Page 103 of Staff of Nightfall

She relayed everything that happened. Her fight with Kirven. How Kirven tried to kill Regulus and she passed out, but something had happened to the Staff of Nightfall. How it seemed to not be working properly and be causing Kirven pain. Kirven and Nolan taking Regulus. She hung her head.

“I’m sorry, sir. I failed.”

“You gave the king a chance to escape,” Beale said. “The king is alive because of you. You did your duty. And you tried. And survived, which is more than I can say for...far too many of our men.” He dragged his hand down the side of his face. “Captain Russell accompanied the king. Lieutenant Antar is gravely wounded and may lose his leg, possibly his life. Captain Matthews and Lieutenant Breck are dead. Five guards sustained minor injuries, five are critically wounded, ten are dead, and seven are missing, suspected desertion. Best guess, they panicked when attacked by a sorcerer, ran with the guests, and are too afraid to come back.”

Adelaide nodded. The punishment for abandoning your post was at minimum thirty lashes and two days in the stocks without food or clothes.

“That leaves us with only twenty-five guards.” Beale clasped his hands together. “And the threat is still out there. So I need you to pull yourself together, Belanger. We don’t stand a chance without your help.”

“Where are the wounded?” She sounded more tired than she had hoped. “I can help them.”

Beale perked up at that. “Most are in the infirmary, at the beginning of the hall.” He stood. “Lieutenant Antar is next door.”

He led them into Antar’s room. Antar lay on his bed, his damp hair plastered to his head. He muttered incoherently under his breath. Blood soaked through a thick bandage wrapped around the top of his right leg. Beale moved to unwrap the leg, but Adelaide stopped him.

“I don’t need to see it.”

And truthfully, she didn’t want to. She held her hand over the bandage. Her magic flowed out and into Antar, and she got a sense of his wound. The wide cut went deep, partway through the bone. A sensation she hadn’t encountered before surprised her until she realized what it was. An infection was already spreading through his body.

“I don’t know if I can heal this,” she admitted. “Why didn’t they amputate already?”

“He insisted they wait until morning. I think he was hoping to die first.”

She focused on mending the bone, the torn muscles and severed veins and nerves. Antar stopped muttering and his breathing deepened. The infection was harder—she had never dealt with that before. She tried to kill it, as if burning the infection out. When she had done everything in her power, she turned to Beale.

“He’s technically healed, but I don’t know if he will live. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“I understand. Thank you for trying.” Beale led the way to the infirmary, and she spent the next hour healing the guards. By the end, she felt more like a ghost than a person.

“I need to sleep,” she mumbled. “I have to...to...have to regill. Refain.” She shook her head. “Regain my energy. Wait for my magic to rurn...return.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Beale looked like he thought she might topple over at any moment. “We need you at your best, Belanger. Get some sleep.”

She fell asleep within moments of collapsing on the bed. She only barely registered that Dresden had followed her and settled back into a chair. Somehow, his presence made the ache in her soul a little more bearable. But Regulus’ absence next to her felt like a hole in her heart as she slipped into a deep sleep.

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LIGHT WAS STEALINGinto the room in the cracks around the door when Adelaide bolted awake with a scream trapped in her lungs. She arched her back and flailed her arms and legs but couldn’t break free of the bone-crushing pain pummeling her body. She rolled off the bed and hit the ground hard. Dresden jumped off the chair and grabbed her shoulders as she pulled in a wheezing, strangled breath.

“Breathe!” He dodged her wildly swinging hands. “What’s wrong?”

She found her voice, and a single word leapt from her throat in a shriek. “Regulus!”

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