Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Sixty Eight: A Stranger

"Let me look."

Grace's fingers pried Nova's hand away from her back, where she was trying to ascertain whether her other wing was broken, too. She didn't need to see the girl's aura to know how shaken up she was; her hands trembled against Nova's skin as she gently probed the damage, and her breath came so hard Nova felt it moving her hair.

A few feet away, the spy lay prone and motionless. His breathing was just barely visible under his layers of clothing, but looking at him Nova felt an echo of that same wild relief she had felt in the Barrens all those years ago, when the bodies of the agents both her uncle and Lord Harkenn had sent to kill her lay leagues behind. She felt no communion with her own people anymore, not like she used to. At that moment, the only other soul that mattered to her was Grace.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?" Grace sniffed quietly; she'd been crying.

"That you got tangled up with this. That I couldn't protect you."

"Don't make this into one of those cheesy romance scenes," Grace said with a choked-off laugh, and then she hesitated and added, "Of course you don't know what I mean. Sometimes I forget you and I aren't from the same world. It's...it's insane to think so, even though it's been weeks. I don't think it'll ever get better. I don't think this is broken, by the way."

Nova pulled down her shift and got to her feet, wincing as every part of her body protested. She walked over to the man lying on his front, sighed, and gently rolled him over with her foot. Grace let out a horrified gasp as he fell onto his back, but he didn't stir. Quickly, Nova tore a bigger hole in his jerkin and poked around at the damage. The knife had gone in to the hilt, but it wasn't bleeding heavily enough to have hit anything important. The eye with the needle sticking out of it would cause him far bigger problems.

"If he dies, it won't be from your wound," Nova muttered, leaning over and peering at his face. It was barely recognisable under the thick mask of blood. "So you can stop panicking about that."

"He was up and running with yours!" Grace protested, eyes welling again. Nova cursed; that hadn't been her intention at all. "Then I.... I stabbed someone. Nova, I stabbed someone."

"You did, yes," Nova said slowly. "I can see it."

"I can't believe I stabbed someone."

Nova blinked, and then said emphatically, "He was going to kill us."

Grace stared at her, eyes wide. "You don't care? What if he dies?"

"You know you said that already," Nova snapped, "About five times. So we can stand here and watch him die, or we can get him to the kitchens, patch him up, and have him arrested."

Grace had an odd look on her face, and suddenly Nova was struck with the fear that she had in a single moment just undone whatever progress she and Grace had made in coming to terms with Nova's past crimes. It wasn't that she didn't feel some degree of panic over the fact that she may well have just pushed her kill count into the double digits, only that panicking about it just made it all feel worse than it needed to.

"Grab his head end," she sighed, tugging at his feet and bracing them against her hips. Her entire body protested, but she ignored it with gritted teeth. "We can stash him in the dungeons for now."

"The dungeons?" Grace repeated. "But..."

"I can't carry him all the way back to the kitchens. We need guards for that," Nova said, "If you want to try, you're on your own. And if he wakes up, he's not going to feel any less inclined to gut us both. The dungeons are closer, and with any luck he'll be too disorientated to think about running away before Harkenn can get to him."