Elara stopped shaking. The stopping was a decision made by a girl whose best friend was dying on cobblestones and whose grief had been overruled by necessity.
Charlie cleaned the wounds. Methodical. Thorough. The water turned pink, then red, then a color that had no name. He worked through the cloth, through the blood, through the specific, intimate horror of a healer whose hands were inside a child's wounds and whose composure was the only thing standing between her and the infection that would kill her if the blood loss didn't finish the job first.
"You're going to be fine, Serena." He said it the way a healer says it when the tone is as much medicine as the treatment. "This is going to hurt. But you're going to be alive to complain about the pain, and alive is the only outcome I'm accepting tonight."
