Levi had positioned himself slightly behind the others, leaning against the bookshelf nearest the door in a posture that seemed oddly casual when contrasted with the obvious tension in the room. He also appeared to be in his fifties, which was either accurate or wildly misleading, depending on how one counted the years of a being who hadn’t technically existed before his summoning. His face was thoughtful, his gaze steady, and his magical signature, now that Malachi could study it at closer range, was even more unsettling than it had been from across the room. It was like trying to read an artifact that had no bottom; the deeper his gift reached, the more there was to find, and none of it followed any pattern he recognized.
Belshegar stood apart from the others, near the windows. His human form was that of a tall, well-built man, handsome and dark-haired, and anyone who didn’t possess a resonance gift would have seen nothing unusual about him other than his good looks. Malachi, however, could see…or rather, sense…the vast power that existed beneath the human surface, the extradimensional essence wearing a mortal shape the way one might wear a particularly well-tailored suit. He was looking at Malachi, and his expression didn’t seem to be hostile. No, it was something worse.
It was thoughtful.
Between all of them and Malachi stood Roslyn.
She’d placed herself directly in front of the leather chair, positioned so that anyone who wanted to reach him would have to go through her first. He could see her exhaustion in the shadows under her eyes and the slight tremor in her hands and the pallor of her usually luminous skin, but she was also standing straight, her shoulders squared, her chin lifted. She had her back to him, which meant he couldn’t see her face. But he could see theirs, however, their expressions ranging from Angela’s barely contained fury to Connor’s outright hostility to Levi’s quiet assessment.
“Move aside, Roslyn,” Angela said. Her voice was soft now, which was somehow worse than the sharpness had been. Soft meant she was running out of patience but was still willing to be careful with the woman she was speaking to. “Let me see him.”
“He’s my patient,” Roslyn said.
Angela crossed her arms, emerald eyes still blazing. “He’s the man who kidnapped you.”
“All right, both of those things are true, but it still doesn’t change anything.” Roslyn’s voice was steady and professional, stripped of everything except the calm authority Malachi had heard her use during their most difficult exchanges. It was a voice that said, I’m the healer, and my word is final. “He’s critically injured. His magic has been depleted to the point of systemic failure, he has second-degree burns across his left side, and the scarring around his heart is severe enough that any significant stress could trigger a complete collapse. I’ve spent the last three weeks keeping him alive, and I will not have that work undone just because you’re upset.”
Angela shot the younger woman a look of utter disbelief. “Are you serious? You’ve been here for three weeks, healing the man who stole you from your family, and you want me to — ”
“I want you to trust my judgment.” Roslyn still hadn’t raised her voice, but something in her tone had shifted and hardened. “I’m a healer, and he’s my patient. I don’t walk away from my patients, Angela. Not ever. You know that about me.”
The prima stared at her for one long, excruciating moment. Malachi could see the calculation happening behind those brilliant green eyes, her reassessment of a situation that in reality was far more complex than it had appeared from a thousand miles away.
Connor was less patient. “Roslyn, this man threatened our entire clan. He sent people to steal from us, he tried to recruit Brianna, and he attacked us on our own land. He’s the reason Allegra nearly — ”
“I know what he did.” Roslyn’s voice cut across his, quiet but final. “I know all of it. I’ve spent three weeks in this house with him, and I know exactly who he is and what he’s done. I also know that he’s dying, and that killing a dying man or leaving him to die isn’t something any of us should be comfortable with.”
The silence that followed those words was so heavy that it felt as if the air itself was somehow solidifying. Malachi was acutely aware of the picture he presented — propped up in a leather chair with a blanket over his legs and his burned left arm braced against his body, his white hair lank and unwashed, his face the color of paper. Currently, he was far from an impressive figure, and the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him.
