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Chapter Twenty-Nine
Liana
The wounded just kept coming.
One after another after another. I couldn’t heal any of them fully, just enough to save them from the edge of death, or to lessen some of the pain. But even rationing my Grace as I was, I could already feel it dwindling, and the line of wounded still to be seen continued to grow. Several Horde soldiers were already dead by the time I got to them.
I’d had to stop to vomit into a basin or a bucket twice already. The smell was foul and cloying. There was so escaping it.
But still I pressed on. Tiernan followed me from soldier to soldier, doing what he could to help. Holding them still. Giving them water, or something to bite down on when my Grace of healing wouldn’t work fast enough, and I had to cauterize open, oozing wounds.
I laid my hands on one of the males laying against the wall. The arrow through his chest had missed his heart by a hair but had punctured one of his lungs. Tiernan snapped off the tip and yanked it through him while I set to work mending the tears in the fragile tissue of his lung. He would continue coughing up blood until he got it all out, but I made it so no more could seep in. I let my hands fall away from him, staggering as I tried to move to the next.
Tiernan steadied me, “You have to take a rest,” he said, his voice high-pitched and frantic, “You can’t keep going like this.”
But he was wrong. Icouldkeep going. I just had to push harder. The fire was easier to command—my fury at what they had done to the Fae of my court ran wild through my veins—and I cauterized the next two patients in the blink of an eye. There was no time to administer something for the pain, so they were left screaming at my searing touch.
The sounds wrapped around my heart, settling like lead weights in my stomach.
Black spots crowded the edges of my vision and I shook my head. Catching myself before a bout of vertigo almost had me careening to the left.
Tiernan took hold of me firmly, taking my face into his hands, “Stop this!”
I shoved him off, rushing to the next, and the next, and the next. But more and more came. It was a never ending deluge of tortured pain and twisted faces.
I peeled my hands from the female warrior, leaving her with an ugly scar of raised red flesh, but at least she would live. Turning to the next patient, I caught sight of them through the haze of exhaustion. My heart stilled—then sped up again.
They stood in the doorway of the mill, each carrying a wounded soldier in with them, when it was clear to see they were the ones who needed tending.
The arrow still protruded from Finn’s shoulder. Alaric winced every time he moved, and Kade’s entire right arm and side were badly bruised. He could have crushed his bones. Could have internal bleeding from the fall…
I stepped out from the table, letting go of the ledge of it I had been using to steady myself. But I lost my balance, my head spinning violently. The black spots grew—diving in front of my eyes until I couldn’t see. My head connected with something hard, and the last thing I heard was shouting from familiar voices before I could hear nothing at all.
Chapter Thirty
Finn
It took almost a full day for Liana to wake. And by the time she did, she found herself back in the palace, awakening in her own bed. We’d had to make some hard and fast decisions while she was unconscious. Healer Loris said with the damage she’d done to herself, it would be a miracle if she woke at all.
Liana had healed over a hundred Horde soldiers. Loris told us while she healed us she’d seen nothing like it. But Liana paid the toll—almost with her life. Alaric and the rest of us already spoke our piece to her about it. Told her if sheeverput her life in danger like that again we’d—well, I don’t know what we’d do, but she wouldn’t like it.
And then the argument was over. There was no time for grudges or fighting. We’d survived the battle, and she had lived, and that’s all that mattered.
“We have to think of something,” she said, still bleary-eyed—her hair a mass of tangled silver, “They’ll be at the front gates in a few days if not less.”
We had slowed them as much as we could. Setting traps along their path to slow them and dwindle their numbers as they made their way to the palace. But still they came, and their numbers weren’t dwindled enough to make any meaningful difference.
“The palace has stood for a thousand years,” Alaric said, “It’s hewn from the stone itself. We can wait them out.”
She shook her head, “There are weak points,” she said, “The main gate isn’t fortified, and the Draconians can get in through any of the terraces.”
“She’s right,” I agreed, “We wouldn’t be able to wait them out for long before they found a way in.”
Liana stood on shaking legs, pacing the section of floor next to her bed, “We need more soldiers.” She flinched, her chin quivering.
The battle at the gap had dwindled the Horde numbers to little over a thousand, and even though she saved over one hundred of those lives… it made little difference in the face of all the lives lost.
Families had been torn apart. And they had evacuated the rest of the non-fighting Fae south with a letter bearing the queen’s seal. Inside was Liana’s plea to the queen of day to give them refuge. Some refused to go south—and they remained in the palace, protected by its walls for as long as they would hold.
