Ava sagged against me. She was still so tired.
I frowned. “Pidge, you can hardly stand. Maybe this wasn’t a good—”
Ava went to take a step, but she let go of me. My heart lurched as I felt her going down. I grabbed her tightly and caught her before she crashed to the floor. Ava clutched my shirt, and her body trembled. Oberi whimpered loudly.
“I’m okay. I can stand,” Ava said, but something in her tone worried me.
“We need to get you back into bed. You’re not well enough to be moving around,” I argued.
“No, I’ve got this.” She sounded frustrated as she put an arm around my neck. “Just support me, okay?”
I wished to carry her, but that’s not what she wanted. So instead, I steadied her as she tried to take a step… only she didn’t go anywhere.
My heart slammed against my rib cage. This wasn’t right. “Pidge, what’s wrong? What hurts?”
Ava’s tone wavered. “It… it doesn’t. That’s the problem. I… I can’t feel my legs.”
The world seemed to stop spinning. I couldn’t have heard her right.
“You can’t…?”Fuck!My words trailed off.
Ava’s panic ripped through the bond. I teetered on the verge of freak-out, but I didn’t want to worry her further, so I shoved my emotions downward.
The door opened, and Sophia gasped when she saw me clutching Ava. “What are you doing?!” she cried. “Ava, I explicitly told you to stay in bed!”
I scooped Ava in my arms and set her on the bed. I’d gone numb all over, and my thoughts were completely blank. What was going on? We’d already been through so much… there couldn’t be possibly more we had to endure, could there?
Oberi let out a low whine beside us, as if he knew this had been coming and wanted to protect us from it, but knew nothing he could do or say would help.
Ava’s hands trembled, and her voice shook. “I just wanted a shower… Charlie, I don’t understand. Wh— why can’t I feel anything?”
I didn’t have an answer to give her, and it tore me to fucking shreds. Sophia must’ve said something to Ava, but I didn’t hear it. The whole infirmary seemed to turn upside down. I couldn’t make sense of space or time.
A hand landed on my shoulder, and Sophia whispered softly, “Charlie… I need to talk with you privately.”
Ancestors, I hoped she had an idea of what we could do to help Ava. I couldn’t muster the strength to say anything as she pulled me into the hall. I raked my fingers through my hair. “Is she…?”
“While I was healing her, I discovered that some of the nerves in her spine were severely damaged at the base,” Sophia said, her voice cracking. She sounded as if she was barely holding herself together. “The doctors and I did what we could to repair them, but even with my healing magic, we couldn’t mend the worst of the damage.”
My thoughts spun faster than a whirlwind. Most of the explosion had been concentrated around Ava’s middle, as that’s where her magic had blasted outward. But I didn’t realize her spine had been injured, too. The doctors had never told me.
Then I realized why— because they didn’t think Ava would ever recover enough for it to be important to mention.
“I’d seen the damage to her body, and I truly thought she wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t want to tell you and cause you more pain.” Sophia sounded regretful. “But then she woke up. I was going to tell you both as soon as I came back to the room, but you already had her out of bed.”
“So what do we need to do?” I asked. “Will she heal in time, or…?”
Sophia sighed heavily. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Charlie. But Ava-Marie is never going to walk again.”
CHAPTERTWO
AVA-MARIE
Ow.
Every part of me hurt. There wasn’t a bit of my body that wasn’t aching and wanting— and not at all in a sexy way. Each time I moved, I found new bruises. My flesh was soft and tender, and I struggled to take every breath. My lungs might as well have been pierced with a million knives and turned inside out.
My middle was particularly agonizing. They’d scrambled my organs and rearranged them.
