Page 175 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

“Shut. Up,” I barked at her. “Don’t joke. You’re still bleeding.”

Goddess, I barely knew this woman besides her name, but I felt fury for and at her like I’d known her my entire damned life.

Sasha laughed.

Well, it was more like a choked grunt, but there was humor in it.

“Bandages. In my—” She let out a low sigh of discomfort as she shifted half upright, revealing just how little my weight and strength had been doing to hold her down. “Pocket.”

I kept my fingers pressed to the wound as I rooted through the large, buttoned pocket on her hip that she’d flicked her eyes at. Inside were two thoroughly squished rolls of cloth bandage. Unraveling a roll with one hand amounted to shaking it like it had fired the arrow at Sasha, but I managed, quickly stuffing the wadded-up cloth where my fingers had been.

“Sorry.” I winced as I packed it into her wound, and Sasha let out a string of curses.

She at least had color back in her face.

“Hold this for a second.” I grabbed her hand from her uninjured side and pressed it against the cloth. Thankfully, she humored me. It gave me time to unravel the other roll of bandage and start wrapping it snug around the wound, under her armpit and up over her shoulder a few times, and once across her chest for measure. “Almost done.”

Lastly, I unbuttoned her uniform jacket just under her bust and slipped the hand of her injured arm through. It wasn’t any admirable sling, but it would do for the time being until she could get proper attention from a medic—something that needed to happen now.

“Are you a witch or some’in’?” Sasha had a little slur to her words, which stoked the panic that had only just settled in my heart. “That feels so much fuckin’ better.”

If I’d been wiser, I would have asked Maksym a little more about the effects of bright iron before he’d whisked me off to the damned front line.

“No, no. Nothing of the sort.” As much as I hated to admit it, carrying her off the walkway and out of the battlements wasn’t an option. “Think you can walk with some help? We need to get you out of here.”

Sasha’s brows pinched, and her eyes narrowed as she glanced at her body. She gave me a nod that seemed a little too confident with how unfocused her earthy eyes were. “Yeah. I think so.”

Enough for me.

I pulled her hale arm over my shoulders, wrapped my arm around her waist, and lifted her, thanks entirely to the strength of my legs, which I would never take for granted again. She hissed out a few words I didn’t understand at all but commiserated with entirely.

We staggered from one uneasy step to the next, dodging archers as they switched in and out of position, stocked their quivers, lit their arrows, and returned fire that seemed to thin.

We had to dodge the wounded too.

Other archers and scouts were being tended to by their partners, though their numbers were thankfully few. Even fewer were bodies pushed against the walls, though that was a few too many for my taste.

Apparently for Sasha too.

She swayed to a halt right at the opening of a crenel that looked back over our camp. Safe, sure, but we needed to keep moving.

“Come on. The tower is just right there; we can stop for a second then if you need⁠—”

“Look at it, Miss Anna.”

Anna it was.

We were always taught that the wounded were a peculiar bunch, often best dealt with by ceding to their whims a bit.

I stifled my sigh and followed her attention to a wave of black rolling across the horizon, blotting out the blue sky. Fuck. The last thing we needed was more rain. The grounds were already a mucky mess from the morning’s downpour, and hitting marks in a storm was a fucking nightmare.

But I realized quickly that these weren’t storm clouds.

So did everyone else up on the wall, as the thwack and whizz of bows being fired died off, and attention turned.

Tension banded around my chest and squeezed as the darkness passed over us in a brutally rolling wave, hitting the wall like a wicked gust and flowing out over the plateau. Shouts and panic came from the Odessan squad, and they started running for their camp beyond the ridge. Whoever had plane stepped them in had abandoned them to their own devices.

The air was palpable in its thickness, full of smoke and haze, but there was no smell or taste to it. No heaviness in my lungs, either, or burn in my eyes.