Angel's Mark

Seventeen

"He's not dead, Nura, he's clearly breathing."

"I think we should poke him to make sure."

"Don't poke him. Vinny doesn't like to be poked."

It wasn't a rude awakening, but a gentle one, a slow peel of my eyelids. Incomprehensible blobs dissolved into faces: Lucie's, Cian's, Nura's. A smile spread across all their lips suddenly, and Cian turned and yelped, "He's up!" to someone further away.

Nura offered to help me up, but I waved her off, dragging myself to a sitting position on my own. To my surprise, we were still in the hall outside the arena, the air dim save for the failing, golden-tinged light of the antique lamp on the hallway table.

Mom approached warily from the corridor's mouth, wringing her hands. The eager sound of her stilettos upon the wood floors echoed through the house—which I now realized was empty and silent. How Mom had managed to get everyone out of the house so quickly was beyond me. It was the first time I'd ever thought that maybe I'd been underestimating her.

"How long was I out?" I questioned, craning my neck back to look behind me. The door to the arena was shut. There wasn't blood anywhere, but the scent of it lingered.

"An hour, at most. Not long," answered Cian. "Are you okay?"

My eyes widened. "Am I okay? You're the one who got stabbed."

I traced him from his face to his stomach, but there was no sign of the wound except for a tiny remainder of blood splashed across his shirt. He was breathing, he was speaking, he was living, and because of me? My head ached at the thought of it.

"Oh," said Cian, "right. Well, thanks to you, it's easy to forget I got stabbed, so it's no biggie. I'm fine."

I'd known he was fine, but for some reason when he said it, I let out a breath of relief anyhow.

Lucie cleared her throat, gingerly nudging Cian aside. Her dark eyes scrutinized me, hazelnut skin in little folds between her furrowed eyebrows. "How did you know what to do, Vinny?" she asked me. "When we asked him, Zev said he hasn't even taught you how to heal yet."

"And he hasn't," I replied. "I don't know what I did. I'm just glad it worked. Does—does Zev happen to know why the heck I passed out? Does that have something to do with—"

Nura answered, "He said it's because you're a wuss."

I looked at her, expecting a laugh to come after that, but her expression was dead serious. When I raised an eyebrow at Cian and Lucie, they both shrugged.

"No, really," Nura said. "It must have been the shock and all the blood and stuff that made you black out. But Zev said it didn't have anything to do with your whole healing shebang."

"Shoot," I said then, allowing Nura to help me shakily to my feet. The world tilted a little, but I blinked it steady. "Maybe I am a wuss."

"Oh, who cares," came Mom's voice, over more clacking of her heeled shoes. Before I knew it, she'd pulled me into a hug, squeezing me so tight I worried for a moment she'd re-break one of my ribs. "You're both okay. Thank God, oh thank God."

There was no fighting the woman when she got like this; I sagged into her arms. Her perfume smelled like lavender. "I'm sorry about your party, Mom."

"Don't worry about it. It's not your fault."
It's not my fault?

The words rang within me, and not for the most pleasant of reasons. There had been Cian, bleeding, dying, but it hadn't been my fault, had it? Besides, Nura had said that in her vision there were demons, everywhere—but it was a person that had nearly killed Cian.