Chapter 16 – — On Corrupted Tissue, Restricted Archives
Chapter Sixteen
“Some wounds want to stay open. Some wounds are hungry.”
— On Corrupted Tissue, Restricted Archives
She’s been stuck here for three weeks, and no one has figured out how to help her.
I push open the door and stop short.
I see her wings first, a dark-gray membrane spread wide across a padded frame that extends the entire width of the room, like an oversized headboard.
Delicate bone structures are visible beneath the surface, thin as the skeleton of a leaf held up to light.
Vampire wings. I’ve seen Draven and Malric’s, brief flashes of dark leather before they vanished back into wherever they keep them.
But I’ve never seen them like this, forced open and vulnerable.
The girl they belong to reclines against a pile of pillows, her back to me, facing the window. She’s watching the gray sky outside or maybe the birds that cut across it. Things that can fly when she can’t.
I smell rotting flesh masked by something chemical, the sharp tang of experimental treatments that burn the inside of my nose. This is the smell of desperation. Of healers trying things they’re not sure will work on wounds they don’t fully understand.
“I know you’re standing there.” Her voice is raspy, annoyed. She doesn’t turn around. “I can smell you too.”
So much for introductions.
“I’m Maelis, bone year.” I step further into the room, letting the door close behind me. “I’ve been assigned to help take care of you.”
“Fantastic, another one.”
I circle around the bed so I can see her face.
She’s small for fourteen, thin in a way that makes me wonder if she’s been eating.
Or maybe that’s how vampire girls are built at that age, all sharp angles and limbs they haven’t quite grown into.
Dark hair falls around her shoulders, tangled like she’s stopped caring about brushing it.
Her face is sharp, high cheekbones and a stubborn jaw, but there’s something soft underneath.
Something she’s trying very hard to hide.
A small table beside the bed holds a cup of water, a half-eaten roll going stale, and a stuffed animal that looks like it’s been loved within an inch of its life.
Some kind of fox, missing an eye and patched in three places with mismatched thread.
It’s tucked against her hip, and I notice her fingers resting on its worn fur.
She’s probably embarrassed to still have it but hasn’t let it go.
A chair in the corner is buried under a pile of books, spines cracked and pages dog-eared. Escapism, I understand that. When everything around you is falling apart, sometimes the only safe place is inside someone else’s story.
“Another one?” I grab the chair, dump the books onto the wide window ledge, and drag it around so I can sit facing her.
“Bone year, baby healer, whatever you want to call it.” She finally looks at me, amber eyes narrowing. “You’re human.”
I’m getting used to that reaction by now.
“I am.”
“Huh.” She studies me with an intensity that feels too old for her face. “They let humans in here now? Things must be getting desperate.”
I could take offense. I probably should. But there’s something underneath the sharpness in her voice. Something tired and scared that she’s working hard to bury. I’ve seen it in my own mirror on the nights I can’t sleep.
“Desperate enough to send me to deal with sarcastic vampire teenagers apparently.” I settle into the chair across from her. “So, Nella, how are you feeling today?”
She blinks at me like she can’t figure out what to do with someone who doesn’t cower or apologize.
“I’ve been stuck in this bed for three weeks with my wings pinned open like some kind of fucking butterfly collection.” She gestures weakly at the frame behind her. “How do you think I feel?”
“That sounds miserable. I’d be losing my mind.”
Surprise flickers across her face, or relief perhaps that someone isn’t feeding her empty reassurances.
“I am losing my mind.” She slumps back against the pillows. “But thanks for acknowledging it.”
Now that I’m facing her, I can see the damage clearly.
The right wing looks healthy enough. Dark-charcoal-gray membrane stretched taut across delicate bones, faint vessels visible when the weak light from the window catches it.
There’s an iridescent quality to the healthy tissue. It’s beautiful in a strange way.
The left wing is a different story entirely.
A jagged slash nearly two feet long runs from the joint near her shoulder blade down toward the outer edge. The edges are ragged, torn rather than cut clean. This wasn’t a blade. This was something with claws like broken glass.
The membrane around the wound is discolored, the healthy gray giving way to sickly green and mottled black.
Dark lines spread outward from the gash, branching and splitting as they creep toward the wing’s edge.
Some of them look faded, like they’re receding.
Others look fresh and angry, still pushing outward.
