Page 3 of The Bound Blood
“You’re awake,” Tamsin says from somewhere to my right. She doesn’t sound surprised. “Took you long enough.”
I glance over. She’s curled in a chair beside my bed, legs pulled up, a half-empty coffee mug in her hands. Her braid is a mess, and there’s a faint cut healing along her collarbone.
“How long?” I ask, voice hoarse.
“Almost a day and a half,” she replies. “They thought your magic might not stabilize.”
“It doesn’t feel stable now.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
I flex my fingers, wincing as pain ripples down my bandaged wrist. There’s something beneath the pain though. Something…warm. Buzzing faintly, like a thread caught in my bloodstream. It feels foreign and familiar at the same time.
“What happened to my—” I lift my wrist and frown. “Why’s this wrapped?”
Tamsin shifts, suddenly interested in the inside of her mug. “You were holding her hand when everything exploded. Got burned. Matron Cray said you were lucky it wasn’t worse.”
But it doesn’t feel like a burn. Not entirely.
It feels like a thread I can’t see, tugging quietly beneath my skin. Centering somewhere just out of reach.
“Lindsay?”
“Still out,” she says. “She’s…glowing less now. They think the worst is over, but no one’s really sure. Matron Cray says her mind is still not here, and I'm more likely to trust her than any other healer.”
I push myself upright, ignoring the way the room tilts and the bandages pull tight against my skin. Or the stabbing pain centered in my ribcage.
“Careful,” Tamsin warns, but I’m already turning my head, scanning the room.
And then I see her.
Lindsay.
She’s stretched out on the cot across from mine, a shimmer of barely-there magic rippling over her skin like smoke trapped beneath glass. Her hair spills across the pillow in tangled waves, dark lashes resting on too-pale cheeks. There’s a stillness to her—too deep, too unnatural. Like even her dreams have been silenced.
Something in my chest lurches painfully.
She looks breakable.
And she’sneverlooked breakable before.
“Lindsay,” I breathe, already trying to stand. My legs hit the floor, barely holding my weight. I take one step. Then another.
Then the world blurs sideways.
Strong hands catch me before I can hit the stone.
“For fuck’s sake,” Tamsin mutters, arms bracing around my torso as she drags me half-upright again. “What part ofyou were out for a day and a halfdidn’t you understand?”
I groan, breath shallow, vision swimming. “I just…I needed to see her.”
“Youwereseeing her,” she snaps. “From a perfectly safe distance. One that didn’t require you face-planting like a lovesick idiot.”
But her grip is steady, even as she lowers me carefully back onto the bed. Her eyes flick once toward Lindsay, and I swear even her face softens. She’s worried too.
“She’s still fighting,” she says, quieter now. “You don’t have to bleed trying to do it for her.”
I let my head fall back against the pillow, chest heaving, every breath dragging guilt and fear up from my ribs. Because no matter what the healers say…it feels like all of this is just beginning, and Lindsay’s the key to it all.
