Chapter 20 – —Headmaster Ashmoor, Ashwell Academy Handbook
Chapter Twenty
“A surgeon who hesitates is not a surgeon. They’re a witness to death.”
—Headmaster Ashmoor, Ashwell Academy Handbook
I run as fast as I can, and my bracelet won’t stop buzzing against my wrist. I have to get to the fifth floor.
The lift will take too long. I shove through the stairwell door and take the steps two at a time. My medical belt bounces against my hip. I almost trip twice.
Fifth floor.
I burst through the door, and the corridor is empty.
No one. Not a single mender or healer or anyone.
Oh my gods.
My bracelet pulses again.
Room 503. The door is already open.
I hear her screaming, this horrible raw sound that doesn’t even sound human anymore.
I shove into the room, and my body goes ridged.
Nella ripped her wings off the wall. The frames that were supposed to hold them spread and stable are hanging crooked and empty. She’s hunched over on the bed, curled into herself, her hair stuck to her face with sweat, her hands clenching the sheets so hard her knuckles are white.
And her wing.
The decay has exploded across the membrane. Black lines everywhere, branching and spreading, crawling up toward her shoulder and disappearing under her gown. It wasn’t like this before. I checked on her two hours ago at the start of my shift, and it wasn’t anywhere near this bad.
How is it this bad?
I rush to her side, and my hands are hovering because I don’t know where to touch her. I don’t want to hurt her more. “Nella, I’m here.”
She screams again, and her whole body seizes up. When her eyes find mine, they’re wild with pain.
“Save it,” she wails. “Please. My wing. Try anything. I don’t care if it hurts, just save it. Please.”
I don’t know what to do.
“Help!” I scream toward the door. “Someone help!”
Nothing. No footsteps. No response.
I run to the doorway and scream down the corridor. “I need help! Room 503! Anyone!”
My voice echoes and dies. Where the fuck is everyone?
I run back to Nella.
She’s crying, these broken, sobbing sounds that get stuck in her throat. Her hand finds mine, and she squeezes so hard it hurts.
“It hurts. Maelis, it hurts so bad. Please. Please make it stop.”
I have to do something.
“I need to look at it, okay?” I try to sound calm, like my dad used to when patients were scared. “Hold still for me.”
She nods and bites her lip so hard it bleeds.
I grab her wing as gently as I can, and she screams. I don’t let go. I start peeling back the bandages, and my fingers come away wet with blood and something dark and thick that isn’t blood.
The wound underneath is worse than I thought possible.
The corruption has eaten holes through the membrane.
I can see bone in places, gray-white poking through dead flesh.
The veins are black and bulging, pulsing with something that isn’t life.
And the lines are still moving, still spreading.
I watch them creep another inch toward her spine while I stand here uselessly.
I fumble with my medical belt. My hands are shaking so bad I can barely open it. I have healing tincture. It’s not strong enough for this, but maybe it’ll slow it down and buy time.
I rip the stopper out with my teeth and dump the whole thing on the wound.
It does nothing.
“Please.” Nella’s voice is getting weaker. “I don’t want to die. I wanted to fly again. I was gonna go home and show my brother I was okay.”
I hear footsteps and spin around.
Theo the mender is in the doorway. His face goes white when he sees her wing.
“You have to cut it off.” His voice is urgent. “Now, before it reaches her heart.”
“I need to give her a sedative. Something for the pain. I can’t—”
“There’s no time.” He shoves something into my hands.
The bone saw. Heavy and cold. The teeth are sharp and clean.
Nella sees it and becomes distraught.
She cries harder, “Please no, not my wing. I’ll do anything. Please don’t take it. Maelis, please. Please don’t let them.”
She’s begging me.
Theo says, “She dies if you don’t cut right now.”
I lift the saw.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
I move to the base of her wing where it connects to her back. The corruption hasn’t reached there yet.
I press the blade to her skin.
Nella screams, “Please I don’t want to lose it. I’d rather die. I’d rather die than never fly again.”
Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. I have to cut.
My father’s face appears in front of me.
His body on the bed. The gray of his skin and my shaking hand.
My arm locks up. All I need to do is cut to save her.
“I can’t,” I moan. “I can’t do it.”
“Maelis!” Theo shakes my shoulder. “She’s dying! Cut!”
