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But as my head cleared, I felt a concerned and curious tug through the bond connecting me to the love of my life. It was a strange sensation at first, as if Ayla were beside me and projecting her emotions in my direction, but that clearly wasn’t the case. However, it did rally me, reminding me I was far more connected to my mate than I had ever been before, and that was something worth fighting for.
It touched me deeply that Ayla was paying so close attention to my wellbeing even in the middle of a battle, and that she’d found a way to send a query through to me. As I struggled to my feet, I sent her what I hoped were soothing and confident impressions, assuring her I was fine. I wished our shifter speak had a long enough range where I could communicate to her wherever she was in the city, but it just didn't work like that.
“Oy, mate. You really did a number on those fucks! All your people did.”
Looking at the other boats, I saw that they were indeed doing their job, fighting the crew of the huge warships while also completely going to town on those artillery machines. Those guns weren't gonna fire a single additional mortar.
It was only the beginning of the battle, I knew that much, but I also knew we’d struck a huge blow. There were still the smaller boats chock full of soldiers approaching the shore, but they wouldn’t have their big explosions to back them up and, with any luck, the few ballistae towers Blath had could sink at least a couple of them on their journey to the docks. Any damage they could do would be a huge help to all of us on the shore.
I looked to the captain, wondering if I should shift so I could talk to her, but she just gave me a knowing nod.
“Aye, I’ll get you there. Don’t you worry. This fight isn’t even close to being over yet.”
She was damn right about that.
Chapter 22
Ayla
While it wasn’t the worst scene I’d ever had to run emergency healing on, there was always something extra insidious about civilian casualties. They didn’t enlist, they didn’t ask to be involved in a battle, they’d never trained or pledged their bodies to their country’s service. Some of them weren’t even old enough to know what that meant, and that injustice always made my eyes sting and my throat constrict in a way it didn’t when I was treating fellow soldiers.
“All right, now this is going to hurt, but it’ll get your knee back into joint and then you should be able to get to safety,” I told the butcher Darla and I had helped pull from a pile of rubble. Part of me knew my best friend should be on the shoreline, seeing if she could use her psychic powers to help, but I was ever so grateful for her presence. She could pick up on the panicked thoughts of the people buried below rubble that’d been hit by the Vekas forces, and then my team could dig them out.
My team. I didn’t even know how that had happened. One moment, I was trying to staunch the bleeding on the head of a young girl who kept crying for her mother. The next, Luci was practically hitting me in the face with a healer’s emergency bag. I couldn’t have been more grateful, because yes, while I did have magic to help me, it was always easier to have a strong, natural base of herbs and potions to work from.
Because my magic did feel…strange within me. Not bad. Not even disconnected like it sometimes did after dealing with my curse or the Shrouded Shriek. Simply different.
It felt too big to fit within my skin, fizzing and popping in an effervescent constant that I wasn't quite used to. I'd always been lucky my magic was quite responsive to me, but this felt like so much more. Like it was eager to do my bidding, even overly so. But I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, because there were a lot of people I had to help. Too many innocent people.
Another surge of adrenaline went through me, complements of my connection with my mate. Yet I didn't pause what I was doing and merely sent a gentle tug through our bond. It wasn't something I could do before, but now it felt so natural, as easy as breathing. Just a tiny little pull, checking in if my mate was okay, and somehow Kai knew exactly how to respond, sending his own rush of soothing chemicals to let me know he was fine. He was in a stressful situation, but weren’t we all?
Still, even though I knew he was safe, it didn’t quite settle the worry within me. The agitation. I wanted to be on the battlefield with him. I wanted to fight alongside him, but as far as I could tell, the fight was still on the water, and while I could do long range shielding, I’d never been adept at long range offensive spells.
My patient gave me a nod before I quickly jerked their leg in a sideways and upward motion. It was incredibly painful, but their dislocated knee slid back into place.
“There's going to be a lot of swelling, and this is likely going to be tender for a while,” I told my patient. “You got a lot of bruising on your thigh from the beam that dislocated your knee. You're lucky it hit so high up on your leg. Bartle, can you get this man to safety?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of my team answered—a large, burly man who definitely wasn't a fae, but then I had no idea what type of cryptid he was. He, too, had just run up to Darla and me while we were desperately trying to dig someone out, and had been helping us ever since. He was a great help, as he was about as wide as both of us combined, and his biceps were bigger than our heads. Definitely not human, but not visibly anything else, either. I was immensely grateful for his presence. Him along with Luci and Darla. Of course ,there were about ten of us, all doing our best to pull people out of rubble, unite children with a guardian, and get people to safety.
With the butcher taken care of, I stood up for Umdala, a young fae woman, who had called me over in an urgent voice. Rushing over, I saw her pressing her own dirty shirt to a bleeding wound on someone's side.
“Here, let me take a look at that.” The injured person was a young man who I thought I might recognize from working at the docks. Taking a spray bottle out of the healer’s bag, I did my best to make sure the wound was coated in something that would at least partially sterilize it. The last thing I wanted to do was heal the open injury but create a pocket of infection inside that could risk sepsis.
Once I was sure that the area was about as clean as I could get it while triaging in the field, I laid my hand right over the gash. The young man flinched, but to his credit, he didn't pull away. He just gritted his teeth and let my magic flow into him.
I'd been healing people for years, and was pretty familiar with my process, but everything seemed so different since Kai had finally sunk his teeth into my neck. Before, my magic would always go in and rewrite things, soothe wounds, try to right what was wrong. But now it felt more like my magic slid into place over the wound before adapting, becoming my patient's own energy. Their bodies accepted my alterations so much quicker and easier due to that strange adaptation. I had no words for it, and it wasn't something I was doing purposefully, yet it was causing quite a difference. Enough for even Darla to notice. She raised a soot-covered eyebrow after the wound closed in less than a minute. Thankfully, she didn't say anything and just helped the young man get his orientation so he could head to safety.
There was nothing mundane or boring about healing in the middle of a battle, yet eventually, the individuals did blend together. I would look at them, diagnose, then treat, or at least get them healthy enough to get out of the range of any more bombings. I did notice that the explosive shelling had stopped, but that didn't mean nothing else was coming.
One, if their machines were malfunctioning, I was sure the Vekan forces could fix them. Two, I highly doubted artillery was all they’d brought to battle.
No, things were going to get worse before they got better, and I needed to get as many civilians as possible out of the way as I could.
We methodically picked our way toward the docks, trying to bridge that balance between being quick and efficient while giving every person we helped the time that they needed. No shortcuts, just also no waste. I liked to think we did an excellent job, but really there was no way to know. At least not until after the battle was done, and the whole crux was we’d have to survive to find out.
But I had no intention of dying today. Not when I finally, truly had a life worth living for, and most certainly not at the hands of soldiers from an enemy nation.
No, now that my curse was done, I wanted to die old and in my bed, drifting peacefully off into sleep. Or even on some grand adventure—one like the books I would read when I was younger and actually had free time.
