Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Pain floods my torso from throat to gut. I sputter a breath.
My legs buckle as if they’ve come detached from the rest of me, and I slump down the column to the floor.
My chin lands in a sticky pool. Blood—my blood. Coursing out over the floor with every lurching thud of my heart.
My lips part, but the next breath I strain to suck in feels like pure fire. I think the blade that’s stabbed me has punctured my lung.
I try to lift my head, to look to see who launched the attack, but at the same moment a blow shoves the knife deeper into my back.
My whole body convulses. Fresh agony lances through my chest.
The puddle beneath me spreads. I can’t tell whether the metallic flavor filling my mouth is from within or without.
With another shock of pain, the blade yanks free. Something hard—the hilt of the knife?—smacks into the back of my head.
My temple knocks against the floor, and my thoughts spin away from me.
Ivy! Julita yells. Ivy! Call for help! Make some noise! Stab this asshole with one of your knives! Do something.
I can’t, though. My brain is rattling through my skull and my innards are in pieces.
I can already feel the blood loss leaching the strength from my limbs. My fingers twitch, miles from any of my weapons.
My lungs can barely drag in any air at all. I struggle to push a sound from my throat and only spew liquid that tastes unnervingly fleshy.
There’s no one around to see. That’s why I picked this route.
I can’t tell if my attacker is still there. My awareness is dwindling to the boundaries of my body—to the pain… and the flash of frantic magic whipping through it.
My power wriggles through me, tugging at me, pleading.
It could seal the wound; it could set me right. The pain would go away.
But my dimming mind keeps just enough conviction to refuse.
My eyelids droop, and I see Ma shivering in her bed as her body failed. Her skin stretched pale and thin over her hollowed cheeks. The glimmer of life fading from her glazed eyes.
I felt the same call then. I felt the surge of power thrumming through my veins, and I knew I could save her.
So of course I did.
I placed my small hands on my mother’s clammy arm and called the magic up through my soul—the soul I didn’t know was broken yet. I welcomed the power into me and from me to her.
Yes, remember that. Remember, even as the magic nags at me now.
Remember the rush of joy when her shivers stopped and her eyes cleared. Remember the healthy flush returning to her cheeks, the first steady breath in days that she dragged into her lungs.
Remember the thump that reverberated through the air from behind me.
I see that too—the image that met me when I whipped my seven-year-old frame around.
Linzi, slumped to the floor with her wooden doll fallen from her slack fingers. My little sister, as still and empty as that fucking doll.
I killed her. I stole the life right out of her.
I should have known better. Magic doesn’t come from nothing. There’s always a sacrifice.
And the riven sacrifice again and again and again.
I can’t heal without hurting. I can’t conjure joy without inflicting sorrow.
My power flails at me again, but I tighten my resistance. I will not make the same mistake.
My life isn’t worth that much. It isn’t worth someone else’s, whoever’s future my brutal magic would steal.
I was a monster back then. I won’t be now.
I won’t be.
My eyelids slide all the way closed. The world is darkness and pain.
But even the pain is getting fuzzy, as if I’m drifting away from it. From everything. Into the black void that will swallow me up and deposit me at the feet of the godlen.
If Julita is still raving at me, her voice has faded into the distance too. My magic can’t hurt me any more than I’ve already been wrecked.
It’s all over now. My whole wretched—
A resounding voice cuts through my dwindling thoughts. Ah, my wayward rogue. What mess have you gotten yourself into now?
It’s not Julita—the voice is nothing like hers. It’s everywhere and nowhere, echoing through my veins, reverberating into my bones, speaking from inside me and outside me and yet neither all at once.
Every particle in my body goes still and silent, like the figures standing at attention for the king this afternoon. Recognizing an authority far beyond even the man who rules my country.
Who… who are you? I say and yet don’t, a wisp of a thought in a final burst of coherence.
This doesn’t appear to be an ideal time for introductions. Consider me a concerned benefactor. Now why don’t you rouse that power of yours and bind yourself back together.
I can’t tell if my body actually flinches or if it’s only my mind that recoils. A wail of wordless denial rises up inside me.
Ah, the sublime voice says. Mortals and their fears. You’ve been incredibly honorable about the whole thing, but really, if there’s a moment to set those qualms aside, this is it. You do realize you’re a minute or two from dying, don’t you?
My next response is also wordless, something along the lines of not giving a shit.
Stubborn too. It’s a good thing I appreciate that quality. I’d really prefer not to lose what we’ve already accomplished here, so what if I lend a small helping hand?
My answer could probably be best expressed as, Huh?
I’ll direct the power for you. Just a little whiff of magic, enough to hold you together until help arrives. And I’ll aim the backlash at the one who attacked you. You can’t claim there’s any unfairness to that consequence, I presume.
Direct the power? I wouldn’t even know how.
