“Don’t laugh,” Alwyn said, forcing down a grin now too.
“Sorry,” Krujha chuckled, shaking his head. “I just... This isn’t how I was expecting the night to go. Or any of this at all.”
“Me neither.”
Krujha sighed, leaning back. The longer Alwyn looked at him, the more tired he appeared, especially as he moved out of the flickering light of the campfire. But he still kept that same soft smile as he regarded Alwyn silently.
“Do you really want to stay with me? In Aefraya?” Alwyn finally asked. Krujha’s grin widened.
“Of course I do,” he said. “I’ve never been, so I’ll need a tour guide, you know.”
Alwyn scoffed, glancing away. “You’re insufferable.”
“Yet you still want me around.”
“Don’t make me change my mind,” he warned. Krujha’s smile remained just as jovial as he leaned forward and pressed another careful kiss to Alwyn’s forehead.
“I don’t think you will,” he said softly. Alwyn couldn’t find the words to argue with him. In his heart, he knew the orc was right.
Chapter Thirty-One
Alwyn
Their small party arrived in Aefraya a few days later, and Iefyr brought them to the elder healer she had told them about: a man with short-cropped hair just starting to gray at the temples, a sign of his long life. He met them just outside his practice near the top of the hill that led to the castle, right on the edge of the residential area, and introduced himself as Ferym. He and Iefyr spoke quietly about what she had done so far, as Krujha gently helped Alwyn rise to his feet. After a week of being carried in the cart, he was as stumbling and fragile as a newborn lamb. The handful of steps from the threshold, through the dwelling, and into the exam room took all his effort; by the end, Krujha was all but carrying him.
While they had been on the road, Iefyr had changed the dressings on his hands each day; but Alwyn had avoided looking as much as he could, too sick at the thought of how bad it might be. Now, as Ferym gently unwrapped the bandages, Alwyn forced himself to watch. Red, shiny skin appeared, starting from his wrists and down to his palms, which were a mess of blisters, while his fingers looked sickeningly raw. Somehow, though, itwasn’t as bad as he was expecting—some part of him had been bracing himself to see bloody stumps where his fingers had been, or flesh burned down to exposed bone. It certainly didn’t lookgood, but he was relieved all the same.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do as much here,” Iefyr said quietly, as Ferym inspected them. “All the sinews and bones in the hands... I didn’t trust myself to do more than draw out any burgeoning infection. I’d never encountered magical burns like this before, so...”
“You did well to bring him here,” Ferym said, though his bespectacled eyes remained fixed on Alwyn’s hands. “With how deep the burns were, if you had targeted the wrong muscles, or in the wrong order, you could have impacted the range of motion. But they are clean, and I see no signs of infection. A perfect canvas to start with.”
For the first time, the sinking feeling in Alwyn’s chest started to lighten and lift. Maybe there was some hope for him after all.
Ferym continued to look him over in the exam room; only after a lengthy visual examination and extensive note-taking did Alwyn feel the first touch of the elder healer’s magic wash over him. It felt cool and light, like water spreading through his veins. He could feel it pooling in his hands at first, just settling there and sensing, until finally it started to spread upward through his arms and into the rest of his body.
It seemed to pause as it coursed through his chest.
“Oh,” Ferym said softly, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. “I see.”
Alwyn frowned. “What?”
“Your magic,” the healer said, and Alwyn could sense it probing a little deeper. “This is a terrible wound. I can tell you had great capacity, but it’s... empty, for lack of a better term.”
Alwyn’s heart sank all over again. He could feel it within himself—that hollowness had not diminished in the least fromthe moment that druid’s raven had dug its talons into his shoulder. He wasn’t sure what he had expected the healer to say, but that he also seemed taken aback had to be a bad omen.
“Another mage did this to me,” Alwyn said softly, brows knitted together. “Can it be healed?”
“I haven’t seen anything quite like this,” Ferym continued, now closing his eyes in concentration. “I’m not sure. I’ll do some research, but that’s all I can promise for now.”
Alwyn remained silent. Who would he be without his magic? It had been the core facet of his identity for so long—he was Tessarion’s favored pupil because of his magical prowess. Now, he was unsure if he had any magic left at all.
“We can worry about your hands first, of course,” Ferym added after a moment, seeming to detect Alwyn’s disquiet. “We’ll have to take this slow to avoid any further damage. If I’m careful, I should be able to heal all the tissue with a very limited impact on your range of motion.”
“That sounds good,” Alwyn said, his voice small.
Krujha had remained beside him throughout the whole examination, his expression carefully neutral. But when Alwyn looked at him now, a soft sort of sympathy crossed his face. Alwyn wanted to bristle—to protest that he had no need of sympathy from him or anyone—but he pushed that instinct down. Instead, he did his best to sit with it and feel glad that someone cared enough about him to feel compassion for him. He didn’t have to pretend to be fine for Krujha to accept him.
“You’ll need to stay with me for a few days, perhaps a week,” Ferym said when he finally released his gentle hold on Alwyn’s wrists. “But I think after that you’ll be alright.”
