Book 17: I'm a Freak

Posey

I press another cool, wet rag against Aris’s battered face, sighing deeply at the gouge across his forehead, expertly stitched by his mother. A welt the size of Tarsian slashes from temple to jaw on the left side of his face, and he has a black eye, but I’m sure he’s looked worse at some point in his life. This is just the worst I’ve ever seen him, and my stomach curls into tight knots when he frowns and hisses in pain against the cold press of the rag.

“Don’t be a baby about it,” I scold, dunking the rag in ice water again and wringing it out to continue torturing him. “It was, wholeheartedly, your fault.”

He grunts in reply, unable to fully open his left eye, but the right one is fixed on my face, narrowed into a fox-like slit.

I reach for the small vial of healing draft on the bedside table, but he catches