“Sebastian!” She tried to hold his head still, to protect him from hitting it on the forest floor. It hardly worked – he was too strong, even unconscious. “I didn’t mean–”
I did it wrong. I hurt him.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”
Olive green light poured from her hands and wrapped around him. Her healing magic surged instinctively, wildly. It pulsed with her guilt, her fear, her desperate need to make it right. She found it quickly. A bleed inside his skull. She had caused that.
A wound inside his mind.
Her magic hovered, unsure. She remembered what Henry had said:
Permanent damage that emerald can’t heal.
Pure panic seized her. She had to be able to heal him. She had to. Remorse unlike anything she’d ever felt took hold of her.
“I’ll fix it. I’ll make it better,” she swore.
Her magic obeyed. Answered in full. It poured into him, more powerful than it had ever been. His body began to still and something shifted. A spark of warmth bled through the dark green hue, as if hermagic itself knew the truth: this was what it was meant for. Not binding. Healing.
Healing him.
But then it surged past what she intended. The olive light burned brighter, wilder.
Wait. No.
The first thing she saw disappear was the jagged scar on his chin. Then the faint, healed burn mark on his collarbone, just visible beneath his tunic. The array of white and pink marks across his arms – all vanished in front of her.
“No, no,” she gasped, trying to pull back. But her magic was frenzied. Out of control – she couldn’t stop it.
It was rewriting him.
Every scar. Every mark that told the story of who he was – her magic was erasing it all. She yanked her hands back with enormous effort. But it was too late. The only scar that had survived her was the one beneath his eye. From the trials. The rest were gone. In her panic, her desperation, she hadn’t realised what else she’d done.
She had lifted everything.
Even the enchanted sleep.
And then–
He moved.
Kara’s breath came as a gasp when Sebastian’s eyes fluttered open, and met hers.
First, with confusion. “Kara?”
Then with fury. He looked livid.
She froze. Neither of them said anything; the only sound was the crackle of the fire. Then he moved so suddenly it made her jump and scramble backwards. He pushed himself up from the ground to his knees, but his hands stopped short at an odd angle, the nightshade ropes keeping him from straightening fully.
He blinked, confused. Then he caught sight of the cords binding him to the tree. He tested them once.
Then twice.
Magic sparked at his fingertips – a flicker of crimson – but it stuttered and died. He grunted in frustration, looking down to his now empty hip, where his blade had been before Henry had removed that too.
“Nightshade,” he said hoarsely. “Clever, Healer.”
When he looked back to her, it wasn’t anger in his eyes. It was hurt. Hurt and wounded pride. He tried to mask it, but she’d seen it.
