Tainted

Chapter Seventeen

Drip.

Drip.

Something is dripping on my forehead.

I jerk so violently my chest feels as if I've cleaved it in two.

"Calm down," a voice says quickly.

"Who are you?" I try to shout but the words claw themselves against my dry throat. I tear my eyelids open.

Spots cloud my vision as pain sears my body. Nothing is coming into focus. I can't piece together one image from the next, and my brain is working too slowly to catch up. I can feel my breath coming fast and it burns. Everything burns.

"Shh," the voice says again. Whoever's speaking places a hand against my sternum and fire breaks beneath my skin.

I scream.

"Mira, calm down!" The hand reaches up to cup my cheek.

"Who are you?" I cry.

My fingers scrabble at the hard surface beneath my spine. It's made of wood, and the varnish clumps beneath my nails.

Wood. I can feel its grain. I'm not supposed to feel anything in the Everdark.

My eyes squint at the face before me. Its voice is too soft to belong to the Lord of Shadows. His voice is said to fill your veins with ice and your heart with shadow. My veins aren't filling with ice. I don't think.

"Alani," the face answers, and she comes into focus. Alani leans forward, her blonde hair falling against my forehead. The strands of it make me shiver.

I latch my eyes onto Alani's face. If not for a whiff of her lavender perfume, I'd think she was a hallucination.

"I'm not dead?" I ask in a hush.

Alani shakes her head. Her blue eyes are wet, but they've sunken beneath her brows, and her skin is stretched against her cheekbones.

How long have I been...not dead? Alani looks as if she hasn't slept in days.

"No," Alani breathes. "You're not dead. You were—" she stops and swallows "—so close, but the healer saved you, Mira. You're alive." Her chin wobbles, and a tear drips from her nose to land on my forehead.

I stare at her. "How?"

Alani blinks. "How are you alive?"

I nod, each nerve in my neck feeling the motion like the tiny prick of a needle.

Alani's hand presses into the side of my face. "Gregor—the healer—fixed you. I declared you dead, and I smuggled you back here, and he fixed you." Alani cups my cheek. "Because I couldn't let you die." She lets go of my chin and leans back, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose.

Behind her are the dusky outlines of the healer's cabinets. I'm in his room, lying atop the one wooden surgical table.

Binks shot an arrow through my chest. I didn't dream that, did I?

I tuck my chin to my sternum, and all I can see are bandages. Where once an arrow was protruding from beneath my shoulder, now there's just bloody linen, wrapped piecemeal around my chest.

The breath hitches against my throat.

Each muscle feels weak, and there's a constant, throbbing pain coming from where the arrow pierced my body. Stitches stretch against my shoulder as I feel out the mobility of my hands, and my back stings with every little movement against the rough wood.

So I didn't dream it. She did shoot me.

I close my eyes again the pain. "You said you declared me dead?" I manage, my throat still achingly dry.