Page 42 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

It’s still so strange to see the blood be so red, so close.

For the brief period before the body died but Ambra was still part of her, they had bled both black and red, and it was a shock to both of them.

Now, just black.

“On a scale from one to ten, how much pain are you in?” he murmurs, still focusing on his arm.

“That’s too imprecise of a scale,” she counters.

Of course she’s heard that scale before. Back when they were tying in her nerves, back when the handlers were trying things, they asked it constantly.

It annoyed her back then, too.

“Then give me an accurate scale,” he says, which is a far more difficult question, but he’s letting her lean in and watch as he patches himself from an injury.

“It’s not the worst pain I’ve been in,” she starts, because they all seemed to want to know that. “It’s more…weakness.”

Another brief flicker of his eyes to hers.

“If I stand, it feels like the nerves would stop the muscles from working and make me fall down again,” she supplies, and he nods. “Shooting pain when I do that, aches when I’m not.”

He finishes with the alcohol wipe, folding it back and putting it in its open foil packet for safe keeping, then placing the gauze over the cut. “Hold this in place.”

She does, of course, and the edges of his skin are warm, hot to the touch, but he doesn’t react to the contact as he quickly wraps the area in medical tape.

“The pain during the spike was way worse, but this has less functionality,” she continues.

“So we should evaluate in terms of severity and function?” he asks, business-like, before examining the bandage and wincing. “Did he have to cut up my good wrist?”

“What’s wrong with the other?” she asks, and he rolls his eyes. “What?”

“Carpal tunnel,” he replies sarcastically, and it’s not a term she’s familiar with. “It’s a normal human injury, just lasts for a while.” Then, after rotating his other wrist, says, “It’s not bad on the severity scale, just have to take it easy on it or it’ll bother me more.”

Makes sense.

He neatens up the rest of the med kit, placing his trash precisely to the side and fitting everything back into its place, like the actions soothe him somehow. Like the day caused him distress as well, and this is how he needs to process it.

Humans are horrifically complicated.

“What do demons usually do when they need to recover?” he asks, raising another critical eyebrow at her, making his opinion of her physical state very obvious.

Which is fair, the body did collapse.

“Hide,” she replies truthfully. “Usually, with something that can entertain the mind, a puzzle to solve, a book to read, a library to research, for however long it takes.”

“Is hiding the answer for every demon ill?” he says, and she knows he’s mocking her, but he’s also not wrong.

“Hiding or fighting,” she says. “Some…some go hard into sensation seeking, some collect influence over humans, some build power, but all that goes back to hiding or fighting.”

He watches her face and she’s acutely aware of it, and she almost prickles underneath his gaze, before something thoughtful crosses behind his eyes. “So you were the hiding sort of demon.”

He’s not saying it derogatorily, thankfully. “I saw no reason to risk myself in open conflict.”

“Then the College made you into a puppet assassin.”

She shrugs one shoulder. She’s still wearing the reddish sweater, and it smells of ash, but the collection of clothes they left at this condo is way smaller and she doesn’t want to stand to go look.

“And you have a library of hidden books and research. They could have made you an Archivist.”

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