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Instead, I move to Kellyn’s other side and take the hand attached to his uninjured arm.
“He’ll be fine,” the healer says, her eyes closed. “I’ve cleared the infection. All that’s left now is to mend the muscle and skin.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“No, thankyou,” she says. “You saved me. This is the least I could do.”
“You also mended my sister. I think I am still in your debt.”
She shakes her head, and her dark eyes flutter open. “This is what I do. It’s what I love. Surely, you can relate? I’ve heard quite a lot about you since I’ve been back. You work with metal the way I work with flesh. I hope you don’t mind Petrik telling me. Once he got to talking—apologizing, really—for revealing who I was to you, I think he felt the need to even the score.”
I shrug. “I don’t care that you know.” I watch as Kellyn’s flesh stitches back together under Serutha’s careful ministrations. “Your ability is far more impressive than mine.”
“It’s not a contest.”
“No, but you save life, whereas I seem to be good only for threatening it.”
Serutha massages her left hand with her right when she’s done. “I would wager there are hundreds out there who would testify otherwise. I’m sure your weapons have saved them in ways you will never hear about. The only difference between you and me is that I get to see the results of my work firsthand.”
The words are kind, and I accept them. For now. “How does it work? Your ability?” I ask. “You’re the only other person with magic I’ve ever met.”
She smiles, takes a seat opposite me. And though she can’t be much older than I am, she feels older, like she’s seen more of life than I have somehow. I suppose she’s witnessed many die while honing her craft and learning. It would age anyone.
“I doubt that’s true. Didn’t you meet Elany while you were trapped with Ravis?”
“Elany. Yes, she followed me practically everywhere I went under Ravis’s orders. She’s gifted with magic?”
“Yes. The carefully crafted camouflage over my prison door? That was her doing.”
It takes me far too long to put it together.
“Elany is the cotton spinner!” I ought to be shocked. Instead, I’m enraged. “How could she betray her own kind!”
“She has her loyalties, just like we have ours.”
“But Ravis is awful.”
“You don’t need to tell me. Elany is the one who needs to figure that out. I hope she does it sooner rather than later.”
A moment of silence passes as I process the new information. The invisible assassins on the road, the soldier wearing Kellyn’s face, the prison camouflage—that was all Elany. She’s caused me unimaginable grief, and I had no idea she was right in front of me for weeks.
What would you have done if you’d known?
Nothing, I realize. I could do nothing while Ravis’s prisoner. I suppose things would have still played out as they did.
I sigh as I try to force the tension from my body.
“Do you still wish to know how my ability works?” Serutha says, perhaps thinking to distract me from the pain of the past.
Either way, I’m glad for it. “Yes.”
“I can sense all the parts of the body, and I can feel what’s broken or dying. And then I guide it. I encourage bones to move back into place, tell muscle to knit itself back together. I ask the infection to leave. I talk to the body, though not aloud, and it listens.”
“I talk to metal in much the same way,” I say. “But sometimes aloud.”
“It’s fascinating how gifts so different can still be so alike.”
“Do you think we’re gifted? That these abilities are blessings from the Sister Goddesses?” Or are we cursed? Forced to be pawns in the hands of those in positions of power?
