CHAPTER 83

JARRETT'S POV

I collapsed after we got off the ice.

Not dramatically. Not in front of the kids. I waited until we hit the tunnel. Until the sun was off the lake and the cold came back.

One step my ribs held. The next, they didn't.

Helena caught me before my knees hit stone.

"Jarrett?"

Her voice was the last thing I heard before the gray took me.

**********

I woke up to heat.

Not fire heat. Body heat and too much of it.

My leathers were gone. My chest was wrapped in fresh bandages, but they were soaked through. The hot line where Lucian's blade went in was pulsing again, like it had never closed.

Helena was asleep with her head on my chest. Or not asleep. Passed out. Her hand was on my bandages and her skin was too hot to touch.

Gold veins, thin as thread, were crawling from her jaw down her neck, down her arm, into her fingertips where they touched me.

The Crown was trying to heal me. And it was burning her to do it.

"Helena," I croaked.

She jerked awake instantly, her eyes were gold, not a single brown left.

"You're awake." Her voice had that double echo in it. Crown and girl at once.

"You're burning," I said.

She didn't move her hand. "You tore it open again on the ice. You were bleeding out. I couldn't -"

"You should have gotten Silas."

"Silas would have stitched you and told you to rest." Her jaw ticked. Gold flickered. "You don't rest."

I tried to sit up. She pushed me down with one hand. Too strong.

"Don't," she said.

"You're hurting yourself."

"I'm fine."

She wasn't fine. The gold was up to her elbow now. I could feel it humming under her palm.

I reached up with my good hand and covered hers. The contact jolted us both. Her breath hitched.

"Let me do it right," she whispered. "I figured it out last night. From the old texts. It's not about pushing power into you. It's about sharing it."

"Helena -"

"Shut up and let me save you for once. You took a blade for me. Let me do this."

The gold pulsed. Then it changed.

Instead of pouring into me, it pulled. I felt my wolf, quiet for days, suddenly rear up. Not in pain. In recognition.

Her heat flowed into me, but my cold flowed into her. The bandages under her hand went from wet to dry. The throbbing in my ribs dulled from a stab to an ache.

The gold veins stopped spreading. Then they retreated. Jaw. Neck. Shoulder. Until only the faint ember under her jaw was left.

She gasped and fell forward, forehead on my chest. Brown eyes again. Human eyes.

"Did it work?" she asked.

I put my hand in her hair. Snow-matted, sweaty. "Yeah. It worked."

We stayed like that until Kael kicked the door open.

He took one look and said, "Oh, thank the packs. You're not dead. And you're not on the ice again."

Helena didn't lift her head. "He's not dead because of me."

"I can see that," Kael said, dropping a tray of water and clean bandages. He pointedly did not look at her hand still on my chest. "The First Council is asking where you are. Tova is asking where you are. Everyone is asking."

"Tell them I'm busy not letting my Guard die of stubbornness."

Kael snorted. "Your Guard needs to learn to sit out a period."

"I'm sitting," I said.

"You're bleeding," he said.

"Was bleeding," Helena corrected. She finally sat up. Her hand left my chest and the air felt cold where it had been. "He tore Lucian's cut open playing hero with eight-year-olds."

"I was playing goalie," I said.

"You were being a wall," she said. "Same thing."

Kael left the tray and left us alone again.

Helena started unwrapping the old bandages. Her hands were steady now. No gold.

"You scared me," she said quietly, not looking at the wound. "In the tunnel."

"I've been stabbed before."

"Not like this. Not after... after everything."

The last bandage came off. The cut was closed. Pink, new skin instead of open flesh. It would scar.

She stared at it.

"Helena?"

"I thought if the Crown could heal, it should heal," she said. "But Silas said the old bearers never healed anyone. They only ever used it to hurt. To punish. I thought maybe I was doing it wrong."

"You weren't," I said.

"I was. I was forcing it." She traced the new scar with one fingertip, light. "It's not a weapon. You were right on the ice that day. It's a choice. When I tried to fix you because I was scared of losing you, it burned. When I... when I let you take some of my fear too... it worked."

She looked up at me.

"I felt you," she said. "Your wolf. He's quiet, but he's there. He was worried about me."

"He's always worried about you," I said. "Since we were fifteen."

She leaned down and pressed her forehead to mine. Her skin was cool now. Normal.

"Don't do that again," she whispered. "Don't wait until you're falling to tell me you're hurt."

"Same team," I said. "Remember? That means you tell me when the gold gets too hot."

She smiled against my forehead. "Same team."

There was a knock on the doorframe. Tova, the rogue girl from the Council. Scar across her throat, arms crossed.

"You're both bad at resting," she said. "Kids are back on the ice. They left your puck and your stick exactly where you left them. No one touched them."

Helena didn't move. "Tell them we'll be there tomorrow."

Tova stared at the bandages, at Helena's hand on my chest. "Silas found something. In your grandfather's journals. He says you both need to see it. Now."

The gold flickered once under Helena's jaw. Just a blink.

She sighed. "Five more minutes."

Tova rolled her eyes, but she closed the door.

Helena lay back down next to me, careful of my ribs. Not on my chest this time. Beside me. Shoulder to shoulder.

"Your trial is in two days," she said to the ceiling.

"I know."

"You still plead guilty?"

"Yeah."

She turned her head to look at me. "Even though it means they can strip your name?"

"House Varek is just a name," I said. "You holding my hand on the ice means more."

She was quiet for a long time.

"When you offered your bloodline to the Crown last night," she said, "in the shrine, I felt it crack. Under my feet. The ice. For the first time."

"I know."

"Don't ever offer yourself to it again without asking me."

"Same team," I said again.

"Same team," she repeated. She reached over and took my hand. Laced our fingers. No gold. Just warm.

Outside, we could hear faint shouting from the lake. Kids. Still playing.

Inside, the bandages sat unused. We didn't need them.

For the first time since Lucian's blade, my chest didn't hurt when I breathed.

Because she was breathing with me.