Free Lynn Viehl - [Darkyn 08 - Lords of the Darkyn 01] by Nightborn (mobi) Page A

must have killed a boy who resembled him, and planted the evidence on his body.” Flavia made the sign of the cross over herself.
    “He knew if Father thought he was still alive, he would never stop searching for him.” Simone looked at one gnarled, dead-looking rosebush. It seldom had more than a dozen leaves on its spindly canes, but still steadily produced the largest and most exquisite flowers at the convent. The reason for that made her get to her feet. “I must tend to the Englishman and then rest while I can.”
    “He will want blood when he wakes tonight,” Flavia warned. “I will provide it.”
    “You can’t risk—”
    “Nor can you.” She reached out and touched the strip of cloth Simone had bound around her forearm. “I may be blind, child, but I am not stupid. Nor have I forgotten how much I may safely take from my own veins to mix in some wine. Now go to him.”
    Simone retrieved some tools from the garden shed before she went upstairs and sent the field hands back to their work. Once inside, she bolted her door and laid out the tools on the end of her pallet.
    Her bed was too small for a man Korvel’s size, and provided no room in which to turn him. She tore her sheets by using them to drag him half over the edge before she rolled him onto his front.
    Time was running out for him, so she discarded the idea of cutting off his bloodstained garments, and instead tore the rent in the back of his trousers wider to give her easier access to his wound. Pájaro’s man had buried his blade deep, and only a tiny piece protruded from the still-bleeding gash.
    Simone picked up the slimmest pair of pliers and clamped them around the protrusion. She tugged carefully on the thin metal, wriggling and easing it at a slight angle rather than pulling it straight out. Fresh blood streaked with black grease welled up the broken blade.
    She knew the risk she took. If the metal snapped and even the tiniest sliver of copper entered his veins, it would lodge in his heart and spread poison from there into every other vessel in his body. He would die in minutes.
    The metal remained intact, although she could feel the serrations tearing anew through Korvel’s flesh. As soon as she saw the tip of the broken blade, she pulled it free and tossed it to the floor. She inserted her fingertips into the wound, holding it open as she used her teeth to pull the cloth wound around her forearm away from the cut.
    It hurt to bite around the cut, but she applied only enough pressure to make herself bleed again before holding her forearm over the open wound. As soon as her blood dripped into the gash, Korvel’s bleeding stopped, and the tear slowly began to shrink inside.
    Korvel’s hair began to rapidly darken, turning from flaxen gold to a dark red. Like all tresori, Simone knew that Kyn with copper poisoning often shed the metal through their scalp, which caused the color of their hair to change. Because the copper now staining Korvel’s hair would also cause irritation to his skin, she used her sewing shears to cut off most of the length.
    Exhaustion, not all of it from her own blood loss, turned Simone’s limbs to lead. Her hands shook as she ripped clean strips from the remains of her sheets to bind his leg and her forearm. After that she intended to climb off the bed and get a blanket from her chest so she could sleep on the floor, but Korvel’s arm encircled her waist to pull her down beside him. He did not wake, but when she tried to move away from his big body, his arm tightened and he shifted, tucking her head in the space between his shoulder and neck. The coolness of his skin felt good against her hot face.
    Of course, he needed her warmth, she decided, too tired to fight his hold another moment.
    The universe had become gray sludge.
    Korvel no longer permitted himself to pass into the nightlands, where the Darkyn went to rest and recover from the brutalities of the world. Too much of that strange territory reminded him