All the usual How are you feeling?s and Are you hurt?s rushed through Llew’s mind, but of course they were pointless. Finally, she settled on something worth voicing.

‘Braph thinks I can heal you.’

A range of scowls crossed Jonas’s face as he processed the statement and tried to manage his discomfort. Llew crouched by him and reached out to touch his cheek lightly, wanting to soothe him not bring another source of pain.

‘I believe him,’ she said. ‘We just have to wait. Stay with me, huh?’

Jonas gave a weak smile.

The wait for Braph’s return felt like an eternity. It had taken a couple of hours for Llew to reach the tree from Hinden when she’d had Syakaran speed. She didn’t know how that compared to a horse, but she guessed about the same. Braph had to get there, find what he needed, and ride back. Luckily, it was still daylight, still business hours. Jonas remained silent. Llew studied him closely a couple of times to make sure he hadn’t opted out. He stayed with them, but it seemed to take all his concentration to deal with his pain.

Braph rode into the meadow as the sun began to lower behind the hills.

‘We need to move quickly.’ He slid from the saddle. ‘If they get cold on top of trying to hold together, we really could lose them.’

‘What do we need to do?’ Llew asked.

‘First, we need to move them closer to your tree. Then we need to reset any broken bones.’ Braph stood before Hisham, appraising him. ‘You first, then you can help me move him. Can you stand?’

‘With a little help,’ Hisham replied.

‘Once we’ve removed these arrows.’ Braph placed his pouch on the ground.

With minimal twisting, Braph eased the arrow from Hisham’s side and moved to his shoulder, leaving Hisham to clamp down on the blood flow. Hisham breathed through his teeth as Braph pinched and fiddled one-handedly with the broken-off shaft protruding from his shoulder.

Braph clamped his pouch under his handless arm and, with his one hand, eased Hisham to the tree.

‘We’ll get to you soon,’ Llew said to Jonas. ‘So, you better still be here when we’re ready.’ He didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. ‘You hear me?’ His head moved a fraction. ‘Good.’ She followed the Karan men to her tree.

Braph crouched by the tree, letting his bundle roll open on the ground. Several glass vials in silver framing rolled free and, much to Llew’s lack of delight, needles. But she would do what needed to be done for Jonas and Hisham. She needed them, but first they needed her. Braph brought one of the syringes and a needle to Llew, brandishing them before her. What was she supposed to do with those? He lifted and let fall again his stumpy arm. Of course, he was disadvantaged.

Under his instruction, she fitted the needle to the syringe, then he handed her a plunger. She pressed it into the open end of the vial and handed the whole thing back to Braph.

Awkwardly, he manipulated the contraption in his one hand a few times until he had it sliding relatively smoothly. He placed the completed apparatus down and passed Llew another needle, syringe, and plunger to construct. And finally, a third. The last pieced together, he practiced his one-handed plunging action a couple more times.

‘This may not be my best work.’ He looked at Llew expectantly. ‘Sitting or standing?’

‘Standing.’ There was still the risk of Aris returning, and in the gathering dark they might not see him till he was right on them. And then there was the small matter of Braph jabbing a needle into her. She might have been keen to help her friends, but Llew wasn’t entirely unwary. If he did anything to spook her, she wanted to have a chance to retaliate.

Braph indicated for her to pull up her sleeve, so she slid off her jacket and pushed up the soft wool sleeve of the dress. Now, on top of being jabbed with a needle, she was going to get cold. Braph had mentioned a good vein in the thigh, but she was not about to let him anywhere down there. Reluctantly, she bared her arm to him.

‘Watch what I do.’ Braph flicked the skin of her inner elbow with the plunger end a few times, made a growling noise in the back of his throat, looked up at the darkening sky and back down at Llew’s arm.

‘Sorry,’ he said as he leaned forward, peering at her skin, and taking aim with the needle.

