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"You're far from fine." He was already crouching and pushing my hands away with his strong fingers. "Let me see."

"River, I swear to Hecate…"

"Hazel." He looked up at me from the floor of a motel bathroom with his forearms across his knees, and the gold behind his eyes pulsed like a heartbeat. "Let me help you. Please."

Nobody in my family or coven has ever said please to me. I want to be clear that this is not an exaggeration or a bid for sympathy. It's straightforward honesty. Danika demands. Shadowblood ordered. The Council summons. Even Alex, who loves me as his own, negotiates like a man who expects to win every argument or debate. In twenty-six years of being a Byrne, the word please has been available to me approximately never when talking to any of them.

I put my foot in his hands.

He tended to me in the yellow light of a bathroom with a broken extractor fan, and he did it slowly, methodically. We didn't say anything for a long time. He found tweezers in the bag Amber packed, because of course she'd packed tweezers. Amber Greywood has raised four children and once pulled a fishhook out of her own thigh at a lake. The woman was prepared for anything at all times. Unlike me. I was never ready for anything my entire life.

River got the grit out piece by piece and set each one on a folded washcloth on the tile beside him, in a line. You'd think each tiny piece was set to answer for its crimes when he was done. When the last pebble was removed he turned me around and turned the shower on. Taking the handle he adjusted the water, and when he was satisfied with the temperature only then did he let it touch my skin.

A fist stuck in my throat was making it difficult to breathe, so I focused on what he was doing and blinked rapidly so the tears wouldn't fall in front of him.

The water sloshed over my foot and ran pink at first, then paler until it finally stopped being anything at all when it swirled down the drain.

And the whole time, I watched his hands.

Because here's the thing I had not let myself think about all day. Those hands would kill a witch. No effort involved, no malice, nothing personal about it at all. My grandmother, the strongest creature on this continent, would come apart into ash if she brushed the back of his wrist in a crowded hallway. That is the truth. That has been the case since before there were people to write it down. Angels and the fallen are simply not survivable, and everybody in the supernatural world grows up knowing it the way human children grow up being taught not to touch electric wires, or hot stoves.

And he had my bare foot in both hands, picking gravel out of it with a pair of eyebrow tweezers like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You know," I mumbled absentmindedly. "I can tell you're doing something."

His hands went still on my ankle.

"When you touch me." I clarified, my voice sounding strange. "It's not my imagination. And you're not trying to heal me either. It's like there's something you're holding on to. I can feel it."

For a moment I thought he'd deny it. He has a whole repertoire of denials at the ready, the slow blink, the change of subject, the infuriating half-smile that means let her finish being wrong.

He didn't try any of it.

"Yes, I am." Clearing his throat he continued washing my foot like it was the most fragile thing in the universe. "The urge to release the power is much stronger now. I have to keep my intent at the forefront of my mind."

"All the time?"

"All the time." He set my foot down and after washing the tweezers he placed them on the washcloth, careful, in line with everything else. "It's not a spell. I want to be clear about that, because I think you're picturing something I can put down and pick up again, which is the case with witch magic." He turned my heel toward the light and kept his eyes on it. "It's closer to holding a door shut with your foot. That's the best I can do. I remind it of my intention consistently."

"And if you stopped?"

"Hazel."

"If you stopped, River."

He didn't look up from my foot, which is how I knew the answer before he gave it.

"You'd be a mark on this floor," he said quietly. "And I'd still be holding your ankle."

The extractor fan buzzed. The pop machine hummed outside through the wall. Somewhere on the highway a truck went past in a long tearing sound that got loud and then faded.

I should have taken my foot back.

Every instinct I own, every scrap of training, twenty-six years of being told what I was and wasn't allowed to touch, all of it stood up at once and shouted at me to take my foot out of that male's hands.

I left it there.

"How long can you keep control of it?" I asked instead.