Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Pinpricks of pain dotted his chest, the first sensation in the hazy sea he drifted on.
“…waking up.”
“…sedate again?”
“No need. It will not matter...”
Fieran clawed toward wakefulness. Some sense was prickling along his skin, telling him he needed to wake up. He let just a hint of his magic flow through his veins, burning away whatever sedative they’d used on him all the quicker.
“Turn on the machine.”
There was the click of a switch. A whirring noise.
Then agony stabbed downward through those points of pain and clawed deep and sharp within his chest, as if determined to rip his heart out of his body.
No, not his heart. His magic.
His magic lurched within him, wanting to attack. But some deep-seated instinct told him to cling to his magic, pulling it back and locking it within his chest. It was his magic. This thing couldn’t have it.
But that pain was still digging and clawing like a cat caught beneath his ribs.
Fieran snapped his eyes open. Brightness blared down at him. He blinked rapidly, gasping in pain and grappling to keep hold of his magic.
The brightness solidified into lights set directly above him, the rest of the room a stark white. Even the two men standing on either side of him wore white lab coats, white caps, and white masks tied over their faces. Even their gloves were white, although one was stained with fresh, red blood.
“He’s awake.” The white-garbed man on the right looked at the other rather than at Fieran.
“Ramp up the power.” The man on the left said the words with an utterly flat, unbothered voice.
The other man leapt to obey the orders, pushing a lever forward on a machine next to him.
A large cable of wire extended from that machine, suspended over where Fieran lay, before branching into many smaller wires directly above him. These were stabbed into various points on his chest, taped into place like hypodermic needles transfusing blood.
Except these wires were trying to take instead of give.
The machine whirred louder, and the digging increased, as if that strange something was trying to carve Fieran’s magic out of his chest.
He bit down on a cry of pain, arching his back as he fought to hold his magic inside of himself. He was pinned down, restraints tight around his wrists, ankles, and even a strap across his upper chest. The cold metal of a surgical table pressed against his bare back.
This was just like that magic-stealing machine he’d fought under that airship, except this machine wasn’t trying to take magic he’d already unleashed. No, it was trying to steal the very essence of his power straight from his body.
And if it succeeded, he’d never survive it.
He glanced around, searching for any way he could escape, and his gaze caught on a figure lying on the next table over.
Dacha was still unconscious, his eyes closed and his hair trailing over the side of the table.
Strapped down at his wrists, ankles, and across his shoulders, he’d been stripped of his clothes except for his underwear, and a mess of wires was attached to his chest. But the machine next to him was dark, not yet on.
No. Dacha couldn’t die too. Fieran wouldn’t let it happen.
“Dacha.” Fieran’s voice was a croak between his groans of pain. He struggled to hold on to his magic, as if in a tug-of-war with the machine trying to tear it from him.
“He’s still fighting us. The machine can’t get a grip on his magic.” The man on the right shifted, fiddling with the dials and levers on the machine next to him.
The man on the left turned to a tray, then picked up a scalpel. He inspected it for just a moment before, without any kind of flicker in his eyes to signal his intent, he swiped that scalpel across Fieran’s ribs.
Fieran cried out and yanked on the restraints, his magic lashing out to protect him. The machine snatched his magic, sucking it along the wires, greedily tearing it from him. Something shredded within him, and he screamed.
One of Dacha’s fingers twitched, but he didn’t wake.
“I told you it would work.” The man’s voice was no longer merely flat. Instead, a self-satisfied note rang in his tone. “Even the magic of the great elven warriors is no match for our invention.”
The other man glanced from Fieran to the dials on the machine, as if worried the magic would be too much.
Fieran gritted his teeth around another scream. That was it. His magic was too much. His only chance—Dacha’s only chance—was for Fieran to stop fighting and give the machine everything it wanted.
With as deep a breath as he could manage past the agony, he released his magic and instead shoved it outward with a yell. “Dacha!”
The wires glowed white-blue with the force of his magic, the machine whining instead of whirring.
On the other table, Dacha stirred, his head tilting. But his eyes remained closed.
“He’s waking up!”
“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 and wrong.
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 wrong with 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.”