Page 141 of The Last Remaining Light

He had come for her even knowing the risk.

Lora swallowed hard. “Oh stars,” she sniffled. “You really are exactly what I expected.”

Caelyn’s brow pulled into a line, but he didn't reply. Elowynn looked at her friend, remembering how hopelessly romantic she was.

Lora blinked rapidly, then scrubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. Looking down, she absently nudged one of the resonance crystals with a fingertip.

Alyra moved then, perhaps because she understood that if the room remained any longer in this thick emotion, none of them would survive it intact. She pointed at Korvel. “Stand watch.”

Korvel grunted, but didn’t argue.

Alyra crossed toward Caelyn and crouched beside him, setting her resonance blade on the floor within reach before examining the blood-soaked fabric across his back.

“These shards need to come out,” she said.

Caelyn’s body stiffened beneath Elowynn’s hands. “I’m fine,” he rasped.

Alyra stared at him with the flat patience of a woman who had already killed Starless tonight and had no remaining tolerance for male stubbornness.

“You are bleeding out everywhere.”

Caelyn slowly breathed out. “I said... I’m fine.”

“You nearly collapsed in the passage!” Alyra reached for his ruined coat. “If the crystal remains inside you, you’ll keep bleeding, and I don’t intend to drag your corpse through the lower observatories.”

Elowynn’s throat tightened around the word corpse. Caelyn must have felt the change in her, because his hand lowered and found her wrist. His fingers closed there, weak but deliberate. Holding on.

Elowynn looked down at his hand around her wrist, at the dried blood beneath his fingernails and the black veins still beneath his skin. She thought of all the times through their childhood where he’d said he was fine. After falling from the lower cliff path and breaking one of his toes. After burning his hand repairing a lantern; it blistered and had become infected. After Agatha had caught him awake three nights in a row and threatened to sedate him with tea strong enough to down a horse.

I’m fine. He had always said it the same way, as if his pain mattered less than the thought of inconveniencing someone for aiding him.

“I’m f—” he started to say again, but Elowynn cut him off.

“No!” The steadiness of her own voice surprised her. “You are not fine.”

Caelyn didn't look at her, which confirmed her words.

“Caelyn,” Alyra said, using his name with pointed care, “I need the coat off.”

His jaw moved once, clenching his teeth.

Lora, perhaps unable to bear the tension without speaking, tilted her head while eyeing the blood around him and said, “You know… I feel like we're skipping several important social steps in this friendship.”

A laugh tried to escape Elowynn and broke somewhere in her chest instead.

Caelyn closed his eyes. “I dislike you.”

“No, you don’t,” Lora said. “You barely know me! How can you dislike someone you don’t even know? In fact, I’m pretty sure I know you better than you know me.”

“I’m forming conclusions,” he grumbled beneath his breath.

Lora preened at this. “That’s fair. I do make an impression.”

Alyra shot her a look over one shoulder, half chastising, half smitten fool. Pressing her lips together, Lora mimed locking them shut.

With a great deal of effort and visible resentment, Caelyn allowed them to help him sit forward. Elowynn kept one hand braced against his chest while Alyra worked the ruined coat down his arms. The fabric stuck where blood had dried against his skin, and Caelyn’s breath hitched once through his teeth before he swallowed the sound down.

Elowynn didn’t like the way he kept trying to spare her from witnessing his pain, as though she had not already chosen to remain beside him.