Chapter 8
T he infirmary passage opened before we reached it.
Nessa stood between the parted roots with her flint knife already drawn. Her gaze moved over the gold markings visible above Xandros' collar before settling on the healer.
“You may examine the wounds.” She stepped aside. “No power enters either patient without my approval.”
The fae healer inclined his head.
Xandros followed him.
A second wall had grown around Rhian and Torren’s beds. Thick walls sealed the chamber from the rest of the infirmary, leaving one narrow opening behind us. Thornwardens filled the passage before it closed again.
Amber light moved through the ancient bark.
Rhian lay beneath it.
His face had lost more color while I was gone. Sweat dampened the curls at his temples, and his lips had begun to pale. His chest rose and fell beneath the linen, stopped, then he dragged in another shallow breath.
I reached him before anyone crossed half the chamber.
Bramble left my shoulders and climbed onto the bed. He pressed his nose beneath Rhian’s chin and curled against his neck.
Fear tightened our bond when Rhian failed to stir beneath him.
Xandros stopped across the bed while the healer moved to Rhian’s wounded side.
“How long since the attack?” He asked.
“Just before the rift opened. A smaller Marred attacked him first, but the corruption only appeared within the last hour,” I told him, trembling fingers holding Rhian’s hand.
Nessa peeled back the linen to show them the thin vein of indigo curved beneath Rhian’s lowest rib, two branches already climbing toward his chest.
The healer raised his hands in question, waiting for Nessa’s approval before stepping closer. She nodded. He held his hand above the damaged flesh. Gold gathered along his fingers and spread into a narrow band around the wound.
Rhian’s body stiffened. I caught his wrist, and his pulse stumbled beneath my fingertips.
Caelan stepped forward, his body braced for a fight.
“Look!”
The indigo branches stopped moving.
A breath escaped me, and Caelan’s muscles relaxed, but the healer’s face remained drawn. Sweat gathered along his temples as he forced the corruption back toward the wound.
“Can you remove it?” Caelan sounded hopeful for the first time since the attack.
“No.” The gold around his fingers flickered. “I can only contain what has already spread.”
“How long will it hold?” Nessa monitored Rhian’s pulse, the vines on her arms glowing in time with his heartbeat.
His jaw tightened. “The corruption behaves differently in every body. For some, containing it can buy them weeks. For others, hours. I will continue to check on him. If it moves again, I may be able to pull it back.”
May .
My stomach twisted around the word.
The healer withdrew his hand. A faint ring of gold remained around the wound, holding the dark veins in place. Nessa pressed her palm above the indigo branch. Verdant light moved beneath her skin and sank toward Rhian’s wound.
The dark vein brightened.
Her power thinned before it reached the damaged flesh, swallowed so quickly the light vanished beneath her hand.
Nessa pulled back. “His Wild should be healing him. The wound is closed enough for his body to begin repairing itself, but every time his power reaches the corruption, the corruption burns through it.”
Xandros looked from the fading vines along Rhian’s arm to the gold still circling the wound.
“It does the same to our Everlight.” His gaze followed the dark vein beneath Rhian’s ribs. “The corruption consumes whatever living power is sent against it, then uses the weakness left behind to spread.”
A sharp crack came from the neighboring bed.
My attention snapped toward Torren.
The woven supports beneath Torren shuddered. Indigo crawled from his blackened markings into the nearest length of living wood.
The grain darkened beneath him.
Nessa reached for Torren, but another support tore itself free from the bed before the corruption could climb farther into the Mother Tree’s living weave.
She was cutting away the infected path to protect everything beyond it.
The last support beneath his shoulder snapped.
Torren arched from the bed as corruption blazed through the blackened vines along his arm. Green light had already begun spreading beneath Nessa’s markings when Xandros caught her wrist.
“Don’t. It’s reaching for your power.”
Beneath Torren’s skin, the indigo veins shifted toward her raised hand. They pushed hard against his flesh until the skin along his collarbone split open.
His scream tore through the chamber.
Midnight motes spilled from the wound and rose toward Nessa’s glowing palm. Caelan dragged her back against his chest while the fae healer closed both hands, hiding the Everlight gathered around his fingers.
As the green and gold faded, the motes stopped above Torren.
They hung there for one long breath before spreading through the air.
Nessa held her hands against her chest while the dark cloud drifted toward her. Caelan kept one arm locked around her waist, preventing her from moving as the first specks gathered inches from her fingers.
One grazed her knuckle.
She flinched, but no Wild rose beneath her skin.
Finding nothing, the motes drew away and turned toward the fae healer. He remained beside Rhian’s bed with his fists closed and his breathing steady. Xandros stepped to his shoulder as the cloud gathered between them, searching the golden markings along their skin.
Neither male gave it anything to follow.
The motes slipped past them and crossed the space between the beds.
My hand closed around Rhian’s wrist when the cloud reached the ring of Everlight surrounding his wound. His pulse fluttered beneath my fingers while every dark speck turned toward the gold.
The healer’s jaw tightened.
Slowly, he drew his power back. The ring narrowed into a thin golden thread, flickered once, and disappeared.
Without the barrier, the indigo veins beneath Rhian’s ribs twitched.
My grip tightened around his wrist.
Several motes dipped toward the wound before rising again. They circled his chest, searching for the Everlight that had been there moments before, then scattered through the chamber when they found nothing.
They passed over Nessa’s closed hands and circled the healer’s fists once more.
At last, the cloud turned back toward Torren.
The motes gathered over the tear beneath his collarbone before rushing through it all at once.
Torren’s body fell off the bed.
Caelan caught him beneath the shoulders as the corruption tore through his markings. Indigo raced from Torren’s throat toward his wrist, leaving every inked vine black in its wake.
His teeth locked around a broken cry while Caelan braced an arm across his chest and held him through the shaking.
“Torren.”
The corruption flashed beneath his skin one final time before the light vanished.
Torren collapsed against Caelan.
Nessa moved in as Caelan lowered him onto the bed. Without calling on her Wild, she pressed two fingers beneath his jaw and rested her other hand against his chest.
Several breaths passed.
Then Torren’s chest lifted weakly beneath her palm.
“He’s alive.”
Caelan kept one hand around Torren’s wrist, holding the faint pulse beneath his fingers.
Gold flared behind me.
The fae healer had returned to Rhian’s side. Everlight closed around the wound once more, catching the dark veins before they could spread beyond his ribs.
Nessa traced Torren’s ruined markings with her bare fingers.
I pressed my palm to his forearm. His pulse fluttered against my skin, but when the Wild in my bones reached for his, it found nothing. No warmth. No answering pull. Only an empty silence where the forest should have been.
The vines along Torren’s arm had shriveled beneath his skin, their leaves curled and black as if burned.
I knew they would never glow again. The forest would no longer answer when he called, and the power that had sustained him since birth was gone.
Even if his wounds healed, he could never return to the life he had known.
The corruption had left him alive and taken everything else.
Nessa lifted her gaze to Caelan, the same realization playing out in her expression. “His Wild is gone.”
Xandros' gaze moved from Torren’s dead vines to the green markings glowing along my wrist. His fingers curled until gold gathered between them; then he forced his hand open.
A shallow breath scraped from the bed behind me. I turned toward Rhian and the dark veins trapped beneath the thin ring of gold.
The same fate waited beneath his skin.