Llew flinched as the needle dug in, taken aback as much by the sting as Braph’s apology. Braph pulled back on the plunger, drawing Llew’s blood into the vial. She had to look away. She looked across at where Jonas lay, broken, and looking for all the world like he was dead already. Don’t be dead.

As the blood was withdrawn, a tingling sensation began in the hand she had pressed against the tree and washed through the rest of her. It was subtle, but undeniable.

Braph withdrew the needle and crouched by Hisham. ‘Arm,’ he commanded.

Hisham presented the crook of his elbow. Even in the low light, prominent veins were visible up his forearm. Braph smiled.

‘This better work,’ said Hisham as Braph brought the needle to one of the veins. ‘Gettin’ pumped with someone else’s blood, let alone an Aenuk’s, don’t seem right to me otherwise.’

‘It’ll work,’ said Braph. ‘We might just have to do this a few times.’

‘Great,’ said Hisham, less than satisfied.

‘Hey, I’m the one he’s taking it from.’

‘Yeah, but you know you can replace it. I don’t know what it’s gonna do to me.’

‘Now.’ Braph withdrew the needle. ‘Pick a wound, a small one to start, and focus on healing it. Your body should do the rest.’

After a dubious glance at both Braph and Llew, Hisham lifted his other arm, twisting it so he was looking at a small but fairly deep scratch across the back of his forearm.

‘Think about it healing, huh?’ He peered back up at Braph. ‘I have no idea how things heal. What do I think about?’

‘Just picture it closing.’ Braph sounded annoyed. ‘Your body knows what it’s doing. You’re not really telling it what to do, just helping focus the Aenuk power.’ He moved back to Llew and waved the needle in front of her. He wanted more. Llew presented her arm again. She would have preferred to have seen it work first, but she supposed she could give him the benefit of the doubt one more time. Especially since she really wanted it to work. She didn’t flinch when Braph probed her vein this time, focused as she was on Hisham’s arm, looking – hoping – for a change.

Hisham sat leaning forward, still, staring intently at his forearm. Then he rocked back, sighing with frustration, and shifted, unfolding a leg from under him, and leaned forward again, determination evident in the firm set of his shoulders, the slight angle of his head, and the set of his jaw. After a few more moments, the edges of the wound began to rejoin. Llew gasped and yelped. Braph hissed, gripped her arm, and gave her a Don’t do that again scowl, then he continued filling the vial.

‘It stopped,’ said Hisham, his wound nearly sealed, with a small opening in the centre. ‘I can’t seem to get it to close any farther.’

‘Then I guess you need a whole lot more of this.’ Braph brandished Llew’s blood before the other Karan. He looked up at the sky briefly before continuing. ‘But I might also suggest settling for mostly healed. Otherwise, we’ll be here all night, and he . . .’ He nodded to Jonas ‘. . . might not be.’

‘Then stop talking and get on with it,’ said Llew through gritted teeth. Not that she didn’t like Hisham, but she wished Braph had helped Jonas first.

Braph flicked her a smile, and stuck Hisham with the needle.

‘Why didn’t it do much?’ Hisham asked.

‘It wasn’t much blood. Each of my crystals contained the active ingredients of close to half of all the blood in Llew’s body.’ Again, he looked across at Jonas. ‘He is going to take . . . a lot. But with three of us working on it . . .’

‘Three?’ Llew asked.

Braph stooped to gather up one of the other apparatuses as he returned for more blood. ‘Your turn to help. You draw, I’ll eject.’ He handed it to her with a quirky smile that on Jonas might have been cute. But he was Braph. He was anything but.

Reluctantly, Llew took the needle in her right hand, stretched out her left arm and looked for the vein. It was so hard to see with the light continuing to ebb away. Braph pointed with his own needle, giving her a guide. She lined the needle up, making a slight depression in her skin. Taking a deep breath, she pressed. The metal cut into her skin, stinging, burning, somehow even more painful than when Braph had done it. Llew gasped, fighting down the incredibly strong urge to pull the needle free and fling it away. She had to do this. She took a couple more deep breaths, maneuvered her hand into position and pulled back on the plunger. When Braph had done it, she’d had the luxury to look away. Now she had to watch what she was doing. She felt the blood leave her face, paused, breathed, and continued. Finished, she handed the vial to Braph. With accomplished dexterity, he swapped his empty one into her hand as he took her full one and turned back to Hisham, leaving her to comprehend her next move. Several deep breaths later, Llew had jabbed herself with a needle a second time.

