"What?" Kael's voice came out strangled. Tight with fear he couldn't suppress. He'd heard her perfectly but needed her to say something different.
"The spikes. They were covered in something." Seris's hands hovered over the affected area without touching. Professional distance warring with personal horror. "Not just poison. Bioluminescent blood."
"What does that mean?" But he already knew. Could feel it in his shoulder. Could feel wrongness spreading like frost across glass.
Kael looked at his shoulder. Really looked at it for the first time since she'd healed the puncture wounds. At the faint blue glow spreading outward from the wound site in slow, deliberate waves. Like contamination made visible. Like infection you could watch in real-time. "I'm infected."
