And yet her eyes were soft, pained with regret as she looked up at him. James realized that he, like the tombstones and monuments, was also being held aloft in Petra’s sorceress grip, but tenderly, as if gravity had simply forgotten about him for a moment. Dimly, he realized that blood was wetting his shirt, cooling fast in the stormy wind.
Petra studied him, seemed to look into him. And then, using the powers that were unique to her, she began to mend him. He felt a tingle and then gasped, more in surprise than pain, as his ribs shifted back into place, releasing his lungs from their broken death-clench. The ruptures deep inside his body first went numb, and then warmed as the pain faded away. Tentatively, he took a breath. His chest expanded, drew air, and his head swam.
“That was stupid of you, James,” Petra said quietly, affectionately, as she settled him back to the grass, coming to meet him.
The cyclone of headstones still swam all around, rushing and surreal. “I could have withstood the falling stone, and protected you from it.”
“I didn’t think about it,” James whispered, buckling slightly as gravity collected him again. “I just acted.”
“That’s you in a nutshell,” she said, and smiled wanly.
She reached out to him, placed a hand on his chest. His shirt was still soaked with blood. It stuck to her palm greased it with red.
James looked down at her. Her own face was bloody. It was a shocking sight to see. Something, probably a hunk of the falling obelisk, had struck her temple and cut it. Blood trickled from beneath her hair, down the line of her cheek, and dripped from her chin. Falling stone might not be capable of killing her, but she could still be cut.
She was still just human enough to bleed.
He cupped her cheek, felt the warm wetness of her blood against his fingers, tried to wipe it away from her skin.
She took her hand from his chest and looked down at it. Her palm was slick and tacky with his blood. With her head still lowered, she looked up at him with her eyes. There was a disconcerting, calculating look in her gaze, as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite dare.
An object glimmered mildly on the la