He had lain down on the floor too, on his stomach, his head turned toward her. His bare wide shoulders looked especially naked against the flagstone floor. He was dirty and haggard, the lines of his face set, but his gaze was the bluest she had ever seen.
Blue like the sky, steady and clear and filled with infinity.
“You should be on watch,” she whispered.
“Aralorn’s on the lookout,” he said. His voice was as steady as his eyes. “And I have fast reflexes. Besides, if the shadow wolves were here, they would have shown up by now. I think they’re with the witch.”
Caerreth muttered instructions to Linwe, who braced her at the shoulders, and she felt strong tugging on her wings as Caerreth set the bones.
Aryal’s face worked, and she clawed at the floor. She wanted to strike at the Elves, to knock them away from what they were doing to her.
Quentin grabbed her hand, gripping it hard. “We already knew you were going to have to have surgery,” he said. “This isn’t news.”
“Leave me alone,” she hissed.
“Like you left me alone these last two years?” His expression was relentless, and his grip tightened to the point of pain. “Like you left me when the wolves attacked? I don’t think so, sunshine.”
Caerreth threw the healing spell. She felt it sink into her, fusing torn flesh and broken bones together. Fusing the joint. Halfway through, she twisted her fingers around and clenched Quentin’s hand.
Dead, dead …
She realized she was whispering it. “… dead. Bitch, you are so dead.”
“That’s right,” Quentin said, his voice pitched low. “We’re going to take her down. She’s a dead woman. She could have asked for whatever the fuck it is that she’s looking for. She could have borrowed it. She didn’t have to lock them up. She didn’t have to do this to you. She made choices.”
The healing spell faded. Caerreth was done, at least with her. “All right, Quentin,” Caerreth said. He sounded shaky. “Now it’s your turn.”
Somehow Aryal pulled out another shapeshift. It helped that her wounds had been closed. They still hurt, along with her wings, but she could tell that the healing had taken root, dispelling whatever had caused the wounds to remain open in the first place.
She forced herself up onto her hands and knees. Linwe ran forward, putting an arm around her to help her get to her feet. Aryal looked down at the ground. Quentin had rolled onto his back and sat up. Caerreth was already working on him.
Aryal looked up at Aralorn, then at Linwe. She could barely stand upright, and the Elves weren’t looking any better. And Caerreth was doing all that healing while he was just as depleted as the others.
She said in a rusty-sounding voice, “We all need food, water and real rest. There’s got to be plenty of food supplies in the palace kitchens. And the safest place to rest is down in the prison cells.”
Quentin lifted his head. Aralorn turned to look at her.
She twitched a shoulder. “Think about it. Bitch tries to come into the cell block, the wolves can’t join her and she can’t use magic. I only hope that happens, because that means we’ve got her. And I really need to get her.”
“Aryal’s right,” Quentin said. “The most dangerous thing will be hunting for the palace kitchens to get food and water. I’ll do that.”
Linwe said, “I’ll go with you.”
“You sure?” Quentin asked. He rolled to his feet as Caerreth finished with him.
Linwe said, “I’m the only one who wasn’t injured. And I can run fast.”
“Okay.”
They watched as Caerreth worked on healing the wounds that Aralorn had. By that point the healer wasn’t looking good. When he finished, Caerreth said, “I’m tapped.”
The young Elf was looking down at himself. That was when Aryal realized he was bandaged too, with defensive wounds on both his forearms. Quentin walked over to him and gripped his arms. “When it comes to healing spells, I’m a one-trick pony,” Quentin said. “Are these wounds simple enough for that?”
Caerreth nodded, and Quentin spelled his arms. Afterward, he looked at Aryal. “You might as well go down below. Linwe and I will join you as soon as we can.”
She nodded dully. “See you soon.”
Her heart and head were pounding, and her mouth was dry. She had pushed past her limit some time ago. She didn’t wait to see Quentin and Linwe slip down the hall. Instead, she eased down the stairs to the cell block, bracing herself with one hand against the wall.
Aralorn and Caerreth followed. “It goes against all of my instincts to walk back in there,” Aralorn muttered. “If something happens to Quentin, and the witch traps us in there, we’re caught again and as good as dead.”
“I know,” Caerreth said tiredly. “But we might take more damage if we stayed at the top of the stairs and got caught there. I think we’ve just got to trust Quentin and Linwe to take care of themselves and get back to us with supplies.”
While Aryal heard them, she didn’t care. All she cared about was going horizontal again as quickly as she could. When they entered the cell block again, she went into Quentin’s cell because hers was too bloody.
A formless noise filled her ears, like that of the ocean. It was odd, because she could have sworn the ocean was on the outside of the cell block window. She made her knees unlock one at a time, and forgot to catch herself, so she fell in a sprawl to the ground.
That was the last thing she knew for a long, dark while.
SIXTEEN 
Stalking through the dark, silent halls of the palace’s underbelly was like a video game gone bad. Any moment now Quentin felt like they were going to run into a water trap populated with piranhas, while logs swung to and fro overhead and shadow wolves jumped out of nooks to attack them.
He rubbed his face and forcibly banished the image from his mind. He wasn’t quite as bad off as any of the others, but he needed to get some rest, and soon.
He said to Linwe, “Be sure to memorize the way back in case you need to run it by yourself.”
“Aw, damn it,” she said miserably. “I’m not going to need to.”
He was terrible at dates, birthdays and such, but he thought Linwe had to be around thirty or so, which was quite young for an Elven adult. Making any kind of direct age-to-adulthood correlation to shorter-lived races, such as humankind, didn’t compute, for she had already lived as a responsible adult for several years, yet she still retained the liveliness of youth.
He remembered her as a little girl, with her wide, naughty grin and eyes sparking with some kind of mischief. She had been adorable and adored, and had pretty much run wild in Lirithriel Wood for the first fifteen years of her life. He hadn’t visited the Wood often, but he remembered once she had run up to him with a laugh that was bigger than she was. She must have been all of five years old. When she had reached him, he’d picked her up and swung her high, setting her on his shoulder.
An echo of the burning pain came back in his chest. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. Not her too, on top of all the massive losses the Elves had already suffered. He grabbed her by the arm, hauled her close and hugged her fiercely. After her first twitch of surprise, her arms came around his waist, and she hugged him back so hard her slight body shook with the strain.
He bent his head and said in her ear, “You will run if I tell you to. Do you hear me, young lady?”
“Quentin, that’s not my job …” she said.
“Linwe.” He injected all the command he could into his voice. “You don’t have the magical aptitude for this kind of fight. And you. Will. Run.”
“Fine!”