The voice can obviously read my thoughts even when I’m not specifically thinking at it. I know how. All I need is your agreement. You want to live, don’t you? That’s all you have to tell me.
The darkness is thickening around me. My mind has turned to sludge.
I don’t know how to tell the voice anything, but just for an instant, the words provoke a flicker of hope. A glimmer of light and the desire to reach toward it.
There was more I wanted to do…
Excellent. Let’s try to avoid any future stabbings, though, because I have to say that…
The voice washes away with a final wave of black that rolls over my mind and drowns every remaining thought.
Familiar voices are babbling around me, colliding and interrupting each other.
“Fuck. All that blood.”
“Who would have—is she even still breathing?”
“Loosen her gown! I need to see the wound.”
“Ivy… I’ll bring a medic.”
Footsteps pound into the distance. The floor is hard and warmly wet beneath the side of my face. The wetness has soaked through my shoulder.
Everything aches.
Fabric shifts against my back with a sharp sting. A groan bursts from my lips.
“She’s alive!”
“You’re hurting her.”
“I’ve got to stabilize her as much as I can. It’s a clean cut, but not bleeding as badly as—”
My skirt rustles, and the sound of tearing silk rattles into my ears. Something presses against the stinging spot, making it throb harder.
I gasp, and my eyes pop open. I find myself gazing blurrily at three sets of crouched legs.
“There’s our fighter.” That’s Benedikt’s voice, somehow managing to sound both lighthearted and raw. He touches the side of my face. “We’re getting you help, Ivy.”
“Hold this,” Stavros orders in a ragged tone I’m not used to, turning to the third guy. “Firm but not forceful.”
The former general leans closer, his handsome face swimming into view when I shift my eyes. I’m afraid to move any other part of my body.
Afraid of how much it’ll hurt… or how much it might not.
Stavros’s hand jerks down his front in the gesture of the divinities. “Who stabbed you?” he demands in a low, savage voice that could be a weapon all on its own. “Who fucking did this, Ivy?”
It’s Alek’s voice that wavers from where he’s now pressing the balled cloth to my wound. “I wouldn’t have thought Anya would go this far…”
Benedikt snorts. His sardonic edge could cut stone. “Not when it might mean getting blood-splatter on her pretty dresses.”
Stavros emits a strangled growl. “Let Ivy tell us.”
But I have nothing to tell them. I didn’t see the person who stabbed me. They never spoke.
I couldn’t offer a single detail about my attacker, except…
My first attempt at speaking turns into nothing more than a croak. I swallow the blood-tainted saliva pooled in my mouth and try again. “The wind…”
I sense more than see the guys exchanging a look. Julita understands, though.
Of course, she was right there with me during the attack, like she always is.
It must have been the same scoundrel who murdered me.
If we find out who attacked you, we can unravel the whole conspiracy!
As long as… Are you going to be okay, Ivy?
For a few minutes there… You seemed to blank out completely, and then I did too.
But something feels different now, like you’ve pulled through.
I don’t know how to answer her. I’m not sure I could form the words anyway.
Frantic footsteps come racing back toward us.
“Here!” Casimir calls out, his gentle voice gone taut. “Please hurry. I don’t know—it looks awful.”
Alek and Benedikt draw back as a woman in a medic’s white robe kneels at my side. The hazy thought passes through my head that white may be serene Elox’s preferred color, but the dedicats of the godlen of healing must go through an awful lot of laundry. She’s going to get my blood all over her.
Stavros shifts over to give the woman room, his real hand coming to rest on my hair. I think I feel a brief tremor ripple through it, but that can’t be right.
The medic sucks in a horrified breath and touches my back on either side of my wound. “I’ll do whatever I can…”
She pauses, and a tickle of warmth flows through my flesh. The power inside me quivers in resonance with her magic, but it isn’t clamoring for me to use it anymore.
An ache that has nothing to do with my injuries forms in my stomach.
The medic’s next remark sends the ache burning deeper. “The cut doesn’t go as deep as I thought from looking at the amount of blood. Somehow it didn’t quite puncture her lung.”
She stands. “I’ve patched her up well enough that she can be moved. We need to get her to the infirmary for the rest of the treatment.”
“Will she make it?” Alek murmurs.
There’s no mistaking the confusion in the medic’s voice. “I think… I think she will. You must have found her just in time.”
My eyelids flutter shut again.
Stavros’s hand slides to my shoulder. “I’m going to be as careful with you as I can be, Ivy. You can curse me out later for however much it ends up hurting.”
His tone has gone oddly tender. I’d wonder about that or the gingerness with which he lifts me into his brawny arms, but behind my closed eyes, my mind is whirling far beyond even the throbbing agony of my partly healed wounds.
A chill has wrapped around my abdomen. I was dying, but I survived. My magic seems satisfied.
What under the gods’ gaze have I done?
And who paid for it in my place?