Page 57 of Storm to Victory
“Get the sedative!”
“More power!”
The shouts blurred with the pain and the fiery light of his magic. The smell of lightning filled the air, punctuated by the acrid scent of burning metal.
The men in the white coats were lunging, one toward Dacha with needle in hand and the one with the scalpel toward Fieran. He raised the scalpel, as if he intended to slit Fieran’s throat before he destroyed their machine and them with it.
With another scream, Fieran shouted with all the trust and terror of a child whose father had never let him down. “Dacha!”
Dacha’s eyes snapped open. He swept a single glance around the room, his gaze locking on the men in white lab coats. “Get your hands off my son.”
His magic erupted in a searingly white blaze of power, so bright Fieran had to squeeze his eyes shut against it.
There were two screams, both ending abruptly.
The machine beside Fieran exploded, sending shards of metal throughout the room. Fieran gasped at the relief as the clawing ended, even though pain remained. His magical senses felt raw and scorched andwrong.
He blinked rapidly, gasping and shuddering. Sometime in the past few seconds, he must have sliced through the restraints with his magic since they fell off him, severed.
Then Dacha was at his side, ripping what was left of the scorched and blackened wires from his chest. “Sason. Fieran. Are you all right?” His other hand pressed to the gash across Fieran’s abdomen.
Fieran moaned at the rush of pain from the pressure. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” He started to push himself onto an elbow, but a wave of dizziness swept from his head, stabbed in his chest, and sent his stomach lurching. “Not okay. Gonna barf.”
He barely had the presence of mind to lean over the opposite side of the table from where Dacha stood before he vomited onto the floor. He gagged and heaved for several moments until nothing more would come up.
Even when he managed to get his gag reflex under control, his stomach still churned with nausea.
He pressed a hand over his wound and lay back down on the table, catching his breath.
Easing closer to the table again, Dacha rested a hand on Fieran’s forehead. “You do not look well, sason.”
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t fine. Something was deeply wrongwith his magic in a way he couldn’t describe. But he felt it in the ache in his chest, the painful hitch every time he breathed, in the wooziness that wouldn’t go away. He started to push himself onto an elbow again. “We need to move. Someone must have heard that.”
“Even if they did, I do not think screams and loud noises are unusual coming from this room. We have time.” Dacha moved his hand from Fieran’s forehead to the gash, his hands somewhat shaky. “We need to tend this before we go anywhere. I will see if I can find bandages.”
As Dacha turned to move away, Fieran gripped his wrist, stopping him. His stomach churned even worse, but he worked to get his thoughts in order. “No. No, bandages and stitches won’t be enough.” He didn’t want to say the next part. But he could feel how deep his wound was, and he had been fighting this war too long not to know what they’d face the moment they stepped from this room. “You’re going to have to cauterize it.”
“No.” Dacha’s tone was short, sharp, as was the shake of his head. “No. I will fetch bandages.”
Fieran didn’t release his dacha’s wrist, holding him there. “We don’t know what we’ll face once we leave this room, but odds are we’ll have a fight on our hands. I can’t go around leaving a blood trail, and I’ll just tear open stitches. No, you’ll need to cauterize it. I’d do it myself, but I can’t burn myself with my own magic. It has to be you.”
Dacha was still shaking his head. “No.”
“Please, Dacha.” Fieran waited until Dacha finally met his gaze, holding it. “We need to get out of here and find Pip. And Uncle Edmund. I can’t worry about reopening a wound while rescuing her.”
Dacha’s shoulders sagged, his head hanging for a moment. He gave a shuddering exhale, and when he lifted his head, his expression had gone blank and hard. Magic laced one of his fingers as he sliced off the end of the leather strap that had been around Fieran’s wrist. He held it out to Fieran. “Bite this.”
Fieran took the leather, stuck it in his mouth, and bit down, bracing himself. This time there would be no healing magic. No numbing morphine. Whatever sedative that remained in his system would burn away.
All in all, the next few minutes would be highly unpleasant. Hopefully not as unpleasant as the previous few minutes had been, but he couldn’t guarantee that.
Dacha gripped Fieran’s hand and leaned an elbow onto Fieran’s chest, effectively pinning him down. Magic wreathed the fingers of his other hand, which he held poised over Fieran’s wound.
He gave one deep breath, his muscles tensing, his grip tightening on Fieran’s hand. But he hesitated, just holding his hand a few inches above the gash.
Fieran squeezed Dacha’s hand and spoke as best he could around the leather strap. “I trust you, Dacha. It’s all right.”
Dacha drew in another deep breath, his jaw working. Then he pressed his magic-wreathed fingers onto Fieran’s wound.
