Page 56 of Wolfsbane

“Viktor,” I said, my voice caught in my tight throat, “rub your hands together, back and forth. Heel of your palm all the way to the tip of your middle finger, then back the other way. Let the magic pool between your hands, and imagine you’re spinning thread. All that magic is coming together into one strand. We’re going to stitch Aleks’s hand back on with magic, so don’t rush. Make it strong.”

I opened my eyes to see Viktor moving purposefully, skimming his hands back and forth, staring at his hands like he could see the magic there.

I began to smell the ozone scent of it building. Good. I needed Viktor to believe in this, to give it his all.

We might fail anyway, but if we had any chance at all, it required Viktor’s complete faith in himself, and in me. I couldn’t afford to let him see how nervous I was.

I shut my eyes again and focused on the scent of his magic. When it was so strong that it overtook the scent of blood, I opened them again and offered him a smile.

“Good. You’re both doing so well.”

Aleks let out another bleak laugh, as if to say he wasn’t doing anything at all, but the fact that he was still with us was quite a lot, in my opinion. I’d have been unconscious minutes ago, werewolf healing or not.

Viktor’s jaw only flexed as he focused on his work.

“All right,” I said, “so now, I want you to touch Aleks’s forearm. Imagine the magic penetrating all the way down to his marrow. Do you feel it?”

Viktor’s throat clicked as he swallowed, but he nodded. His eyes were caught on Aleks’s bloody arm, but I didn’t dare look at it.

“Good. Now, touch his hand. We’re going to stitch together bones, then muscles and tendons, and then his skin,” I went on. “We work from the inside out, setting everything back where it belongs, drawing life all the way through to his fingertips. So back and forth, slowly and with intention, guide the magic from his arm to his hand and back, connecting with both, because they’re both a part of him.”

Viktor’s exhale hardly shook as he worked, and I did my best to hold Aleks completely steady.

“Say these words after me, and when you do, surrender yourself to them fully, because they are the foundation of the world. They are truth, and your power affirms them. Okay?”

Viktor nodded.

I took a deep breath, and though my magic was gone, I imagined that each word I spoke was infused with its power.

“Severed flesh and mangled bone,

Return the hand and see it sewn.

By vein and sinew, knit and bind.

Leave no scar, the limb aligned.

What was severed, now be one.

By my will, this work is done.”

I didn’t know if it was the right incantation, or one I’d read before—probably not in full—but our magic counted intention more than specificity, and Viktor’s intention was clear.

He’d help his brother if he could, and I had to believe it’d be enough.

CHAPTER 31

Viktor

Magic was nothing like I ever would have imagined, even having watched it done before. But every step Daire laid out for me worked exactly as he said it would, the magic springing easily to my hands and forming a thread. Well, more than a thread, really. More like the rough wiry thread I’d mended my garments with back in Russia, almost like twine. Thick and hearty and strong, something that would hold Aleks’s flesh together until it could mend itself.

He was a wolf, after all. As long as there was a wound to heal, he would heal it.

I could almost see it as I fed it into his wrist, how it cemented the bones together, one at a time, until each was as solid as before. Then the tendons that stretched over them, all the small, fine pieces of his wrist slotting neatly back together.

Goodness knew I’d seen people opened up often enough in my life, I knew how things were supposed to look.

I whispered Daire’s rhyme a second time after the first, if only because it made me feel like I was doing something more. A silence had fallen over the whole area, everyone staring at us, all work stopped and every member of the pack waiting to see what would happen.