Chapter 35
I WAS LEFT STARING DOWN AT ROYAL'S BODY. HE WAS ALIVE, BUT only because a stomach wound takes longer to kill. The wood had gone so far into his stomach that a piece of it came out the other side, missing his spine by a hairsbreadth. I pressed the cloth on either side of that wound. Hafwyn cautioned me to be careful, and not move him. Not until they had someone with more healing than she had left in her hands.
Royal's sister, Penny, was at his side, her dress covered in blood. Her hands were too small to compress the wound, but her words were plenty big enough to rub the guilt like sandpaper across my heart.
"We came to you for wings, and you have given us death." She threw herself onto her brother, yelling at me, "Evil, you are all evil. You have never brought us anything but humiliation and destruction."
I couldn't argue with her, not with Royal's body pressed against my hands, his life bleeding away.
She tried to grab him up onto her lap, and that made him cry out in pain. Hafwyn interfered. "Penny, Penny, if you move him you injure him further."
But Penny had let her grief and fear swallow her. There was no reasoning with her. It was one of the other uninjured demi-fey who came and dragged her away. She cried and struggled, and the cr
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