Page 84 of Guardian of Exile

A second passed. Two.

Tristen tried to speak. Again, only a gurgle came out. Fuck.

She heard the sound of running footsteps and then Kaden barreled out of the portal.

She didn’t waste any time on greetings. “Someone’s watching us. At least one person, maybe more. We can’t afford to let them get away and I can’t leave Tristen.” If someone left this alley with what they’d seen, every opportunistic person without scruples in this town—which was apparently most of them—would be looking for Tristen.

“Alihana’s over there.” Nyx nodded to where the sword lay ten feet away. Kaden scooped it up, but rather than keep it, he tossed it to her. Magic pulsed out from him. His gaze shot up and he leapt at the wall, finding hand and toe-holds she hadn’t known were there. He scaled it swiftly and disappeared over the lip of the roof.

Nyx’s hand clenched on Alihana’s hilt. As much of a jerk as the sword could be, she was grateful to have them back. She tried a Hiding again and this time it took, magic weaving around them with Kaden as its only exception.

Tristen finally sucked in a normal breath and Nyx eased the pressure on the cloak she had pressed to his neck. He took another normal breath and she pulled it away to find his skin scarred but healed, the gash closed over. She heard a series of pops as something shifted in his chest, and a sound like a whine left his throat.

It passed and he rasped out, “Leg.”

“What?”

“It’s broken.” His voice had lost the rasp.

She glanced back. His right leg was bent at an impossible angle.

“I can’t keep it from healing much longer.” His voice was fully normal now, if strained, and the scarring on his throat was fading. “You have to straighten it before it does or it’ll have to be broken again.”

She moved to crouch by his right foot. Constance slid down her arm and morphed into a knife Nyx used to cut Tristen’s pants leg open. She pulled the fabric away, exposing his leg, and nearly vomited. His shin bone jutted out of his skin.

She clocked movement in her peripheral and looked up, relaxing when she saw it was only Kaden returning, scaling down the wall.

She looked back at Tristen’s leg. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Just pull it straight. It doesn’t need to be a perfect set like an Earth doctor would need. But I need you to do it in the next thirty seconds.”

Constance melted back into a bracer and Nyx reached for his ankle, unsure where to hold or grab, her gorge rising again. “I really don’t think I can⁠—”

Kaden appeared beside her. “Hold his shoulders down.”

Relieved, Nyx abdicated her position by the broken leg and grabbed Tristen’s shoulders, pinning him. Kaden put one hand on Tristen’s thigh, grasped his ankle with the other, and jerked his leg back into place in one quick, fluid movement.

Tristen screamed. He bucked beneath her hands, his head lifting up, but she held his torso firmly down. She felt him slip the leash on his magic, a wave of it punching through him. Something snapped and crunched. Blood poured from his leg, as if being flushed from the inside out, bits of bone debris and dirt pushed out, and then his skin was knitting back together, growing and fusing until it was a seamless whole.

Tristen’s head thunked back onto the ground. His breath came in labored, audible pulls.

“Are you good?” Kaden asked.

After a brief hesitation, Tristen nodded. He rolled to a sitting position and then pulled his intact pant leg up to his knee and fussed with his prosthetic, which presumably wasn’t intended to stand up to the stress it had just taken. After a minute he made a face and pulled it off, then rose, standing on his right foot.

Nyx opened a portal to their room at the inn. They’d been walking home each night mostly because Tristen didn’t like portals and didn’t want to use them if he didn’t have to, and because walking was another thing that took up time before they ended up back in their room crowded together with their frustration.

Right now, Tristen went through the portal without complaint, waving Nyx off when she tried to help him. He hopped the five steps through the portal to his bed, dragged his bag from beneath it, and began rummaging through the contents.

Nyx and Kaden followed him into the room, the portal closing behind them.

“Do you want me to mention this to anyone?” Kaden asked Nyx.

“Everyone’s out again?” She’d sort of expected someone would have been around to hear her yell for Kaden.

He gave her a dry smile. “Morgen is social. Like our mother.”

“How is Evra handling that?”