Page 50 of A Darkness So Sweet

Soon enough, they stopped and Gunnar pushed him down onto his knees. Clawed hands grabbed his, drawing his fingers to a wound that was warm and wet and vibrated with pain that he couldfeel.

The magic in him pushed out, shoving through his skin and into the body of the troll who had been injured. Though he couldn’t quite see her, he could feel that she’d been caught underneath a rock. It was her leg that he had in his hands. He could feel the broken bone and how it had cracked in so many places that, without magic, it never would have healed. The blood that coated his hand was from the skin that had torn beneath the weight of the rock.

But his magic knew what to do. It knit through flesh and bone, mending and weaving the form before him like clay. Though it would never be the same as a leg unaffected by such trauma, he knew it would be walkable for her. She would still be able to stride through the city without limping.

“Good enough,” Gunnar grunted, his hands on Ragnar’s shoulders once again. “More.”

The word echoed in his mind.More, more, more.

A child who had been pinned to the stone, his face scraped raw against the wall. A man who had pushed his family out of the way and the stone had landed on his torso where his guts had emptied into the cavity of his chest. An elderly woman crushed in her bed. But he hadn’t been able to save her. So many trolls, so little time.

They wandered through the city, depleting his magic until his hands were shaking. There were so many trolls injured, so few people like him who were gifted in flesh weaving. He stood after hours, his knees weak and his vision back to normal. Even his magic seemed to whimper inside of him when he came across another injured child.

“Get my supplies,” he said, his voice little more than a croak as he directed his brother. “The salves and herb packs—they will help. I can use them.”

He’d been on battlefields like this before. His magic simply could not do more, but he could convince the body to speed things along. With the right herbs, the right poultices, he could place them on the wounds and then speed up what it would have done already. It wasn’t the best option. Stitching together skin and then begging it to heal left scars that his regular magic would not leave.

Still, he had to try. There were more people who needed him.

Gunnar nodded, stretching out his back before turning down the street that would lead to their home. “Get some rest until I come back, brother. I won’t know where else to find you.”

Rest? He couldn’t rest. Not when he could hear all of their pain and still feel it sparking throughout his body. But when he tried to walk, he ended up slumped against a wall and sliding right down it. Maybe Gunnar was right. He needed to rest his body for a few moments before he could continue this mad dash to help his people.

Then they would find out what had happened. Because the mountain had been terrified and he had felt that in the very marrow of his bones.

He must have drifted off to sleep. But even resting, his mind ran through every single injury that he’d healed. All the people he might have soothed better if he hadn’t been so distracted by other screams that still echoed in his ears. He would think of this day for years to come. All the good he might have done and all the mistakes he certainly had made.

But then he blinked and his brother had returned, only he wasn’t alone.

A small human trailed along behind him, her eyes wide and her face streaked with dirt. Why was she always dirty? This human seemed to constantly get herself in situations where he had to plunk her into a river or a bath and pray that she wouldn’t be the small gremlin creature she always seemed to be.

But on the tail of that angry thought was relief. She was alive. She was okay. He’d been right about one of them.

Gunnar knelt in front of him. “You ready for more?”

The word continued to echo in his mind, and then his eyes met wide green ones over Gunnar’s shoulder. Ragnar had no idea what he must look like at this moment. Slumped against the wall, nearly drained of all his magic, crushed by the weight of all that he must still do. The horrified expression on her face was enough for him to know he must’ve looked worse than he thought he did.

But he still stood. All on his own. Even though his knees shook and his back ached and his vision skewed to the side. He still did it, and there was some pride in that.

“Where did you come from?” he grumbled, as a small arm wrapped around his waist.

“I was with Rota,” she replied as they started down the street. “She stopped by your home to drop off a gift from her mother. She said you helped her with her arthritis, and then the shakes happened. She barely saved me when a part of your ceiling came off and fell into the center of the parlor. Your home is... We’ll figure that out later.”

“That doesn’t explain where you came from.” Although it warmed his heart that Rota had been with her. The troll maidens were always helpful, even before they had their own families to join.

“She didn’t want me to be alone,” Maia murmured. “And then Gunnar came to the house hours later and when he said he was bringing you supplies, he thought I could help.”

“He thought you could help? You have no magic, fire hair.” He didn’t mean to spit the words at her, but he knew how they sounded.

Instead of flinching, her jaw seemed to set a little firmer. He watched a muscle bounce in her jaw as Gunnar gestured for them to come to yet another person propped against the side of a building. The troll woman was holding a hand against her leg where the muscle had been cut clean through by a stone. She was already weak. He could feel it. The pool of blood puddling around her was going to be the death of her before that wound.

Maia released him and cautiously knelt beside the woman with light blue skin who was so much larger than her. He stared down at the two of them, realizing that the troll woman laid out before them was everything he had once dreamt of. Perfect tusks, long black hair that was tangled around her face, that beautiful blue skin that he might have wanted to lick only weeks ago. But now? Now he was more stunned by the presence of those strangely small hands now smeared with blood as she pressed them against the woman’s wounds.

Maia looked up at him, her eyes wide. “I don’t know what to do, healer. But if I can help as your brother believes, then I will.”

She couldn’t help him. No one could. But Gunnar tossed his bag of herbs at him and nodded at the bag. “She’s a plant speaker, brother. Even if there isn’t a lot of magic in her, she can still convince that bag of goodies to do more than what you’ve got. It’ll last longer.”

The theory had merit. Sighing, he took out his needle and thread and got to work. The throbbing, angry vein that had been severed by the stone was difficult to knit back together, and he had to use more magic on that than he wanted to. Then he stitched together muscle and flesh until finally he reached into his bag and took out the smallest amount of yarrow to stop the bleeding further.

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