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She beat me again. Next time, I shall be on my guard.
~9~
After her morning session with Laethan, Alora’s entire body felt like a bowl of cooked spaghetti noodles. Though she hated being there, she couldn’t find the strength to crawl off the healing bed. It was still Laethan’s healing house, at least for now.
The prior night, Graely held a council meeting, during which he had Laethan make a formal confession to the entire council, including Alora and Kaevin. Though he’d known the truth for several days, Graely glared as if Judas had just kissed him.
All the members reacted with shock to the announcement, but Nordamen had been particularly angry Laethan had hidden his empathy gift, ranting he couldn’t be trusted. Chaleah chided herself for not questioning the chief healer about his gifting, though he’d already earned his position before she became chief judge of Stone Clan. Thalaena sat in stately silence, not being an actual council member yet, and Alora wondered if she might not be such a stickler for rules.
Laethan made no move to defend his actions, which annoyed Alora to no end. Yet she didn’t have the strength to shout above the fray—to defend the man to whom she now felt so indebted, despite the pain she had to endure from his “treatments.”
No, it was Kaevin who had spoken up, silencing the unruly council members and commanding their attention.
“Are you all still so rigid you cannot bend a law instated for reasons that obviously don’t apply in this case? Can you not see God’s hand in this matter? If Laethan had followed the command, not only would he have wasted his talents all these years, but Alora and I would surely be dead in a matter of days. As always, Laethan made the unselfish choice. He saved Alora’s life, revealing his secret, knowing he must risk the wrath and judgment of the council to do so. By his character and his years of unflinching selfless service as Stone Clan’s chief healer, he has proven himself worthy. Would that I could be half as honorable as Laethan.”
In the stony silence following his outburst, Kaevin had coughed and turned beet red. But Alora had never been so proud of her soulmate.
He’s growing up. Becoming a man. Standing against injustice.
Whatever the reason for his unlikely speech, it had turned the tide of emotion in the room. At least, she thought Kaevin’s speech had done it. She knew, however, that Laethan could have manipulated their emotions, though he raged at her for doing that very thing.
Morvaen, who hadn’t seemed the least bit bothered by Laethan’s announcement anyway, suggested the council should postpone judgment and move on to more important matters like discussing the appearance of the new portals and the action that should be taken. From there, the meeting grew even more heated, lasting well into the night and leaving her totally exhausted in the morning, even before she began her daily “Agony” session. The title came from her, as she didn’t think Laethan’s term, Residual Pain Extraction, was an apt description.
After observing an entire morning of pain extraction, Kaevin had been pacing the floor and pulling at his hair, though Laethan shielded Kaevin from pain with precision born from years of practice wielding his gift of empathy. Kaevin shouted and argued with Laethan, so insistent that the healer had finally thrown his hands in the air and agreed to let him participate.
White-faced, Kaevin formed one arc of the circle, his hands gripping hers as Laethan probed through her psyche, unearthing the pain she’d worked so hard to suppress and pushing at it until it rushed out in excruciating torrents. Five minutes seemed like an hour, until Laethan’s grip would slip away, giving her a momentary respite. Falling back in his chair with beads of sweat on his forehead, Laethan took deep breaths and drank copious amounts of water.
Though he denied it, Alora suspected Laethan bore even more pain than she did. But Kaevin’s participation had made a noticeable difference in lessening the pain’s effect. As a result, Laethan added more time to the sessions, complaining he had barely scratched the surface.
He explained when he first found the pain-filled well, pinched closed at the top by Alora’s tight inner shield, the pain sloshed out at the slightest emotional bump. She’d stuffed everything inside that well, both emotional and physical pain, and he described it as a swollen boil, on the verge of rupturing.
Indeed, it had made her entire body sick. Before Dr. Sanders returned through the portal, hauling a protesting Beth with him, he’d mentioned a yellow tinge in Alora’s eyes could indicate her liver wasn’t functioning properly. Laethan, who probably had no idea what a liver was, yelled in Doc’s face, saying he could provide the treatment Alora needed to recover without Doc’s interference. Then Laethan scheduled even more Agony sessions, until his eyes were bloodshot and his skin sallow. Kaevin looked almost as bad, and Alora was grateful there was no mirror around.
Her guilt grew as she watched the two men suffer with her pain, so she observed Laethan’s methods until she was certain she could navigate her mind and proceed on her own.
Maybe I can let it out without Laethan’s help and just feel the pain by myself, like any other burn victim would’ve done. I’m strong enough. I can stand the pain, and then no one else needs to suffer.
She was supposed to be napping, to recover from the morning’s efforts. But while she lay, limp-noodled on the lumpy straw-stuffed mattress, she contemplated how she might get a
way—far enough to extract the pain on her own, but not so far that she could get in trouble where no one could reach her.
She was alone for the moment. The clinic was empty, and Laethan was resting at his home. Kaevin had dragged himself to fetch them both some lunch. Alora didn’t have the energy to make an escape right now, but she could experiment with her pain—test it to make sure she could release it as Laethan had.
She probed. The moment her mind touched the festering pocket, she felt a hint of the customary pain. The opening was pinched tight. Laethan had warned she wouldn’t survive if he dumped it all at once, so she gently teased the opening in her mind with a mental toothpick. A single drop of pain oozed out, black and oily. The pain seared her body like acid as it escaped, but she didn’t cry out.
It worked! I can do it and keep it under control. I’ll find a place to hide until I get it totally empty, no matter how long it takes. I refuse to continue hurting the people I love.
“Hey, Alora.”
Arista’s voice startled her out of her skin.
“Oh! Hi... what’re you doing here?”
Arista held up a large basket covered with a woven cloth. “I’ve got midday dinner. We’re coming to eat with you and Kaevin.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Jireo, Markaeus and I.”