The wound itself is a mess of contradictions, partially closed in some places where vampire healing has tried to knit the tissue back together, raw and weeping in others where something keeps tearing it open again.
The edges are thin and papery, threatening to split farther with any wrong movement.
A dark fluid seeps slowly from the worst sections.
“It’s worse today.” Nella’s watching my face. “I can tell by how you’re not saying anything.”
I force myself to meet her eyes. “I’ve never seen a fissure wound before. I don’t have anything to compare it to.”
“Liar.” But there’s no heat in it. “You’re making the face.”
“Let’s agree on mildly concerned.”
“That’s more than mildly concerned. That’s approaching deeply troubled.” She turns her head back toward the window. “It was better yesterday. The lines were pulling back. I thought maybe...”
Her hopes have been dashed.
I lean forward in the chair. “Tell me what happened. How did you get this?”
She’s quiet, but I wait.
“My brother.” Her fingers find the stuffed fox, grip tightening around its worn fur.
“He’s a second year Vanguard trainee at the academy in the Shadowlands.
I wanted to watch him practice, see what he could do.
I wasn’t supposed to be there but snuck out anyway.
There was a breach. A small fissure opened suddenly, barely a crack, but something came through before anyone could react. ”
“What kind of something?”
“A riftling about the size of a large cat with six legs and too many joints. Skin like burned leather stretched too tight over bones. No eyes, just smooth dark patches where eyes should be. A mouth that split its face in half, full of needle-like teeth.”
Something twists inside me listening to her describe it.
“It didn’t make any sound.” She’s staring out the window again, but I don’t think she’s seeing the sky anymore. “I didn’t even hear it coming. When I saw it, I panicked and got my wings out, thinking I could fly above it to get away.”
“And?”
“It was faster. It launched at me before my feet left the ground, slashing across my wing, and I went down hard. The Vanguards killed it a few seconds later, but the damage was already done.”
A fourteen-year-old girl, wings barely unfurled, trying to escape something with claws and a mouth full of needle teeth. No wonder she keeps that stuffed fox close.
“The corruption?” I ask quietly.
“Riftlings are full of fissure energy. That energy is in me now. My body keeps trying to heal the wound, but the corruption, rot, necrosis, whatever you call it keeps reopening it. They’re fighting each other, and I’m...”
“Stuck in the middle.”
“Yeah, stuck.”
I look at the wing again. At the necrotic lines that spread and recede and spread again. At the wound that heals and tears and heals and tears. A battle happening inside her body, and she has no control over any of it.
“What treatments have they tried?”
“Everything.” She laughs, but there’s nothing funny about it.
“Current flushing is where they channel clean current through my system to try to push the corruption out. Hurts like hell and helps for maybe a day before the lines start spreading again. Bloodletting is great. Nothing a vampire loves more than having her blood drained. Some kind of paste made from burned ashroot and moonpetal has been smeared on the wound. It burns so bad I bite through my lip every time.”
She gestures weakly at the bandages wrapped around the worst parts of her wing.
“And these binding wraps soaked in something that smells sour slow it down but don’t stop it.”
“And if none of that works?”
“They’re talking about cutting the whole wing off before the corruption reaches my core.” She sniffles but doesn’t cry.
Her fingers clutch the stuffed fox.
“I’ve only been flying for four years. I was turned when I was little, but it took me forever to learn to fly. I was starting to love it, and now...”
She swallows hard. Her eyes drift to the window again.
“Do you know what it’s like to dream about flying every night and then wake up and remember you might never do it again?”
I think about my father. About the clinic. About holding a scalpel and watching my hands shake because I know what these hands have done.
“I know what it’s like to dream about something you’ve lost.”
She turns her head to look at me.
“Your brother, does he visit?” I ask.
The softness vanishes. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he blames himself, and my parents blame him. Everyone’s so busy being angry and guilty that no one actually comes to see me.” She picks at the fox’s worn ear. “I’ve been here three weeks, and the only people who talk to me are healers who poke at my wing and tell me to stay positive.”
I lean back in the chair, keeping my voice light. “I’m not going to poke at your wing and tell you to stay positive.”
She looks up. “What are you going to do then?”
“Check your bandages, make sure nothing needs changing, and then sit here and talk to you like a normal person instead of a patient.” I shrug. “If you want.”