannot allow this.

Mercy felt distant, remote, my connection attenuated almost past my reach. Cass was Mercy's beloved, but I was Cass' beloved, and Mercy still answered to me. I'd reached it once. I could do it again.

I was mortal. When I called on the Court of Mercy, it answered with time and slaughter. Men dropping dead, corpses rotting, even steel turning to rust.

Cass' body wasn't dead; not yet. If he could heal before he bled out, not in months but in moments… if I could find a way to bind my connection to the Court back to him…

His blood. He's in his blood.

I shoved my blood-soaked fingers into the wound on my side, agony singing through me, and demanded, Give me time!

Mercy answered.

Faery's wild power thundered into me—into us, turning the clock forward. Pain ripped through me, every sensation cranked to eleven.

My wounds sewed shut, sealing Cass' blood inside me. His flesh closed. Sharp feathers tore through his clothing. Claws sank into the ground. My soulmate's body arced up in a rictus of agony, the Court raging through him, saving him, killing me, time running through us like water—

"No, stop—!"

Cass. His voice—terrified.

I jerked back, the power of the Court cutting off suddenly. Every inch of my skin ached. My hair felt heavy, and when I shoved myself up off the ground, it fell past my shoulders.

"Q…Quyen…" Cass panted out my name, holding his body off the ground with one hand. He trembled, pain in every line of his body, pain I couldn't feel, it was like he was gone— "Don't panic," he said, that agony in every word. "Lioness, please."

People ran down the slope for us. "Your majesties!"

My focus snapped to the here-and-now; to the guards racing to help, and to every eye that would be on us. "Up," I hissed. "Act like it doesn't hurt. They can't know."

His eyes widened, then hardened. He didn't have his magic, but Cass knew control. He got up with the sleek power of a panther and held a hand down to me.

I took it and stood, then turned and steadied myself. Every part of me hurt. It was like some core aspect of me had been scooped out and left bloody, a void inside my soul that would never heal.

"Good. You're here," I said, making my voice cold. I didn't think Cass would be able to speak without sounding injured.

I had no idea what I'd done to him… to us. But he was alive. At least there was that.

"Your majesties," one of the guards said. Her eyes skittered across the scene. "Are you…"

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