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I had reacted on instinct, the sight of him a reminder of that terrifying moment at the party, the one I couldn’t shake from my mind. As always, the sudden memory had momentarily brought back the shock and fear I had felt then, but there had been no need for me to speak. Just as then, he wasn’t going to attack indiscriminately.
Thankfully Nik didn’t even seem to hear me. Reaching out with his free hand, he grabbed the boy’s collar, lifting him slightly so that he was off balance. Throwing the staff down, he dragged the boy in my direction.
As Nik came, he turned his head and finally absorbed my reaction. The heightened color on his face immediately drained away, and I wished I could take back every moment of my reaction rather than see his anger replaced with pain.
Why did I keep hurting Nik? It was my own fault that I still saw echoes of that awful moment at the party when I saw him bending over Augustine’s body. I now knew he had been checking Augustine for signs of life—something he had rushed to do without even dropping his sword—and I should have known it then, too. No wonder Nik was avoiding me when I kept letting my terrible mistake stand between us.
Recovering himself in an instant and hiding his emotion, Nik’s face returned to a stony expression as he dragged the boy the rest of the way to face me.
“Look her in the face.” He gave the boy a slight shake. “This is the woman who just healed your mother, and yet you struck her over the back of the head?”
“She claims she healed my mother,” the boy said in a sullen voice. “But how do I know that’s true? She’s a murderer.”
“Delphine is a healer,” Nik said in an ice-cold tone. “She has never—and will never—murder someone. I was there. I saw it happen. Your precious Constantines turned on each other.”
“You’re lying!” the boy cried, his face twisting and showing a glimpse of something far more heartbreaking than his attack.
Beneath his aggression lay barely masked terror and confusion. It wasn’t transient fear of Nik’s larger frame and stronger muscles, but something far deeper. Already in the most confusing and tempestuous time of life, his emotions had been tangled further—first by the Constantines’ mesmerizations and then by their abrupt and violent deaths.
All my anger disappeared, replaced with compassion and a bone-deep exhaustion. We could heal every person in the entire town and eliminate the epidemic, but how could they begin to heal from what the Constantines had done to them?
The boy exploded into sudden movement, trying to get to me, but Nik’s grip only tightened further, holding him in place. He shouted further accusations, getting more and more worked up in the face of Nik’s unyielding stance and blank face.
“You must know someone with a healing affinity,” Nik said when the boy paused for breath.
The youth hesitated, giving Nik the space to keep talking.
“Of course you do. Have you asked them about this epidemic?”
The boy’s eyes slid sideways, away from our faces, giving us our answer.
“Precisely,” I said. “Believe me, we’re not doing all this for fun. Any healer in this town, however weak, could tell you that the people who were sick have now been healed.”
“Your own eyes could tell you that,” Nik said with impatience. “And those same friends will be able to confirm I’m telling the truth about what happened to the Constantines. Shall we go find one right now?”
He took a step as if he meant to drag the boy off to find the closest person with a healing affinity.
The youth shivered, and for a moment I thought it was from fear or embarrassment. But when he shivered again, it racked his whole body in a way that made me hesitate.
“Wait,” I said, putting a hand on Nik’s arm. He stilled instantly. “Let me check something.”
I put a hand to the boy’s head, not even using my ability as I confirmed my sudden suspicion.
“He has a fever. No wonder he’s acting so irrationally.”
I sent my power into him, confirming that he had the illness, likely in the second week.
“How did you conceal this?” I muttered, mostly to myself. “Have you been hiding from the healers every time they came past?”
He shrank into himself at my words, looking guilty and scared.
“It’s a good thing I discovered it now, or you could have ended up in a dangerous situation,” I scolded him as I drove the illness out of his body. “Everyone who’s ill needs to be monitored for disease progression—surely you know that by now.”
As I healed him, my earlier discouragement and desperation rose up inside me. My power could easily drive the disease from his body, but what I really wanted was to drive out the lingering effect of the mesmerizations.
The Constantines might be gone, but the lingering echo of pain in my head told me people were still being hurt by them. How much longer did it have to go on? Would these people ever be free?
A protective instinct rose inside me, fueled by my anger. I stopped trying to hold it in, letting it fan into flame inside me as I did a final sweep of his body to check for any missed pockets of illness.
