Chapter 556

ARIA

“The bruising on her throat,” Kael said.

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“Will heal,” Eliza said. “Nothing is permanently damaged.” She looked at him steadily. “She was held for long enough that it will be tender for a week, and she should not strain her voice for the first few days, but she’s going to be fine.”

Something in Kael’s posture changed. Not relaxed – he didn’t relax, exactly — but the specific locked quality around his jaw and his shoulders released a degree.

“Killian,” Eliza said, “is stable. The wound is clean. He’ll need to stay off his feet for a week and he should eat more than he’s been eating – the surgery site will demand resources. If Ivory has the specific botanical compound she uses for accelerated healing, that would help.”

“She has it,” Nina said.

“She has everything,” Jordan said.

“Yes,” Eliza said, with the expression of someone who’d been watching Ivory build the clinic’s resources for years and had developed specific opinions about the scope of the inventory. She looked at me on her way out and did a brief assessment that I recognized as the healer’s involuntary cataloguing. “Your runes are active,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

She nodded, filed that too, and left.

Ivory woke up fighting.

Not immediately – there was the shallow return to consciousness first, the specific quality of someone coming up from somewhere deep, the slight movement of her fingers that was the first sign. Kael, whose hand hadn’t moved from hers, noticed before anyone else.

Then her eyes opened and her hand went for the dagger in the same motion, the specific response of someone who’d woken in enough dangerous situations that the reach was below conscious thought, and the dagger was up and the hand holding it was moving before the rest of her was fully awake.

Kael caught her wrist.

“Ivory,” he said.

She froze.

Looked at him. At the clinic. At Nina, Jordan, me, Killian on the other table with Jordan sitting beside him. The dagger in her hand, Kael’s hand on her wrist, the bruises she could probably feel now in the specific

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way that injuries that had been running on adrenaline announced themselves when the adrenaline was

gone.

She put the dagger down

“Where is Vela,” she said.

Her voice was rougher than usual. The throat

“Vela is dead,” Kael said.

“That’s the last thing I remember,” she said. “The dungeon.” She looked at the ceiling, inventory-running. “And Alaric.”

“Also dead,” Kael said.

She was quiet for a moment.

“You’re alright,” he said. “You passed out in the corridor. Eliza checked you.”

“What did she say,” Ivory said.

“Rest,” Kael said. “Voice rest specifically, for a few days.”

Ivory looked at him with the expression of someone who had been told to rest and was doing the math on everything that currently required her attention and was finding the math not in favor of resting.

“The pack,” she said.

“Is fine,” Kael said.

“I brought a war,” she said. “We need to tell them.” She was already trying to sit up – Kael put a hand on her shoulder, not force, just presence, and she stopped. Not because of the hand. Because she’d registered her own body’s position on the question of sitting up and the position was not enthusiastic.

“The war was coming regardless,” Jordan said, from across the room. “It was there. You just accelerated the timeline and sent a message.”

“The pack members will–” Ivory started.

“Understand,” Nina said.

“They’re human,” Ivory said. The specific quality in it that I’d heard before – not dismissal, something closer to responsibility. The accounting she kept for every person in Shadowmere who didn’t have a wolf’s capacity for the things that Shadowmere sometimes required.

“They’re petty humans,” Nina said, “and we’ve faced considerably worse than a network that’s just lost two members and is now very annoyed at us.”

Ivory looked at her. “When?”

“When have we faced worse,” Jordan said. He looked at the ceiling, in the way of a man reviewing a list. “We were actively cohabitating with a cursed wolf who could have leveled the pack on a bad day.”

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“Hey,” Kael said.

“Just saying,” Jordan said.

“We also had your father,” Nina said, to Kael.

“Don’t,” Kael said.

“He was traumatizing EVERYONE. I lost my entire family to him, and Ivory almost died on his orders,” Nina said, with the serenity of someone stating a documented historical fact.

“Don’t remind me of that period.” Kael said.

“Oh my god, Nina, wait have all the male of one particular bloodline try to kill me?” Ivory aseked looking surprised it as she was recollecting.

“Yes

E

1. Wow. Kael, Killian, Korish…” Jordan listed ou as everyone was snickering, im dark humor.

amused as NIna cleared her throat and continued.

Sonya.”

ed at the window.

he said.

God.” Jordan said. “I’d almost managed to forget about Sonya.”

ou were not forgetting about Sonya,” Ivory said. “You were infatuated with Sonya. Both of you were. She nd you fighting each other in the training yard over who got to carry her archery equipment.”

We were fifteen,” Jordan said.

Fifteen and fully embarrassing yourselves,” Ivory said.

“She made it easy,” Jordan said. “She was- Look, the context matters-”

“You threw Jordan’s lunch into a tree,” Nina said to Kael. “Over a girl who ended up leaving the pack eight months later to join a different one.”

“Jordan had it coming,” Kael said.

“I had it coming,” Jordan agreed, with the expression of someone who’d been carrying this particular sequence of events for two decades and had finally arrived at peace with it. “I said something I shouldn’t have said. The lunch consequence was proportionate.”

“You threw it into the tree from thirty feet away,” Nina said.

“Proportionate,” Kael confirmed.

“We’re getting off the topic,” Ivory said, but the roughness in her voice had something underneath it now that was different from the clinical flat of someone managing a crisis. Something that was almost – not quite, but almos

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“The topic,” Jordan said, returning to it, “is that we’ve dealt with worse than a war, and the pack knows it. and when you tell them which we will do, together, at a time that is not while you’re on the treatment table – they’re going to understand.”

“It’s not the understanding I’m worried about, Ivory said.

“What are you worried about,” Kael said.

She was quiet for a moment. Looking at her hands – the scratches, the specific evidence of what the past few hours had cost.

“Killian,” she said.

Everyone went quiet.

“He’ll have been aware,” she said. “For some of it. Aware that his hands were-” she stopped. “He’ll need-

“He’s right here,” Jordan said.

Killian, on the table across the room, had been listening with the specific stillness of someone who was present and choosing not to announce it. His eyes were open. He looked at Ivory when she said his name, and the expression on his face had several layers that I wasn’t sure I had the full context for yet, and then he said:

“I know it wasn’t you,” Ivory said, before he could say whatever he’d been about to say. “You know that I know that.”