“Seth, get the elixirs. The smelling salts. The wounds are too deep.”
“There could be more of them.”
“I’ll handle it. Go!”
I press Ronan’s light magic to a hole pierced in his left side. The magic flares on my fingertips thanks to the torch, but the wound barely closes. “Fuck!”
I need Ronan to wake up. My grasp on his magic is too weak without him. I shake him, moving his face and trying to rouse him, but it’s no good. “Seth!” I shout towards the cottage. “Hurry!”
I turn to Taran. He has even more wounds on him than Ronan, and some of them are bleeding as well. Even some of the superficial ones that should have been easily cauterized by Seth’s flame.
I look at the nearest assassin. His body is limp, killed by an icicle to the chest, but his blade is still in his hand. A long dagger, unbloodied, but coated in something dark.
Poison. They’ve been poisoned by something that’s stopping the magic from working. It’s not just in the vials; it’s on the blades themselves.
It’s in their wounds.
“Fuck,” I mutter, turning back to Ronan. There’s a chance that whatever poison is in their bodies could interact with the healing elixirs. But with the amount of blood they’re losing—particularly Taran—we’re just going to have to take that risk.
Seth arrives as I’m straining with the light magic, coaxing Ronan’s skin into closing just a little. “Wake him,” I say.
Seth’s face pales as he looks at Taran. “I healed them. I burned those wounds. Why are they bleeding, Sylvie?”
“I don’t know. Seth, the smelling salts.”
His eyes won’t leave Taran. He kneels, almost frozen with fear.
“Seth!” I take the satchel of elixirs from him as he stares blankly, digging around until I find a vial filled with orange crystals. I shove it under Ronan’s nose, and he takes a sudden, gasping breath, clutching at his chest as he wakes.
I throw my arms around him. “Oh, thank Vayla.” I press down on his wounds with much stronger light magic as he blinkingly comes to.
“What happened? Sylvie? Are you hurt?” He reaches for me, feeling for injuries with his magic.
“It’s your blood. Lie still.” I touch each of his wounds in turn. The skin joins back together, but it’s much slower than I expected. Slower than I’ve ever experienced before.
Still, at least it’s working.
“Taran. He took the worst of it.” He tries to get up, but I push him back down.
“Drink an elixir. The frankincense one—that’s for bleeding.”
“Seth,” I say calmly. He’s crouched over Taran, burning a cut on his hand and then watching it open again, even the burn mark fading. I take his hand and move it away so I can heal Taran with my light. “Go down to town and get a healer. The Temple of Vayla has a couple. And then get Larus and the others. They could be in danger too.”
“I’m not leaving,” says Seth. His eyes are crazed as they reflect the pool of blood beneath Taran on the ground.
It’s a lot of blood. It’s like Elia all over again, only at least now I can control the healing magic.
But I can’t control Seth’s fear, and with Ronan awake, I can feel it acutely. I’ve learned to wield Ronan’s empathy selectively, but I can’t avoid feeling very strong emotions when I’m near enough to someone in crisis, and Ronan is nearby.
And sometimes, like now, they overwhelm me. I’m having trouble holding onto the light magic as I rip Taran’s shirt open, trying to find all of his wounds. There are so many. The shouting I heard earlier, the shouting I ignored thinking it was just Seth panicking about nothing. This is what was happening.
They were outnumbered, ambushed, likely in the dark if these are shadow-born like I expect. Ronan would have been able to sense them, to see them, but Taran wouldn’t have.
Seth must have come late to the fight. And then he tried to warn me, tried to get me to help him, and I didn’t listen.
His panic runs through my veins along with my guilt, and I lose Ronan’s light.
“Seth, please. I need to focus.”
