Page 73 of Bound to Three Fae Beasts

“I’m going to have to pull this out. Here.” He picked up one of the potions. “For the pain.”

“What is it?” I asked suspiciously.

Seb pushed the vial into my hand. “Just a painkiller mixed with mild sedative.”

Hmm. No, that wasn’t a good idea. “No. I’ll just bite a pillow.”

“Now is not the time to be stubborn.” Seb’s jaw set with an ironic stubbornness and he narrowed his eyes at me. “This is going to be painful, and if you start jerking around, it can cause more damage to your tissues. So just take the potion so I can take care of you, okay?”

I eyed the vial. “How much of a sedative is it?”

“Enough to take the edge off. You’ll feel mildly drowsy. It’s mostly a painkiller.” Each sentence was clipped, his tone growing more impatient with each one.

My irritation came back, but it was already painful. If he wanted to take advantage of me, he had plenty of other chances to do it. He’d backed off quickly in Lotmas’s pavilion, too. I hesitated only a moment longer before I picked up the vial. I swallowed the potion quickly, then gestured for him to get to work.

Watching him mess with the stick made me feel sick to my stomach, so I closed my eyes. He was right that the potion made me feel drowsy, but I was pleased to find there was no pain as he removed the stick and started to clean the gaping hole in my calf.

“How do you know so much about healing, anyway?” I asked, cracking one eye open again. I felt the pressure of him working on my leg, but that was it. With the relaxation of the potion working in my system, I had to be careful not to drift off.

“It’s in my training.”

I propped my cheek up with one hand. “Training?”

“As the heir of my house.”

He paused and wiped around the edges of my wound. They were ragged, the flesh torn. A few small splinters were sticking up out of the blood that oozed from it. He’d packed the stabbed part itself with gauze of some sort. The sight made me groan, and I had to close my eyes again.

“Why does training for your heirship mean you learn healing? I thought you were all about being big and powerful and going chop-chop to your enemies.”

“You’re very eloquent when you’re injured,” Seb answered dryly. Then he laughed, and it made me smile. “As the future head of my court, I have to be prepared for everything. Battles, yes, but also politics, and also taking care of myself and others. I can fight, but I can also sew, cook, clean and heal. A useless man can’t be any good to his court.”

It surprised me to hear something so humble and practical from him. The way he always swaggered about, I thought he was exactly one of those useless sorts of men. It seemed I was off base with him. The gentle way he treated my leg now, and how skillfully he was taking care of it, spoke to a greater depth than I’d thought possible.

“Alright. This is ready for the healing potion now,” he said, wiping his hands off on a towel. Seb lifted a container with a thick, paste-like cream in it. “It’s a topical potion and is more targeted than the potions you can drink, so it will heal your leg faster.”

“Right. Go ahead, then,” I mumbled.

He scooped some of the cream onto his fingers and began to apply it around my injury, then I had to look away because he started to take the gauze out. He must have seen how green my face was, because he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just need to keep my mind off it.”

“Ah. Then, do you know what the fae mating bond is?”

I shook my head. “Never heard of it.”

“Your mother didn’t tell you? Or any of your friends?”

“No.”

Seb made a small, exasperated noise. “I swear, one day I’m going to meet your mother and give her a piece of my mind.”

I almost told him my mother was dead, but bit back on it at the last moment. Let him think what he wanted. That wasn’t something I was willing to share with him, even if he was looking after my leg. “So what is it?”

“It’s a bond that develops between fae as a sign that they are genetically compatible,” he said. His hand moved down my calf, spreading the healing potion past the numbed area. My skin shivered beneath his touch. “A bond only forms for a fae once. Being mates means that you are perfectly suited to one another, in temperament as well as physically. There’s a greater chance for children if you like your partner, after all.”

Why was he telling me this? Did I even want to know?

No. I didn’t. Ignorance was bliss, after all. I risked glancing at my leg again. To my surprise, instead of having a gaping hole in my leg, there was an angry red mark. My skin was whole. “Whoa.”