Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55602 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55602 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Energy sluices through me and my movements snap against the lingering bonds.
Quin staggers out of the miasma. He loses his grip on the cane and I catch his sagging weight, arm around his waist. He presses his bundle to my chest, struggling to speak. “I have . . . immortal bone.”
His head droops, but I’ll—
“Heal my people first.”
I shake my head, already trying to rummage in the cloak. He grips my wrist. It’s a feeble hold, but the weight of his meaning is not feeble at all. “Promise me.”
Frustration warms my limbs and I help him hobble back to the horse. He manages to pull himself up with me shoving and steering him into the saddle, but his limbs slacken as we ride and I clench my thighs around him, one arm firm at his waist. “Hold on, hold on, hold on.”
His response is weak, scratchy; I spur the horse on harder and faster. “Stay awake!”
My arm crushes around his middle, I jam myself against his back, I bite his shoulder. His hiss is barely audible. I dig my heels into the horse, and bite him over and over—
His wispy grunts of pain stop.
His body goes limp.
“Wake up. Now.” I gallop on in a thick cloud of road dust and cry out for help, and suddenly Bastion is there, catching the king’s tumbling weight as he falls from the horse. Heart jammed in my throat, I help carry him into one of the empty cottages and lay him on a raised bed. My voice comes out strangled. “I said wake up!”
He’s unconscious, but breathing. I take his pulse. He’s deeply traumatised from an hour of unbearable pain. His body has locked down. “No, no, no, no. Come on, Quin. Wake up.”
“Is it bad?” Bastion asks, eyes narrowed on the king.
I read his pulse again. Bile races up my throat and I shake my head.
“Cael?”
Words choke up my throat.
“When will he wake?”
Will he wake, is the question.
“He promised to be the last to receive treatment.”
I grit my teeth, remove a sliver of immortal bone from the bundle Quin collected and thrust the rest to Bastion with instructions to prepare it.
He pauses beside me. “He’s being hunted. It’s only a matter of time. It’s better this way.”
“Go,” I yell at him.
“I’ll make sure to keep this quiet,” he says on the way out.
He strides off, and I layer a blanket over Quin. “You’re not allowed to die,” I tell him and watch his face for any flickering movement under his closed eyelids. When it doesn’t come, I bring my mouth to his ear, “I don’t allow it.”
I leave him with this vow and find that Bastion has sent one of his men to guard Quin’s cottage. Summoning all my concentration, I spend the next hours making Quin’s ordeal worthwhile. Immortal bone will heal anything. Anything except death.
I help the daughter whose mother I couldn’t save first. When life blooms again inside her and colour touches her cheeks, her eyes meet mine coldly before she turns her body away. My chest aches. At least now she can cry.
Olyn tells me to heal the others before her, but I insist. I need her to help me. It takes a lot of energy to channel healing through the body, and though I’ve learned how to do much more than I once could, I’m still one vitalian after all.
“We can stretch the reach of the bone. Make a broth with it. Let them drink it.”
“A crude technique.” I sigh.
“Don’t look down on other methods.”
“It’ll draw out the healing process. They’ll still have scales for days, rashes might take weeks to—”
“Yes. It will be uncomfortable. But it will reach ten times as many.”
Ten times as many.
There’s no question.
I swallow. “Still not enough for everyone.”
“But it will help the worst cases and half the others.”
“Ration the broth according to progression of the illness.”
Olyn nods.
“Don’t tell the others there isn’t enough. Tell them . . . they can only receive the cure at a certain point or it won’t work.”
“I understand.”
Heavily, I press on. The family of four, who are overjoyed when my spell takes away their scales and they can breathe easily again. The farmer is second to last, and upon hauling in a healthy lungful of air, he shouts out his thanks to the heavens.
I look over with a furrowed brow at him leaping out of bed. “It wasn’t the heavens that saved you.”
He flushes and keeps a tight hand on the pouch at his waist. “How is your wife?” he asks meekly.
I’m slammed with the memory of ‘pregnant’ veiled Quin. Then slammed again with the image of Quin unconscious, tucked in blankets. “My wife . . . can overcome anything.”
“Your baby is healthy then?”
I swallow. “Mm. His mother’s good looks and my good mind.”
For a moment I think I hear a laugh, and imagine Quin coming up behind me. “Good mind? Muddled, you mean.” I jerk around, but the space behind me is quiet, still. No one is there. I’m exhausted. My mind is playing tricks.