“I’ll see you for dinner.”
“Are you cooking?”
I frowned and turned to him. “For the fortress, yes. I will see you in the dining hall.”
“Yes, Dad.” Then his footfalls were ratter-tatting up the stairs into the distance.
“Flight Sergeant.” Shi indicated the position Fin had vacated.
Swallowing, I moved and eased myself down.
“How do you begin when you wish to heal someone?” he asked.
I didn’t immediately have an answer. Mostly because I didn’t think about it. “I just … do it.”
Shi sighed. Shifted and pulled his dagger from the sheath on his thigh, then sat back and sliced open his hand.
“By the Gods, what are you doing?” I reached out, grabbed his hand, placed my own over it, reached inside and healed him. When I lifted my hand, I looked, and the cut was completely healed without a scar. I breathed a sigh and let him go.
He looked at his hand. Then he returned it to his knee. “Now I understand.”
I frowned. “You do?”
He nodded. “When you reach out, you do so with all your strength. You hold nothing back.”
“I should not want to restrict the help I can give.”
“It would not be a restriction,” Shi assured me. “At the moment, you pour all your energy into your healing. That, I believe, is why after you healed your son’s back and fought with Eustace, you had no energy left to heal your own hurts.”
I shrugged. “It’s the only way I know.”
“Then we will find a new way together,” said Shi. “I will not have you losing more time out by wasting energy that need not be wasted. Should a seafarer attack occur, we do not know what injuries or how many the men here might suffer. You may be needed a great deal, and I would have you ready for that.”
* * *
The lessons continued for some months. I lost count of the times that he cut open his hand to make me heal it, to discipline me to use less and less magic. But with the flight captain’s guidance,his patience and persistence, I found easier and less costly ways to channel my magic. In the end I barely had to channel magic at all to heal a small wound.
Though the time he slashed into his femoral artery, I hesitated in shock and he nearly bled out. I stopped the bleeding, closed the wound, and he was fine — mostly.I read nothing in the way that he had sagged against me after that event. It wasn’t like I especially enjoyed holding him. No. not at all.
“Forgive me,” I held him and begged.
“This is why one must always control one’s emotions,” he said. His back was against my chest, his head resting back on my shoulder. My hand remained on his thigh where he’d cut himself. That he wasn’t pulling away was a sign I supposed of how poorly I had done.
“I am certainly not as competent as you in that matter.”
It was only when he tensed his shoulder to reach up to me that I realised how relaxed against me he was. The warmth of his palm on my arm focused my blood.
“My control comes…” His voice slid away, but he took a fortifying breath. I felt the air he drew in and blew out flutter on my neck. “It was hard learned. I hurt someone. Someone I cared — no — someone I loved.”
His admission of a past love tasted slightly sour. I could not help but remember how it felt to lose my beloved. Ang Shi lay in my arms and I careful poured more of my magic into him hoping to boost his blood and energy levels, just not so much he pushed me away again. The heat I felt in his groin was just the result of my magic.
“My magic responds to my emotions,” he whispered. “Good or bad emotions. I learned control when I realised how much damage I could do. The effort came as such a cost it nearly killed me. It drove all others away.” His head turned more to me,as his spoke, his lips lightly kissed my skin. “I am not heartless because I wish to be, but because I must be.”
My grip around him tightened. I relished that his heartbeat was stronger, and his skin less pale now. “You are not heartless.”
But if he could learn such control, I would learn the lessons he taught, because I would not risk hurting another by my inaction again. I would not risk him or Fin that way.
Fin took a lot longer to learn his control, and as my flight captain spent more time focused on my son, I knew that he was helping Fin, but I found my jaw clenching and my stomach burning because he was doing more for my son than I was. Than Icould.
