"You okay?" Aren asks.

"No," I snap. "I'm not. I'm psychologically impaired."

He lifts an eyebrow.

"Fissure out."

"McKenzie," he says, sounding as if he's disappointed in me.

"Now, damn it." I swing my arm at him, hit his shoulder.

He grunts. "I can't go anywhere while we're moving."

I slam on the brake, shove the gearshift into park, and then wait, but he doesn't budge. He just sits there staring at me. "I'm not kidding, Aren. Fissure. Out."

He sighs and I think he's finally going to comply when he says, "I'm very sorry about this."

"Sorry about wha-"

His hand darts out, grabs the keys, and pulls them from the ignition.

I lunge across the center console, reaching for them. I'm screwed if I don't get them back, but Aren fends me off.

"I can't let you go," he says.

"Give me the fucking keys!" I make a second attempt to grab them. He holds them away and bats my hands down. I manage to catch his wrist, but my momentum and a small jerk from him causes me to half fall into his lap. A smile starts to appear on his lips, so I slam my fist into his injured shoulder.

"Nom Sidhe," he groans, squeezing his eyes shut. When the keys fall to the floorboard, I reach between his legs to grab them. Before I straighten, he wraps an arm around my waist and then kicks open his door.

I throw an elbow toward his gut. He blocks it, pulls me across his lap, and nearly throws me out of the car. I drop the keys to grab the oh-shit handle above the door with both hands as Aren rises out of the car, keeping his arm around me.

"Let go of the handle."

"Let go of me!" I yell back. He pulls harder, lifting my feet off the ground. The handle is my only anchor to the car, but my grip is weakening. I kick, but he's holding both my legs now.

"McKenzie." He gives a final jerk and my hands slip. My teeth slice through my bottom lip when I land face-first on the damp roadside.

Aren flips me over and pins me to the ground. I buck and twist and try to shimmy out from under him.

"Relax," he orders.

My left arm slips free. He recaptures it.

"Enough, McKenzie. Enough!"

I let my body go limp beneath him and force myself not to react when edarratae scramble from his hands into my arms. I fail miserably in the no-reaction department. I don't move, but chaos lusters pulse under my skin, and the longer he touches me, the hotter they become. They're not painful; they're stirring and addictive.

"I hate you," I whisper. His silver eyes follow a luster as it tickles over my shoulder, up my neck, and across my cheek.

"You're bleeding," he says, and then he gently presses his thumb to my bottom lip. I suck in a breath when he flares his magic to heal the small cut there, and it feels as if a thousand chaos lusters crash together in my stomach.

I fight back my frustration, turning my head to the side so I don't have to look at him. "Will you let me up now?"

"Will you try to run?" When I don't respond, he breathes out a warm sigh on my neck. "Stupid question. Of course you'll try."

Aren rises and pulls me to my feet. When he turns to open the car's back door, I swoop down, grab the keys lying forgotten on the ground, and shove them into my pocket.

He searches the backseat a moment and then straightens. "This is a . . ."

I peek around his shoulder at the metal box in his hand. "It's a first-aid kit."

He nods, opens it up, and stares at its contents.

"You can't heal yourself, can you?" I ask.

"No." He sits on the edge of the seat, facing me. "Do you sew?"

I still, and a hint of nausea churns in my stomach. "No. I don't."

"My shoulder needs to be cleaned and closed."

"No." I look away, into the forest. He's hurt, but I don't think I can outrun him. Maybe he'll grow weaker on the way to the gate? Then I can sprint back here and escape.

"McKenzie," Aren says, a plea in his voice.

"I'm not sticking a needle into you," I say, refocusing on him. Stitching a wound shut is a little too much for me. I can clean it, though. I look into the open kit on his lap. The vigilantes must have brought it with them. Everything is labeled in English. I spot a few butterfly bandages and pick them up. "I can use these to hold the wound together."

"I'm bleeding too much for that."

"Well, it's that or nothing."

His expression hardens. "Is this your new escape strategy? To let me bleed to death?"

"It's not a bad idea." In fact, that'll be my backup plan if I can't lure him away from the car.

"Fine." He peers into the kit. "Which one of these will disinfect the wound?"

"The antiseptic wipes."

"Which ones?" He takes off the ripped-up shirt he wrapped around himself no more than ten minutes ago. It's dyed completely red now.

"They're on the left."

He tosses the shirt to the ground and pins me with a frustrated glare. "I can speak your language, McKenzie, but I can't read it."

I huff out a breath and grab one of the white packets. "It's this one." I rip the top off and take out the wipe. "You're going to need more of these than we have." He's covered with dirt, sweat, and blood.

"Just clean it as well as you can."

I run the towelette across the hole in his shoulder and down over his incredibly firm chest. God, he's in shape. He's thinner than Kyol, but has the same mouthwateringly toned physique. I try to ignore the hard muscles beneath my hand as I clean his wound. Mostly, the towelettes only smear the blood around. This isn't going to prevent an infection. "You need a doctor."

"I'll be fine once we rejoin the others."

"So fissure out. We're not driving anymore. You can send someone back to this location in two minutes." Two minutes would be enough time for me to jump into the driver's seat and speed off.

He shakes his head. "I'll be fine."

I stop cleaning his shoulder to frown suspiciously into his eyes. "You can't fissure, can you?"

"I can." His jaw clenches. "I just can't fissure very far, right now. The tech's poison will fade by the time we reach the gate."

"In your condition, you won't make it to the gate."

"It's not far."

