I offer my heart, my soul, my light
Now your pain shall end
Repeating the verses again and again, I paint Doc’s wounds with my blood. I start with the cuts on his face, gently massaging them with my fingertips. The moment my blood touches his skin, it turns silver, glowing with healing magick.
Keeping his gaze locked on mine, Doc doesn’t flinch or gasp.
Coating my fingers in more blood, I slide them behind his head, swallowing back my own pain at the wounds I find there. His hair is matted with blood and bits of bone, but I do my best to work past it, coating everything with my magick.
I paint in symbols of love over his chest, covering Judgment’s cruel burns. I gently coat his split knuckles, the cuts on his hands and arms, the bruises beneath his eyes. I don’t stop until my blood has been wiped clean from the Chalice and every last of his injuries is glowing silver.
“And now your pain shall end,” I finish, pressing a kiss to his lips.
When I pull back, he’s still watching me, unmoving but alert. Then, he sucks in a deep, sharp breath, and his eyes flash the same bright sliver as the blood.
By the time he exhales, the silver is gone from his eyes and body both.
I remove the Chalice from his hands and set it to the side, then inspect his arms and chest, his face. His skin is completely unmarred.
“How do you feel?” I ask, tentatively reaching for the back of his head.
He doesn’t let me get that far. With a surge of renewed strength, he gets to his knees and hauls me into a crushing embrace. His hands tangle into my hair, his mouth pressing against mine with a kiss so demanding, he draws blood.
When he finally pulls back, we’re both panting. His stormy gray eyes are wild and fierce. “You,” he says firmly, “are a fuckingmiracle.”
I can’t help but laugh. “I take it the spell worked?”
“Yes, and the moment we get home, I’m going to show you just howwellit worked.”
“I’m holding you to it,” I whisper.
We get to our feet and join the guys, our reunion happy but short-lived.
“What about Ani?” Kirin asks, glancing over the Black Sun’s body, still unconscious. We give Doc a quick recap of what went down at the Fool’s Grave, and our hope that we could somehow reunite Ani’s soul and body with the Wand.
“Ani’s soul is tied to this place,” Doc says. “It took a lot for him to manifest long enough to do the spell last night. He faded pretty quickly after that. I don’t think he’s gone permanently, but it was getting more and more difficult for him to remain in tangible form here.”
“What do we do?” I ask. “We can’t just leave him.”
“The presence of the Black Sun—of Ani’s physical body—isn’t enough to reunite them,” he says. “The only way we can save Ani is to undo the dark magick that fragmented him in the first place, and that means going after the Magician and the Chariot.”
I kneel down beside Ani’s body and run my fingers through his hair, my chest filling with pain.
Doc’s touch on the back of my neck is as warm and gentle as his voice. “I don’t want to leave him either, Stevie, but we can’t stay here. We need to get out and fight. Only then can we save him.”
I blow out a breath and get back to my feet. Doc’s right.
Survival rule number one: Deal with the most pressing problem first.
“Okay,” I say, glancing around the dark space. The mist is back now, pulsing with magick light at our feet. “How the hell do we get out of here? The way we came in is just… gone.”
“This place is an ever-shifting labyrinth,” Doc says. “We can’t walk out. We need magick.”
“Another spell,” I say, agreeing. “Something to clear the mist and show us the way forward.”
Kirin nods. “Air magick. Swords. We’ll call on it to clears the fog and guide us out.”
“You want to do the honors?” I ask.