He considered saying something. Under normal circumstances, he would have had a prepared statement for this situation, a carefully constructed argument that explained the necessity of his actions, the philosophical framework underlying his collection, and the strategic logic that had led to Roslyn’s summoning. He’d delivered such arguments before, to smaller audiences and in less fraught circumstances, and they’d been, if not persuasive in the end, at least sufficiently complex to forestall violence while he maneuvered himself toward a more favorable position.
But he had no maneuvering left. His magic was nearly gone, his body was held together by Roslyn’s skill and stubbornness, and the audience in front of him included two people he’d personally wronged and two beings whose power far exceeded his own even when he was at full strength. Any argument he constructed would be transparent, and any attempt at the kind of rhetorical positioning that had once been his primary defense would insult the intelligence of everyone in the room.
So he said nothing and let Roslyn stand where she stood, and accepted that his fate was in the hands of a woman he’d kidnapped and a family he’d attacked.
It was, he reflected, a fitting arrangement. If his career had been built on the principle that he always knew best, that his judgment was infallible and his methods were justified by the purity of his intentions, then there was a certain symmetry in having all of that dismantled by a twenty-something nurse practitioner who’d decided, against all evidence and self-interest, that he was worth saving.
Belshegar spoke then. What he said surprised everyone in the room…including Malachi.
“She’s right.”
The words were quiet and measured, and, judging the extradimensional being’s overly even tone, he didn’t expect them to be particularly popular with their audience. Angela turned to look at him, and the surprise on her face was quickly replaced by a kind of sharp attention, a prima hearing counsel she hadn’t anticipated.
“What do you mean?” she said.
Belshegar moved away from the window and walked calmly across the study. As he approached, Malachi felt his extradimensional signature intensify, like a bass note dropping even lower. He stopped a few feet from the chair, close enough that Malachi had to tilt his head back to look up at him, and for a moment, he simply studied Malachi with an expression that wasn’t hostile or kind but was something older than either.
“I can see his aura,” Belshegar said, still looking at Malachi as though he was reading a text written in a language only he could interpret. “It’s not the same as it was in Jerome. When he confronted us on the promontory, his signature was armored, layered with artifact energy, and reinforced by objects that amplified his natural power and obscured his true nature.” He paused for a moment, expression thoughtful again. “That armor is gone now. What remains beneath it is damaged, but it’s also different.”
“Different how?” Connor asked. His skeptical tone made it clear that he wasn’t inclined to believe a single word of what Belshegar was saying.
“Changed,” Belshegar said, and something in his voice — a certainty that wasn’t human, that came from a being whose perception extended across dimensions — made even Connor go still. “The aura I see now isn’t the aura of a man who’s trying to deceive or manipulate. It’s the aura of a man whose defenses have been stripped away, and what has been revealed isn’t what I expected to find.” His gaze shifted to Roslyn, and then back to Malachi. “There is also something between them, a bond that was formed through the healing process. I won’t call it romantic, not precisely, although that element is present. It’s the kind of bond that forms when one person sustains another through a prolonged crisis, when the healer’s magic becomes so deeply integrated with the patient’s system that separation would cause damage to both.”
He delivered this clinical assessment without apparent discomfort, and Malachi, despite everything, felt a flush of something that might have been embarrassment at having his psyche described with such frank precision. He was accustomed to being the one who read others, who analyzed signatures and cataloged properties and maintained the analytical distance that kept him in control. Being read himself by a being whose perceptual abilities exceeded his own was a reversal he found deeply unsettling.
Angela looked at Roslyn. “Is that true? About your bond?”
Roslyn’s shoulders lifted, and Malachi could see the tension in the set of her neck. “I’ve been healing him twice a day for three weeks. My magic has been inside his system, tracing every channel and repairing every piece of damage. That kind of sustained work creates a connection. It’s not — ” She paused for a beat or two, and he could hear her choosing her words with the same care he would have chosen his if he’d had the energy for speech. “It’s a medical reality. Severing it abruptly would destabilize everything I’ve built.”