"You can't judge distances when you're in a car." Kyol can't, at least. "We might be miles away from the river."

"I'll make it."

"You'll bleed to death."

A smile breaks through his fatigued expression, and damn it if those chaos lusters don't spring to life again in my stomach. You'd think my awareness of the whole Stockholm syndrome thing would make me immune to its effects, but no. It's worse than ever.

"Your concern for my well-being is heartwarming," he says. He oomphs when I slap a new wet wipe against his wound.

Sosch drapes himself across the ledge behind the backseat. His blue eyes blink, watching me work. I clean Aren off as well as I can, but don't feel like I'm making any progress. Every time I put pressure on his shoulder, a new river of blood pours out. When I'm down to my last two towelettes, I decide it's time to do what I can for the exit wound. The exit wound's on his back, though, and short of sitting in his lap, there's no easy way to get to it.

"Get out of the car." I move so he can stand.

He grips the edge of the BMW's roof, hefts himself to his feet, then turns and leans his forearms on the trunk. Damn, he has a beautiful back-minus the bullet wound and blood, of course. His shoulders are broad and the muscles to either side of his spine ripple when he adjusts his position. A chaos luster zigzags down his right rib cage and disappears beneath the waistband of his pants. The urge to trace its path with my hands is despicably strong, but I force myself to focus on the hole in his shoulder.

When I toss the last blood-soaked wipe into the backseat, Aren dips back into the car. He rummages through the first-aid kit for a needle and a spindle of something that looks more like floss than thread. He holds both up to me.

"I didn't volunteer for that," I say, keeping my eyes on his face.

He watches me a moment, then says softly, "You didn't volunteer for any of this, did you?" He strings the thread through the needle himself, then, without hesitation, sticks it through the flesh beside his bullet wound. I grimace and look away.

"You're not what I expected," he says.

I keep my eyes on the dirt under my feet. He's not what I expected either, but I won't admit to that.

"I thought you'd be heartless," he continues. "Cold, like Sword-master Taltrayn. You're not."

"The sword-master isn't cold," I say before I think better of it.

He pauses with the needle sticking through his skin. "Do you ever get tired of defending the Court?"

I shrug off the question. He almost has the wound closed, but his blood-slick fingers struggle to hold the needle and he can't see what he's doing anymore, no matter how far down he tries to tilt his chin. He won't be able to sew up his back either.

"Here," I growl and take the needle. Before I can back out, I stab it through his skin. I tug the thread tight, slip it under a few of the other stitches, then tie it off. "Turn around." I grab his arm and spin him to face the car again. A few minutes later, he's all stitched up. I wipe as much of the blood off him as I can before I tape gauze over the bullet's entry and exit points.

Aren smiles. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"It was horrible," I say, letting my gaze travel over him. He's lost a lot of blood. Surely that'll weaken him, slow him down some. "You sure you can make it to the gate?"

"I'm sure." He leans inside the car, grabs my backpack, and then clucks to Sosch. The kimki darts inside the bag.

I step to the side and motion for Aren to lead the way. He slips one strap of the backpack over his good shoulder, then holds out his hand.

"I don't need my hand held."

"McKenzie," he says, his tone ever so patient.

I grind my teeth when I realize what he wants. Rolling my eyes, I take the keys out of my back pocket and chuck them at his chest.

ELEVEN.

WITHIN THE HOUR, I'm wearing the Sosch-filled backpack and half carrying Aren through the forest. He resisted my help at first, and I watched him stumble along our weed-clogged "trail." When the underbrush became too thick to pass, he used his sword to carve us a path. It wasn't until he overswung and almost hit me that I finally ignored his protests and took the sword from him. He managed a weak laugh and said he was worried I'd strike him down with it. He's not laughing anymore. He hasn't said a word in more than twenty minutes, and I'm too exhausted to attempt conversation.

He rests his weight across my shoulders. My arm encircles his waist. His body is hot. I can't tell if that's from his edarratae leaping to my skin or from a fever. Most likely, it's the latter. How long does it take for an infection to set in? His lips are pale and he's sweating. I'm sweating, too, and my back aches from supporting his weight. My boots sink into the wet earth and I'm seriously regretting not taking the time to put on socks. I feel like I'm shuffling ankle-deep in broken glass, my feet hurt so badly. Aren's not complaining about the hole in his shoulder, though, so I endure the pain.

Sometime later, I hear the murmur of a river. Sosch must hear it, too. He shifts in the backpack; then, with his signature chirp-squeak, he climbs onto my shoulder before leaping to the ground.

The forest thins enough to see the morning sun glittering across the river's surface. Sosch scurries to its edge and then laps at the water.

"Is it safe to drink?" I ask, hobbling to the bank.

"It shouldn't hurt him," Aren says, but he doesn't look anxious to try it himself. Is he not as thirsty as I am? I'm absolutely parched.

He takes his arm off my shoulder, stands on his own. "We're not far from the gate. Once we fissure, we'll have water."

I plop down on the damp ground beside the river. It might not be a good idea to drink the water, but I can't pass up the opportunity to dip my feet beneath its surface.

"Which way is the gate?" I ask as I unzip my left boot.

He looks downriver. "That way." He doesn't sound certain.

"How far was it on a . . ." Jesus, my foot looks worse than I thought. Oozing red blisters cover my heel and almost all my toes. The fresh air makes them sting and now I'm not so sure I want to plunge them into the water.

"Nom Sidhe, McKenzie," Aren says, staring down at my foot. "Why didn't you say something?"

"I didn't know it was this bad."