It was fascinating watching Hisham close his wounds one by one, and it illuminated one curious fact: Kara could control Aenuk power. Llew couldn’t decide if this was highly unfair or not. She still didn’t know if controlling her power was something she could learn to do, or if it was completely out of her hands. But Braph could, and Hisham could. Did you need one to control the other?

She lost count of the number of times she extracted her own blood for Braph to press into Hisham’s vein, but by the time Hisham was merely covered in scabs and scar tissue, the day’s light was all but gone.

‘You stay,’ Braph said to Llew before he and Hisham went to bring Jonas closer. ‘You will need to be fully replenished.’

She gripped her tree tight, wishing there was some way to pull extra power into her and concentrate it in her blood for Jonas’s benefit. The tree was getting tired.

Jonas made little noise as the two Kara brought him to the base of the Ajnai, though his face was drenched in sweat. Llew reckoned that was better than being unresponsive.

Braph dug through the supplies he’d bought. He had Hisham pry open Jonas’s teeth and stuffed a strap of thick leather between his teeth. Hisham set about helping Braph lie Jonas out straight on his back. As soon as they laid hands on his grotesquely twisted leg, Jonas’s eyes flew open, the whites wide, and a yelp escaped before he bit down on the leather and growled. He hissed out a series of breaths, his eyes glaring bloody murder at Braph.

‘We can’t heal it if we don’t set it first,’ Braph explained calmly.

The brothers shared a long glance. Jonas managed a deep sigh and nodded for them to continue. Braph spared one more empathetic glance for his brother, and then the work began.

Braph steadied the top part of Jonas’s thigh with his one and a half arms and Hisham cut the length of Jonas’s trouser leg with a knife, then gripped the lower thigh and knee and started bringing it round straight again. Despite his skin being whole, it was clear by the strange bumps pressing up under it that the bone was broken right through. Llew had to look away. At first, Jonas growled through the agony, but then an explosive yell echoed across the meadow.

A rush of movement in the dry grass nearby had them all turning. Karlani stood, bent over, hand clutching stomach, confused and wary. She took in the group before her, looked to either side, saw that Aris had abandoned her, and took off, bleeding and broken. She stumbled, slightly faster than the average human, but she was struggling.

They turned back to the task at hand. Jonas’s leg was nearly straight. Hisham gripped it tight and pulled, twisted, and shifted it into place. Jonas panted, hissed, and growled. Hisham grabbed some bandages and strapped Jonas’s thigh tight. Then Braph jumped up, threw the syringe he’d been using on Hisham to the Karan lieutenant and scooped up the third for himself. They came at Llew, Braph filled his syringe first, then Hisham, and finally Llew drew her own blood. Between drawings, the tree helped her refill her veins and heal the puncture wounds. Braph took up residence at Jonas’s side, pumping him full of blood and handing the blood-letting apparatuses back to Hisham for refilling.

Several vials of the blood were pumped into Jonas before Braph coached him through healing the severed bone with more patience than he’d afforded Hisham. Night was settling in, and Llew was well over jabbing herself with needles, when they peeled back the bandages to check Jonas’s progress. If she hadn’t seen the extent of the injury herself, Llew wouldn’t have believed it had even occurred. The skin was as smooth as any adult male’s thigh might be, only a hairless line indicating where a gash had been. Tension washed from Llew. She felt like jumping up and down and screaming with joy. Aris hadn’t won. Jonas would be fine. She could still heal him, and she didn’t have to be pregnant to do it.

Behind her, something went pop! The Ajnai creaked and groaned, its leaves rattling.