I’ll try to use my magic to stop the poison from working, in order to buy us time,Oberi stated.If I resist against it, you can work on finding a cure.
It wasn’t enough. One of the nurses called out, “Edwyrd and Abigail will be posted at the door, should you need them.”
“Fine.” Where the fuck were Ez and Mama? They needed to be here!
A second after I thought that, they stormed in. They didn’t ask questions, just went to Charlie’s bedside immediately and hovered their hands over him. Their Anichi magic glowed as they surveyed the situation. Ez’s gaze darted from Charlie’s face to his abdomen, while Mama squeezed her eyes shut in concentration.
“I need help. I don’t know what this poison is, or what the active ingredient may be, but it’s got inferichite in it,” I pleaded. “We can’t force his body to get rid of the inferichite without killing him, but the poison is killing him, too. Even with all our power, everything we try just backfires.”
Their hands stopped glowing as they drew back their healing magic. Ez sent Mama an anxious look, which she shared.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s a combination poison,” Ez said thickly. “It’s got inferichite in it, which preventsyoufrom helping, but I can sense it’s been mixed with noxite, too, which means me and Mom can’t do anything to get rid of it, either. No healer can.”
The Warden had really thought this through. His soul belonged to me, the next time we dared to meet.
“What if we all try together?” I suggested. “I’ll use simultension to fuse your magic with mine. I’m invulnerableto noxite, and inferichite doesn’t affect you. Maybe if we work together, we can overpower it.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Mama said, and the three of us grabbed hands. We made a circle with our conjoined grasps, our arms hovering over Charlie’s form.
Itried. I wrapped my magic around my brother’s power, and my mother’s, with so much force it nearly yanked their abilities out of them. My mother was a powerful elemental, so I shouldn’t have been able to do that so easily, but I found even her magic crumbled like melting snow the minute I demanded it show up to serve me. I pushed our magic into Charlie’s veins and attempted to force the poison to leave, but despite my best efforts, it wouldn’t budge.
Ez let out a rasping sound and dropped his hand from mine. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself, as if I’d gone too hard and too fast.
“It’s not working,” he said. “The inferichite is preventing you from getting rid of the noxite, so we can’t get past it to heal him.”
Mama went to check Charlie again. Her fingers roamed his chest, and her eyes darkened. “The poison is manifesting into a growth, like a cancer. There are tumors spreading all over his body, and they’re getting bigger the longer we wait.”
No. No, no,no. I wouldn’t let this happen.
We kept trying, and an hour passed, but there was absolutely no effect. If anything, Charlie only seemed to get worse.
“The blood draw is in, princess,” the nurse replied breathlessly as she hurried in.
“What did it say?” I asked. She gave me the paper without a word, and I read over the results quickly.
Inconclusive.Of course. Just like inferichite, the properties and chemical compounds inside the poison weren’t anything recognizable on Earth. The Warden had probably gotten all kinds of awful ingredients from his buddies in hell, then put it alltogether to make this terrible poison. And if the ingredients used in the poison didn’t grow here, that meant we probably didn’t have anything on this planet that could counteract them.
I threw the results on a nearby counter and demanded, “Get Marcus in here.”
He must’ve been standing right outside the door, because he heard my voice and came in. “What do you need?”
“There’s noxite in the poison as well. You’re a Curse Breaker, so you can take it out,” I said. “That way, Mom and Ez will be able to get past the inferichite, because I can’t, and they can remove the poison.”
Marcus leaned over Charlie. He grasped Charlie’s arm and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate.
A few moments later, Marcus buckled to the floor. Ez rushed forward to hold him up, and I demanded, “Well?”
“I can’t get rid of it, though I tried,” Marcus insisted, rising back up again.
“You’ve drawn noxite out of people before!” I cried.
“Yes, but the inferichite is fortifying it, which means I can’t do a damn thing unless we get rid of the inferichitefirst!” he yelled back.
I made an angry noise and pushed him away. “If you’re not going to help, just go.”
Marcus didn’t argue, but he also didn’t seem upset with me. He did as I asked, thank the ancestors, and gave me some space.
