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So, it was with a bang, and not a whimper that I felt the last of the sickness turn to ash and sink into the soldier’s blood. It didn’t move away this time, as his lifeforce sat still in his veins, so I pushed it out with my magic, banishing it so the evil never returned.
“Beginning chest compressions!”
I’d done it.I had done it.
But we were only halfway there. I’d pushed Mad Dog all the way to the edge, and it was time to pull him back from it.
I withdrew all of my magic back into myself, beckoning to take the poison with it, curling up the vile, insidious bleeding out of Mad Dog’s flesh and above his body in a cloud of roiling ash.
It couldn’t just stay there, though, and I couldn’t just let it drop to the floor. The poison I’d made was infused with my magic, supercharged to do what it never could on its own, and since it was born of me, I needed to dispose of it.
I allowed myself a singular moment to breathe, acutely aware the healer who’d climbed onto the table to straddle Mad Dog hadn’t stopped their chest compressions.
These medics were good. I’d hand them that.
Once the moment was over, I let my mouth fall open and called the poison home.
It was a peculiar feeling, the smoke of cursed death spiraling out of the air to tunnel down my throat. It was more of an idea of famine than a physical manifestation, and yet it still felt as if a cloud of biting flies was bludgeoning their way down my stomach, leaving sticky-black streaks of cloying ash across my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
I didn’t fight it, instead swallowing it down, letting it fill me. It tried to spread out as it had with Mad Dog, but I didn’t budge. I quarantined it right there in my middle, finally letting the warm, fizzing nature of my healing magic surround it.
This was like slipping into a pair of old, comfortable shoes long forgotten. There was no fight, no heated battle: just me doing what little ol’ Ayla did best.
I closed my eyes and drew the miasma of my healing ability tighter and tighter, until finally, the cloud of poison popped like a bubble and dissolved into nothing but cleansed energy.
“Five minutes have passed.”
I opened my eyes and looked down at Mad Dog, who was gray and completely still below me, aside from the jolts from the healer on top of him. To anyone else, he looked dead, and I supposed technically he was, but not to me.
I placed one clean hand over his mouth, then bent down and rested my forehead on his.
“It’s time to come back,” I murmured before pushing everything I had, every last drop into him.
My magic flooded through him for the second time that day, but this time there was no burning, no war. It was everything good stolen from him: comfort and warmth, growth and life. Restoration through and through without anything else to spoil it.
I felt it wash through Mad Dog like an unstoppable monsoon, washing away the gray, the black, the oil and ash, until nothing was left but the pale pink and green hues of new life. I plunged into his organs, coaxing them to heal their wounds, to take my energy instead. I flowed through his veins, willing them to take away everything that didn’t belong.
As I worked, I felt his own shifter healing begin to kick in, like a joyous friend ever so happy to see me, and it ran along after my spells, soothing what my magic couldn’t, encouraging the body to live, tothrive.
“His heart’s restarted! It’s beating on its own!”
This was it—the final swell. I couldfeelit.
With the last of my magic, I sewed up any lingering wounds, soothed any hurt flesh. I let go of every drop within me until Mad Dog jerked upright, coughing hard before gagging.
“What the fuck is happening?” he rasped, his face pale but rapidly filling with color.
Mad Dog was alive. Despite how hard my curse worked, despite its power, it hadn’t been able to steal another person from me.
I didn’t get a chance to answer him, however, as my eyes rolled up into my head and I dropped out of existence.
Chapter 19
Ayla
This time there was no crushing weight pinning me to the darkness, and I was able to awake by gently rising to the surface. I didn’t feel great, and I was afraid as soon as I opened my eyes, someone would tell me it hadn’t worked, and Mad Dog was somehow still dying.
“Hey, I think she’s waking up.”
