Page 225 of Between Despair and Hope

Elora stared at her mother for a moment before whipping around and stalking toward the smoking remains of the stable.

“I can do this, Em, if you want to go to the boy.”

“No. You can’t do this. Not yet. Feel the flow of blood? We need to slow it. Can you feel where it’s rushing?” Em asked, voice resolute. “Mend the muscle,” she instructed, and though I’d never seen what a human heart looked like, I imagined the exposed muscle I’d seen before on injured soldiers, my own injuries, and thought of the wound mending itself.

“We all can hate me later for my choices,” she whispered. “I had to make a decision.”

I knew Em would have done her best, choosing what would be most likely to save both of them.

“Oh, good,” she said, voice thick, as she noticed the blood slowing. “Thank the gods. I-I think his lung caved in, so if any air escaped it, just—make sure all the air is in his lungs and nowhere else. If you can even feel that.”

I nodded, noticing a small pocket of air, perhaps around his heart, and I used my own divinity to move it toward where I thought his lung was. Our two distinct gifts meshed together to help my friend, and Em let out a sob as his heartbeat grew steady.

“Now his lung,” she said, sliding our hands downward.

“Don’t I need to finish with the hole here?” I asked, eyeing the blood still trickling out of his wound.

“Not as important yet. Need him to get more air.”

We continued mending and repairing Dewalt’s chest, and Nor’s breathing calmed as his own breaths deepened.

“Is he going to wake up?” the novice asked, and I looked over at Em. Every instinct told me to stop what I was doing, to pluck the tiny pieces of offensive rock from her face, to swipe away the blood speckling her chest.

“I don’t know,” my wife replied. “You’re almost done. Move back up and seal the wound,” she commanded. She stood, calling for Elora, who refused to move from Theo’s side.

“Cyran, are you alright?” I heard Em ask as the boy in question wandered over, hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground.

“My brother is dead, so I ought to be. But so is my sister,” he said, and Em didn’t hesitate before folding him into an embrace. He bent toward her, allowing her to stroke his hair as she whispered soothing words to him. Injured as she was, I wanted her to take care of herself, but seeing her give her healing love to the child felt right.

She sat on the ground, cross-legged, and pulled Cyran down with her. “Help me so I can help Theo?” she asked, and the boy began to pluck the tiny shards of rock from her face, his elegant hands moving tenderly to help her. “Every single thing you’re going to feel is normal, and for these first few days and weeks, you’re going to feel them to their fullest extent,” she began, quietly for privacy, so I did my best not to listen to her comfort him as I finished mending Dewalt’s chest.

A few moments later, once the wound was healed and I sat back to look at my handiwork, she asked me if I was finished.

“I think so. His heart—it all feels right.”

She nodded. “Everything sound right?” she asked, and I nodded, realizing she was still saving her divinity. She rose, though Cyran had barely removed any rocks from her skin. But as she turned toward the stable and I joined her, we saw Elora collapse over Theo, sobs shaking her body. And when I listened for the boy’s heart, I found nothing.

“His heart stopped. Should I try to do what you did with—”

“We can try, but what I did with Elora—that wasn’t me.”

When I opened the rift into the stable, Emma bent to place a soothing hand on our daughter’s back, and she shrugged it off. I knelt beside the boy and put my hands on his head where the blood had pooled on the ground, but my divinity didn’t respond. No humming desire to fix rippled through me, and I glanced over at Em as she knelt beside Elora.

“Nothing to heal?”

“No.” I shook my head as Em’s lip quivered, and she traced a hand down Elora’s back, and this time, our girl bowed into her touch.

An hour later, I had lured Em into the empty bathtub at the estate to gently finish picking pieces of rock out of her face and chest. She focused on her leg while I took care of the rest, and we quietly told each other about the events which had brought us here. The circumstances which led to us burying two bodies within the copse of trees beside the dormitory. What had caused Emma to say goodbye to yet another parental figure, and Elora to cry over the grave of her friend.

I’d rifted the rest of us back to the estate, and the only reason Emma sat calmly for me was so she’d have free access to her divinity once more; we planned to set out to the capital to heal anyone injured in the attack. Dewalt was still sleeping, and Cyran and I had struggled to get him into a bed. His lean body was far heavier than expected. Nor wanted to stay with him and had already retrieved supplies to cleanse his skin of blood.

Watching a bead of Em’s own blood trickle down her face caused a surge of anger to flood through me. I was kicking myself for not expecting some sort of surprise attack like this from Declan. All the preparation I’d done, all the soldiers I’d sent to both Lamera and Nara’s Cove, had been useless when he created those wicked winged creatures. And the dragons Em had made had clearly given him the idea.

I’d been particularly shocked by the revelation that Nor was Declan’s child, and Em had been just as stricken by our siphon surprise. Her instinct was immediately to hide it, to forbid Elora from telling anyone. But after taking a moment to relax with me, she realized because of how she’d handled things with Elora in the past, she had to let it be our daughter’s decision. Agency over her own life was something we both desired for Elora, and, despite the inclination to protect her, to hide her away, if Emma took that choice away from her again the damage would be irreparable.

“Do you feel any different?” I asked.

Though neither of us said it in so many words, Declan’s fixation with wanting Em’s blood made us wonder what kind of favor he had planned to seek from the gods. Why would he need a favor when he could just kill her? What did he want? If he was dead, was this all over? Cyran would rule Folterra, and we’d have an alliance with them for the first time since the failed one over five centuries before.

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