ALEXANDER
Enzo’s hand closes around my arm and hauls me upright before I’ve fully decided to stand.
The world tips once, then settles. I press my hand to my chest — to the place where the blade went in — and feel the torn fabric, the dried blood stiff against my skin, and beneath it the wound itself, the edges of it already drawing closed in the slow, deliberate way that means my body is doing what it has always done.
But slower than it should be.
I press harder, gauging it. Normally by now there would be nothing left to find. A scar at most, already fading. This is something else — the flesh knitting, yes, but reluctantly, like a fire burning on wet wood. The process is there but the speed is wrong.
I file that away and say nothing about it. It means my curse is getting worse.
“You
