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Sure enough, it was completely engulfed in flames. I could see multiple cryptids fighting it, but their magic didn’t seem to be doing any good.
Wait a minute.
Had he said Darla was still in there?
I had to do something. Ihadto! But, what? Most of my quick magic revolved around healing. It wasn’t like I could summon a storm on a whim, conjure water out of nowhere, or—
Oren burst into his wolf form and raced forward, barreling right through the blazing entrance where pretty mahogany doors once stood.
“Oren!” Kai cried in shock and fear. I wasn’t back to my full strength or coherency, but he clearly needed to follow his friend.
“I’m fine!” I rasped, my voice barely audible. “Go. Help him!” Kai looked worriedly from me to where his friend had disappeared, clearly torn, so I hit him weakly with a soot-covered fist. “Go!”
At last, he nodded and set me down, but before he could even shift, Oren burst back out, still in his wolf form, with Darla clinging to his back. Just in time, too, because the entire front section of the building collapsed behind him, making the inferno shoot much higher.
As big as wolves were, their spines usually didn’t support a fully grown human, but it didn’t matter as the adrenaline-charged shifter raced toward them, skidding to a stop, and crouching so Kai could help Darla off his back.
She was burnt and barely conscious, the breath crackling through her lips in a way which told me her lungs were damaged. Despite all of my hopes, I was again faced with my friend dying in my arms.
That wasn’t a remote possibility today.
Stumbling forward, I knelt at her side and placed my hands directly on her stomach. Pushing away my body’s natural inclination to heal myself first, I sent my magic into Darla, mapping out everything wrong, everything needing repair.
The moment flickered in and out of time. One moment I was looking down at the closest thing I had to a best friend, floating in and out of consciousness, and another moment I was back inthe fort, holding her throat to stop her from bleeding out. One moment I was cooling her lungs with my magic, then another I was pushing glass out of her.
Darla. Poor Darla. She was suffering, and it was all my fault. I’d been selfish, far too selfish, and nowshewas the one paying for it.
But I couldn’t let her die. The curse may have been a vicious, vile thing, but I wasn’t going to let it take her from me. Not now.
I pushed more magic into her, rewriting, soothing, mending. I didn’t care if it left me completely drained—none of it mattered.
I was struggling thanks to my own injuries, but then Kai’s hands were on top of my shoulders, warm and firm.
“You can do this,” he murmured, his voice low. “I know you can.”
Once more, I found my magic reacting to his touch in a way I never could’ve imagined. It broiled inside me, a renewing force, and I used it to call on every connection to the earth, the sky, the wind…everythingI had.
Sure enough, both Darla and I healed, as our bodies rewrote themselves, with Kai and Oren right beside us when we erased the ravages of the flames that’d been so eager to devour us.
When I was done, Darla gasped awake, looking around like she’d just realized she’d been hurt. I had no idea smoke inhalation could be so powerful. I’d been struggling to even hold a thought when Kai first broke into my room.
“Ayla!” she cried, trying to sit up and wincing. I recognized her body’s reaction as she started to gag, and quickly managed to roll her onto her side so she could be sick.
“Hey, it’s gonna be okay,” I soothed while her body tried to rapidly get rid of what she’d both inhaled and healed all at once. That was one thing people didn’t realize about healing.Her lungs were no longer burning, but all that shed, burnt flesh, smoke, and ash needed to get outsomehow.
“Water,” I said, holding my hand out. At once, Oren offered a canteen, and I held it to Darla’s lips when she stopped vomiting, letting her drink little by little as my magic continued to slowly trickle into her. I’d gotten her out of the danger zone, but I needed to move more carefully so I didn’t put her into shock. Just like someone coming up too fast from being deep under water, or losing weight too fast, non-shifter bodies didn’t like extremes. Once a patient was far enough away from the edge, slow and steady always won the race.
“Hey,” Darla murmured after a few more beats, staring at me with an intense look in her normally playful gaze. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I never said it was,” I said, still concentrating on channeling my magic through her, but it was a pointless debate because it so obviouslywas. My curse had struck again, hurting alotof people this time, as well as the psychic.
“No, you didn’t,” she murmured, reaching up to cup my cheek. “You’re crying.”
Was I? Feeling my other cheek, I realized there were, indeed, warm, salty tears trailing down my face, carving lines through the soot stains. “It’s just from the smoke,” I said, not wanting to focus on myself. I’d already caused enough trouble.
“Ayla, I’m serious. This isn’t your fault. I don’t understand why you think every bad thing happening is because of you, but it’s not true.”
She didn’t know. I’d never told her about my curse. It wasn’t like my malignant shadow, my malevolent stalker, was a common enchantment. No, it took a great amount of power and hate to bring it into life, and even more to attach the malignance to a literal infant.
