Page 109 of Fortune's Blade

“Odin?” Louis-Cesare repeated, frowning.

“Or Zeus, or whatever name he’s going by these days. The bastard running this show.”

“But aren’t he and the king on the same side?”

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Do I look like I know anything?”

“Shit,” Claire said, trying to tie a tourniquet onto Regin’s massive upper arm to increase blood pressure and make it easier to find a vein. But the little blue straps that had come with her transfusion kit didn’t fit. They were something like eighteen inches long, and Regin’s arms . . . were not.

“Shit!” she said again, staring around.

“Here,” I passed her the belt that Louis-Cesare whipped off, which worked—barely.

“You know how to do this, right?” I asked, because I’d never seen it. Claire was great with herbs, including the fey kind, and was better than average with first aide—on a number of different species. But this was not her usual bailiwick.

“In theory—”

“In theory?”

“Yes, Dory, in theory!” she said hotly, bending over the massive arm and focusing on the bend of the elbow. “I have the equipment, but I’ve never actually done it. You understand that, right?” she asked, looking up at Regin. “I’m not an expert, not to mention that you may not have the same blood type as your son, and I don’t have any way to test for that here. And even if I did, our tests don’t know the antigens for goddamned dragon blood!”

“It is alright,” he told her, considerably more placid than he’d been before. Hope had done wonders, it seemed.

“It’s not alright! If I get it wrong, it will kill him!”

“And if you do nothing?”

Claire looked at him miserably. “It will kill him.”

“Then act. He wants to live, princess.”

“I’m not a princess, as you damned well know!” she snapped. And inserted a fat needle into Regin’s arm. It was connected to some tubing with a clamp on it, that in turn led to a blood collection bag that she placed on the floor. She then released the clamp and blood immediately started to flow into the bag.

I found myself letting out a nervous breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“How long will this take?” Louis-Cesare asked.

“Five to ten minutes to fill the bag; then I have a rapid infuser to speed up delivery of the blood, so . . . half an hour?”

“Half an hour?”

Claire shot him a stressed look. “That is assuming that he doesn’t need a second transfusion—”

“You do realize that we can be discovered at any time?”

“And you realize that if I rush it, I risk damaging the red blood cells and all this is for nothing!”

“Then we can all die together,” my hubby snapped, because this place was getting to him, too.

“You can leave anytime,” Claire snapped back. “I’m not going without my patient.”

“Calm yourselves,” Regin murmured. “He does not need to recover fully or even mostly. Just enough to Change. It will do the rest.”

“Even this far gone?” Claire looked dubious.

“Even this far gone. You have much to learn about us, princess.”

“A smart man would stop calling me that while I have a needle in my hand,” Claire warned, and looked like she meant it.

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