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The death toll, however, hadn’t risen very high so far, just eleven confirmed, and thank the Creator the number was so small. But in her opinion, one was too many.
Within an hour she was sweating, but Marcus opened his eyes again and this time he didn’t hurl. He started to talk but she said, “We’re about halfway, Marcus. Just try to relax. We’re healing you as fast as we can. You feeling better yet?”
“Yes.” But the word came out hissed.
“Good. Now relax.”
“Fine.” He closed his eyes, and though she could tell he was still conscious and anxious to be moving, he stopped struggling against his incapacitation.
She glanced at Kerrick, surprised that he was the one cradling Marcus’s head on his lap. “You okay?” she asked.
“Too many f**king memories.”
She chuckled. “No shit.”
Kerrick met her gaze, his eyes wet. “Yeah.”
“You thinking of Hannah?” Endelle asked.
At that Marcus’s eyes popped open, and as though the men had practiced together for months they bit in unison, “Helena. Her name was Helena.”
Endelle smiled, and the tension eased out of her shoulders as she held her hands just above Marcus’s neck. “You boys are just too easy to bait.”
* * *
Parisa stood next to Warrior Medichi. She kept replaying in her head what Madame Endelle had told Warrior Marcus earlier about not being able to find Havily with her voyeur’s eye. From that point, a terrible feeling of dread had descended on her. What if Endelle asked for her help? What if Endelle wanted her to try to use her special eye, to open her voyeur’s window and try to locate Havily?
She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.
She stared at the battlefield around her, at Madame Endelle working over Warrior Marcus, at Warrior Kerrick supporting the man’s head and upper shoulders on his lap, at the healers clustered around Marcus’s almost naked body. Her gaze extended beyond. There were people on the ground everywhere, but dozens of healers were working on the worst of the victims. Most of the moaning had stopped, thank God.
She kept swiping at her cheeks.
Shortly after the attack started, Thorne had called for Medichi. Of course he had to come to the scene, all of the Warriors of the Blood were here, which meant she’d had to come as well.
But oh how she wanted to leave, to be freed from the sight of so much destruction. People had died here tonight and so many were injured, burned. Most of the fires along both sides of the banks had been put out, but the air smelled torched and rotten.
She’d vomited once but Antony had been so kind. Even now he kept a hand around her waist, very lightly, as though steadying her—and maybe he was. She couldn’t exactly feel her knees.
Alison was busy as well. Going from victim to victim and laying her hand upon each forehead. Parisa would watch bodies stiffen then relax, every time. She was a different kind of healer since she’d been a therapist on Mortal Earth, dealing with the mind instead of the body.
Parisa felt useless right now. She wanted to help, but then her stomach kept taking nosedives and it was all she could do to keep from throwing up again.
Besides, she had her own internal battle going on. She had been a librarian most of her adult life; prior to that she had volunteered in the library of whatever school she had been attending. She had lived in a world of books, not in a world made up of life, real life. And this life was so very real. It was all about war and battling, trying to stay alive, trying to keep one another alive.
She really didn’t want to be part of this.
She wanted to go home and lock herself in her house, maybe nail boards to the inside of every door and window and stay there. Yes, that’s exactly what she wanted to do.
What if she started hunting for Havily but found her burned the way Marcus was burned? She could smell him, for God’s sake.
“I need to ask you something,” Medichi said, his voice almost a whisper. “Do you think you could locate Havily, I mean through your special visions? Endelle has just said she can’t, but do you think you could find her?”
This was too much for her to bear.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I want to go home. Now.”
* * *
Medichi turned toward the ascendiate, released her waist, then took her gently by the shoulders. It had been a long time since his own ascension, and for all that time he had battled as a warrior. He felt her youth and his age, her inexperience and his centuries of living and making war. He had seen worse than this, a thousand times worse than this, but he knew Parisa, her careful world sequestered in a place of books and fairy tales. She had to be in shock.
She lifted her gaze to his, her amethyst eyes drenched with tears. “I don’t want this.”
He smiled a little. He smoothed back her dark hair. “None of us does. But this is what we’ve got, at least tonight. This is what we have to deal with, and that includes you.”
She shook her head, then she leaned into him and he surrounded her with his arms.
He forgot about everything but her. His body seemed to know this woman, a side effect of the breh-hedden, because holding her like this was the most normal thing in the world.
The trouble was, his brother warrior needed his help, needed her help. She had a gift that might enable them to do the impossible, might locate Havily.
“These visions that you have, Parisa,” he began.
She sighed against him. “Yes.”
“They’re not really visions, are they?”
She grew very still. “No. I don’t think so.” Her voice was muffled because her mouth was pressed into his shoulder.
“They occur in real time, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Now I need to ask you something really hard.”
“I won’t do it.” She gripped his arms, her fingers digging into his biceps.
“How many times did Havily save your life?”
“Don’t ask me to do it.”
“I’ll be right next to you all the way.”
After a long moment, she drew back and looked up at him. Her breaths were shallow and fast. Her face was twisted as if in pain. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be part of this.”
“It’s not fair to you.”
“I never wanted these wings. I never asked to see these things.”
“I promise you I’ll be right beside you. That’s what I’m here for. But Parisa, I need you to have courage right now … for Havily … just in case she’s still alive. If we can find her, get to her, we can save her. Can you at least try for her sake?”
