Chapter 5 Jade #2
I pour everything I have into Stellan, refining and transforming and giving back better than I received. The earth spike crumbles as his body rejects it, healed flesh pushing out the foreign material. Within minutes, the gaping wound has become pink new skin, tender but whole.
Stellan's eyes flutter open and stares at me like he's never seen me before. "What did you do?"
"I don't know." My shakes a little as I sit back. "I just... gave you what you needed."
The healing energy doesn't just flow into Stellan.
It bleeds outward through the bonds, every drop of transformed essence rippling through our connection like a shockwave.
Rumi's black threads flare bright enough to light the canyon, absorbing the surge and redirecting it outward in a wave that sends three loyalists flying off their feet.
Ambrose's contracts snap taut with borrowed power, the green light blazing as his barriers become walls of solid force that pin two more attackers against the canyon stone.
Harlow uses the distraction to slip between planes entirely, reappearing behind the remaining fighters and dropping them before they even register he's moved.
The last few loyalists break and run, scrambling up the canyon walls. Skye's essence tracks their retreat until they're well beyond range, and only then does the tension in his shoulders ease.
The canyon goes quiet. Bodies litter the ground, some unconscious, some not, and the smell of scorched earth and blood hangs thick in the air.
"Demons aren't what the Council taught." Skye’s mutters, almost in awe as he looks over at Stellan. "They're not parasites. They're transformers. They refine essence, change it, improve it."
"He healed me." Stellan's hand comes up to touch the new skin where the wound was. "I should be dead, and he healed me." I look down at my hands, covered in his blood and the blood of the attackers I killed. My claws are still extended, still stained with evidence of what I did.
"I killed them. I killed people."
"You protected us." Stellan's grip on my hand tightens. "You protected me." Rumi crouches beside us, his presence warm despite the darkness threading through his aura, and tells me I did what any of them would have done.
The weight of it settles on my shoulders.
Three lives ended by my claws, my hunger, my choice.
I wait for the guilt to crash over me, the horror of what I've become, but it doesn't. They threatened my mates.
They hurt my Stellan. I would do it again.
I would kill a hundred of them, a thousand, to keep the people I love safe. Maybe that should scare me. It doesn't.
We make camp quickly after that, finding a better position in a cave system off the main canyon.
Stellan falls asleep against my chest almost immediately, his body forcing the rest his stubbornness wouldn't allow.
His fire burns steady beneath his skin, the wound fully closed, but I keep my hand pressed flat against it anyway.
Skye sits down beside us after the wards are set. He leans back against the cave wall, arms crossed over his chest, staring at the far wall for a while.
"I didn't know I could do that," I say eventually.
"Neither did I." He's quiet for a moment.
"I've read everything I could get my hands on in Mother Nature's library about demons.
Everything the old Praestes records say.
None of it mentioned healing. They all called it parasitic.
Every single source." He looks at me, there's something raw in his expression.
"They were wrong about you. About all of it.
And I'm the Praestes. I'm supposed to be the keeper of knowledge, and I didn't know. "
"Nobody knew."
"That's not good enough." His jaw tightens.
"Three books of records. Centuries of Praestes documentation.
And not one of them thought to ask whether demons could give back what they took.
They just assumed the worst and wrote it down as fact, and every Praestes after them believed it.
" His hand finds my arm. "I won't make that mistake.
When we get through this, I'm rewriting every record. Starting with yours."
Something loosens in my chest. Stellan saved me by loving me. But Skye is offering something different. He's offering to change the world's memory of what I am.
"Thank you," I say.
He leans over and presses a kiss to my temple, lingering there for a breath before pulling back. "Get some rest. Both of you."
I run my hands over Stellan's healed wound again and again, needing to feel that the skin is whole, that the blood has stopped, that he's here and alive and not bleeding out in my arms. "I almost lost you," I whisper.
"You didn't." He catches my hands and stills them. "You saved me."
"I was so scared. When I saw you fall, I thought I was going to watch you die, and I couldn't, I can't—" He pulls me close, and I bury my face in his neck, breathing in the smoke and heat of him. His arms wrap around me tight, his fire warming the cold places my terror has left behind.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says against my hair. "I'm right here, demon. I'm not leaving you."
"Promise me you won't do that again. Promise me you won't leave me."
"I promise." His hands stroke down my back. "I promise, Jade. I'm yours. I'm not going anywhere." I hold him tighter and let myself believe it. His heartbeat is steady against my chest, his fire warming me from the inside out, and I close my eyes and let the sound of it ground me.
Somewhere in the cave behind us, Ambrose's voice cuts through the quiet. "We have a problem."
I lift my head from Stellan's neck. Ambrose stands near the cave entrance, something glowing green between his hands, a contract pulsing with urgent light. Skye moves toward him immediately, asking what kind of problem, and Ambrose's face goes pale in the contract's glow.
"Phoenix Sanctuary. They're under attack."