He smiled at her. “But this is something I’ve never done before, something I don’t actually know if Icando.”
Renny squeezed his hands. “It’s going to be fine, Perian. You’re thinking about it all wrong, you know.”
“Am I?” he asked, partly bemused because she should know even less about this than he did, but also not really surprised that she knew his own brain better than he did.
“I’m going to tell you a secret,” she said.
He nodded.
She leaned closer. “Kee followed you. To his secret spot in the woods. I mean, he rode Prince Horsey with you. That’s why I went to see you off.”
He stared at her, his mouth actually falling open in his shock. He snapped it shut and demanded, “What?”
She nodded, encouragingly. “Don’t you see? He’s never been able to separate from me like that, but for the first time, he was able to go with you, and I was fine while you were both gone. You’re already doing what you’re trying to do. You’ve got more energy now, and you’re going to try to get it to us on purpose, which is great. But Perian, you care about us, and you’ve been doing exactly what we needed since the moment we met you. You already know what to do.”
He was crying again, but he couldn’t seem to help himself, and Renny flung her arms around him and he held her tight, ignoring the expected commentary from Cormal. Everyone else watched silently.
Perian sniffed. “Thank you, Renny. I care about the two of you very much, and I just want you to be well. I will, uh, try to keep that in mind.”
She smiled at him encouragingly, like this was way more about helping him achieve the new goal he had set for himself than something that might actually change her life. She settled back on the floor in front of him.
She gave him the courage to blow out a breath and try to get settled inside of himself.
It was one thing tosaythat he needed to push energy out to someone else, and it was another to actually do it.
And then the doctor said, “The injury is not the same, but you’ve already done this, too.”
His eyes popped open, and he looked over at her.
“I’m going to tell you something, and I hope you’re ready to hear it.”
He nodded.
“The wound that Molun received should have unquestionably been fatal.”
He froze.
“The demon snapped the bone, tore through a large chunk of his thigh, and undoubtedly severed the femoral artery. Based solely on the amount of blood you and he were covered in, I could have told you that. That sort of wound is fatal in minutes.”
Perian stared at her, stunned.
The doctor smiled faintly. “And yet, when I peeled back those makeshift bandages, what did I find? Plenty of damage, some of it quite severe, but despite the fact that the femoral artery was unquestionably right where it should have been severed, itwasn’t. Or should I say, it wasn’tanymore.”
Perian sucked in a breath. The doctor was staring straight at him, and he couldn’t look away.
“My tonics are good, Perian, but they’re notthatgood.” She huffed something that was almost a laugh. “There’s nothing in this world that should have kept him alive long enough to get back to me—except for you. You drained yourself to exhaustion and poured everything you had into him being well, so hewas.”
Perian huffed out an incredulous breath. Because hehaddone that, hadn’t he? He just hadn’t known that it wasliterally working. He’d told Molun that the wound wasn’t that bad, that the tonics were the best, that the doctor was going to help him, that he’d be fine… andhe was.
Meanwhile, Perian had been exhausted and loopy, and he’d just kept crawling back into the man’s bed. And Brannal had known to feed him and let him keep coming back, so he couldkeepgiving his energy to Molun.
Wow. The doctor was right. This was something he’d done before, and that meant it was something he could do again.
It was a different kind of injury, just like the doctor had said, but surely the principle was the same.
Perian nodded to her, looked again at Renny, her little face so dear to him. He thought of Kee, whom he’d never seen, but who’d been there with his sister the whole time. They’d had their weird, relayed conversations—they’d made it work, but Perian wanted it to be better for them.
He wanted them to be whole. So he’d focus on his love of them, focus on how much he wanted them to be better, on all this energy that he’d pulled inside himself, all this love that he had to give.
