Page 96 of Dark & Dreadful Brutes

Moving on to the next cut, I found a bandage in the right size, cleaned the blood off, and covered it.

The room was nearly silent as I continued with both idorr watching me work. My movements grew confident as I got used to the motions, and Ravv’s coloring started to improve a little too. That made me feel more certain we were doing the right thing in how we were taking care of him.

My body still felt cold and tired, so when I was finally confident that every inch of the king had been patched up, I let myself collapse on the bed and fall asleep.

I woke to the sound of soft swearing.

My eyes cracked open, and I looked around the room, a bit disoriented.

My gaze was drawn to the silhouette of a massive man in the bathroom, his bare body turned to the side.

It took me a moment to realize what he must’ve been doing.

“Don’t mess with my bandages,” I warned, stumbling out of bed.

Veil, I was more exhausted than I realized.

“Go back to sleep,” Ravv growled back.

I ignored him, swatting his hands away as I stepped up to his side. My hip bumped the countertop a bit harder than I planned, and he growled at me again when I winced.

“Be careful with yourself, Lae.”

“Says the man who’s bleeding from a hundred different cuts,” I mumbled back. He’d peeled the bandage about halfway off the wound on his side before I reached him, so I pulled on it a little as I leaned in to look closer.

The discoloration had mostly faded, but it still looked pretty damn grisly, and had bled through the bandage at some point.

“I think you need more of the antidote,” I admitted.

“There are two more vials in the bag,” Gleam said from the bedroom.

“You’ll have to drink it after I replace this,” I told him.

“I’ve got it.” He tried to pull my hands off his abdomen, but I shooed him away.

“You healed me. Now I heal you.”

“If you’re offering your blood, you know I’ll have to turn it down until you’ve recovered.”

I hadn’t been offering that… but it was a good idea. I should’ve considered it sooner.

“You’ll drink from me,” I decided.

“No,” Ravv, Coarse, and Gleam all growled together.

“I drank from you, so it’s only fair,” I pointed out.

“You’re barely awake right now. When your magic returns, you can heal me if I still haven’t recovered. Until then, my teeth don’t go anywhere near your throat.”

“I’m sure you could drink my blood from some other part of me, if you tried.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t tempt me, Lae.”

I narrowed mine back. “Don’t resist me, Ravv.”

With that, I ripped the bandage the rest of the way off his wound.

Colorful curses spewed from his lips as he bent over, trying hard to remain on his feet. I put a hand beneath the water, wet his skin with it, and then pressed the new bandage to his wound with the other hand.

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