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“I can fly him there, and you can wait for me here,” he began.
“No.” Devon grasped Arkimedes’s arm with an impressive amount of strength for someone that ill. His eyes cracked open, and he stared unblinking at the ceiling. “It won’t be my fault if you get caught…”
“You’re dying, Devon.” Orion pushed the words past the thick knot in his throat, resting a hand on his brother’s burning skin. “The potions are doing very little. You need a healer.”
“I don’t. Want. It.” Devon’s chest rattled like a viper preparing to strike, and he shifted on the pillowy mattress. He looked so small for a six-foot man who was usually vibrating with life. “You’ve got to protect Nava. Not me.”
“If only it were that simple to watch a person you care for die. Especially when you can do something about it.”
“We must take him to the healer,” one of his shadows insisted, becoming hard to ignore. “We need his help to defeat the emissary.”
Devon’s pale lips cracked and bled when he smiled, although the feeling didn’t reach his eyes. Instead, he looked like a madman. “And what happens when the guards take you down? When the king wipes your memories again and you forget her and the emissary who is hunting the Beekeepers?”
Orion blinked away the images of that very thing happening. Perhaps his father wouldn’t wipe his memories this time?
“I deserve this.” Devon whispered. “I held the Crows in such esteem, yet they took everything from me.”
Everything? Did he mean his family?
Orion remembered the day the Society brought Devon to its headquarters. Devon had been younger than him, and his body had been badly burned. He’d spent a month in the healer’s quarters.
Devon shook his head, and blood pooled on the corner of his lips. “They told me my family dropped me on the Society’s doorstep because they gambled their money away and couldn’t pay for a proper healer to save me. I waited for months for them to return for me.”
Nava covered her mouth with her hand and stepped forward from where she’d been hovering by the door. “They killed them?”
“I promise you, I asked the mirror about the emissary. But instead, it showed me what I really wanted to know. I didn’t think it would take my wishes as a command, but it spoon-fed me my past like I was a starving man. I suppose in a way I always have been.”
“Did they kill them because of your magic?” Orion asked. Devon’s silence was answer enough.
“I’m sorry,” Devon said to no one in particular, twisting to face Nava. “For the way I treated you in the past. For how I hunted you down like you were nothing but an animal. You were right all along.”
Orion didn’t know what he wanted more: to strangle his brother for reminding him of what he’d done, or to ask him to shut up and get him some help.
He handed Devon two new vials of the healing potion instead. Hopefully, Leela would be back soon with more.
Nava’s lips trembled as she stopped beside the bed. “On the island, I healed Aristaeus and Arkimedes with an alchemist potion I brewed in Willowbrook. There was this warmth that came through me when I pressed my hand to your wound, Ark, and it helped you heal faster.”
“You want to do the same with Devon?” he asked. Without warning, a tingling sensation clawed at his head. A sudden burst of images flashed through his mind, robbing him of his breath.
Orion leaned against the bed frame as the memories of the night Mortimer had betrayed him on Grey Island slotted into place, followed by a sense of foreboding. He relived it all in a strange time-lapse: Mort, one of the few friends he had—selling him to Devon by giving him spiked wine that made him pass out. How he’d stabbed Arkimedes in the side, so he couldn’t escape.
Nava’s face twisted with worry. “Is something wrong?”
He didn’t want to worry her further. Trying to keep his face devoid of emotion, he handed Devon the potion with a forced smile. “No, I’m fine. It wouldn’t hurt to use your magic…”
She leaned forward as the contents of the measly potion disappeared behind Devon’s lips. Then she pressed her palms against Devon’s chest and closed her eyes.
“This tastes like shit,” Devon mumbled.
It didn’t take long for Nava’s palms to shine with white light—so different from the way her magic usually appeared. Perhaps some hope remained.
They stayed with Devon until his skin had gained some color, and his fever broke. When they returned to the living area, Leela had just arrived from her errand to the potion maker’s shop and was fixing up some lunch on her small kitchen counter.
“Is Mr. Black all right?” she asked.
“He is doing a little better now,” he said. “Did you encounter any issues while out?”
The fae’s eyes crinkled with worry, and she glanced at the table. Orion turned just as Nava gasped, panic bursting through their bond.
