“Carefully,” Titania coaches. “Dare, you will want to hold her down.”
“Will she live, Grandmother?” he asks, grimly pressing down on his mate’s shoulder and hip.
Titania bites her lip. “If the Goddess wills it.”
That’s not a yes, but I’ll take it.
I grimace as I make the first cut. The flesh is squishy, falling apart, and I cringe as I wait to feel some real resistance to the blade and find none.
Goddess, if the last few hours have taught me anything, it’s that a healer’s work is more gruesome than a warrior’s.
“You need to get it all,” Titania coaches. “We need living tissue to heal and regenerate.”
Nodding, I push through, trying hard to focus on the task, and not the person beneath the blade. If I do that, I’ll chicken out.
At the point when I finally start meeting resistance, the banshee jerks, and Dare has to hold her down while I finish. The second I’m done, all black flesh removed, I toss the dagger aside. Black-tinged blood is flowing freely from the site, coating both of my arms.
Don’t think about it. Breathe through your mouth and don’t think about it.
“Press your hand to the wound,” Titania instructs. “This will be difficult.”
“Just like Florian,” I remember, grimacing as Yvaine’s life fluid gushes over my hands. She’s getting impossibly paler, her breaths even shallower. Dare is there, staring at her with reddened eyes, like he can will her to live.
Perhaps he can. I have no idea what the mating bond is capable of.
Steeling my spine, I grasp my bond to Danu and let her power flood me, giving Titania everything she needs to work.
The banshee jerks again, thrashing as the magic forces its way into her polluted body. Scouring her veins until my limbs are shaking with the effort. This is so much worse than Florian. He, at least, had been treated by fae healers while I was in Fellgotha. Yvaine has been left in a cage to die.
It gets worse when she’s well enough to feel her side being woven back together. She gains enough strength to scream, to beg.
And she doesn’t beg me to save her.
“Let me die,” she wails, her voice piercing my eardrums until something gives way and wetness trickles down the side of my face.
“No,” Dare yells right back. “Don’t you give up, sweetheart. You wanted to see the waterfalls in Winter’s Fork, remember?”
“I can’t?—”
“If you die, I’m following you,” he vows. “You want to be the cause of me dying, Vainey?”
I tune out his frantic arguing and her begging and focus on her heart, which was already painfully weak. Now, under the onslaught of magic working on the iron poisoning, it’s beating too fast. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.
“We can fix it,” Titania promises, though she sounds as strained as I feel.
My bones have turned to lead, but I don’t let go until the skin has regrown. My body is exhausted, but Danu’s power has swollen beneath my skin, and it won’t rest until I either use it or send it to my mates. I release the banshee, curling in on myself as I struggle to get it under control.
“You can do this, dear heart,” Titania promises, releasing me and leaving that telltale tingle of magic where she touched. “Release, then ground, like I taught you.” Her head snatches up. “Don’t touch her. Let her figure it out.”
I can’t tell who she’s talking to. I don’t have the energy to care as I release my connection to Danu’s vast power and hunt for the bonds which have been hidden by the sheer magnitude of the magic I’ve drawn. If I can just get it to my Guard, I can ground the power and the rush will help heal them too.
“When you have your mating bonds, it will get easier,” she coaches, her voice cutting through the harsh sound of my panting breaths. “But you can still manage.”
There, at the back. So faint I can barely feel them. In my relief, I fumble them the first time before I manage to latch on.
I pour the Goddess’s magic down between all five of them without finesse as my vision blurs and I slump to one side.
It’s gone. Done. Only emptiness and exhaustion remains. Dimly, I’m aware of arms coming around me, immense black wings sheltering me from the wind as I struggle for breath.