I lift the saw again and press it to her wing. My hand shakes so badly the blade skips and cuts a thin red line across her skin.
Nella screams.
I can’t.
“Get someone else,” I say. “Get a healer. Find my blood lead. Get anyone. Now.”
“There’s no—”
“NOW!”
He stares at me for one second. I see the disgust in his eyes before he turns and runs.
The saw falls out of my hands. It clangs against the floor.
Nella stops screaming.
I grab her hand. “Nella, stay with me. Help is coming.”
I cup her face with my other hand, and her eyes find mine. The pain is fading out of them. Something else taking over. Something soft and far away.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Her voice is barely there. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“No, that means it’s getting better. You’re gonna be okay.”
“You’re a bad liar.” She almost smiles. “It’s okay. I know.”
“Nella—”
“I’m not mad at you.” Her fingers twitch against mine. “I know you tried.”
“I’m gonna save you. Hold on.”
“Tell my brother something for me? Tell him it wasn’t his fault. The riftling, none of it. Tell him I never blamed him.” Her eyes are drifting. Losing focus. “Tell him I love him.”
“You can tell him yourself. You’re going to be fine. Stay with me and keep talking to me.”
“You promised I’d fly again.” She looks at me and there’s no anger in her eyes. “It’s okay. Some promises can’t be kept.”
“Nella—”
Her voice diminishes with each word. “I dreamed about flying one more time over the Obsidian Falls. The water looked like liquid night. It was so beautiful.”
“Nella stay with me, please.”
Her eyes close. “I think I’ll fly there now.”
Her hand goes slack in mine.
I feel the exact second she leaves. One moment she’s here, and the next she’s...gone.
“No.”
I shake her.
“No, Nella, wake up.”
I press my ear to her chest. Nothing.
“NELLA!”
I slam my fists against her sternum the way my dad taught me.
Nothing. I start doing chest compressions. I can’t lose her, not like this.
The corruption stopped spreading. It doesn’t need to anymore. It won.
I hear footsteps behind me. Someone grabs my shoulders and yanks me back.
“She’s gone.” A voice I don’t know. “The necrosis reached her heart.”
Gone.
The healer pushes past me and picks up the bone saw. She presses it to Nella’s wing and starts cutting.
I hear metal on bone and flesh, grinding that I’m going to hear forever.
Nella’s body jerks with each stroke, but she doesn’t feel it. She’s not in there anymore.
I back away until my spine hits the wall.
The healer keeps cutting. It’s protocol to remove the dead tissue.
About to throw up, I turn and walk out.
The corridor is empty. The lamps flicker. Everything feels far away like I’m watching myself from somewhere outside my body.
She’s dead.
I promised her. I looked her in the eyes and told her she’d fly again, and she believed me.
And I let her die.
No, I killed her.
The saw was in my hand. All I had to do was cut, but I couldn’t.
I froze.
She died because I’m broken. Because I killed my father, and something in me died with him.
The tears come. I don’t try to stop them.
I don’t know where I’m walking. I need to be anywhere else, somewhere I can’t hear that sound. Somewhere I can’t see her face.
I round a corner and shove through the door to one of the empty exam rooms.
I slam into something solid.
Hands catch my arms, steadying me.
I look up through the blur of tears.
It’s Malric.
His amber eyes move over my face, taking in my tears and the blood on my hands. Her blood. Something shifts in his expression, but he doesn’t say anything.
He pulls me into him.
His hand cradles the back of my head, and I cry into his chest—ugly, full bodied sobs that wrack through me like something is trying to claw its way out. My whole body is shaking. I can’t stop it. I can’t control any of this.
I would do anything, give anything, be anything to make this crushing weight disappear for one second.
Malric’s hand runs down the back of my head. Slow. Almost gentle.
But he’s here, and I’m breaking and don’t have the strength to care about anything else.
“Patients die, Red.” His hand keeps moving through my hair. “It’s not your fault. It’s what happens here.”
I shake my head against his chest. He doesn’t understand. It is my fault. The saw was in my hand.
“I can make the pain stop,” he whispers.
I should say no. I should push him away and walk out and find Jace and let him hold me instead. That’s what I should do.
But Jace will ask what happened. He will want to talk. He will look at me with those soft blue eyes, and I’ll have to explain that I let a fourteen year old girl die because I’m too broken to do my job.
Malric won’t ask. He doesn’t care about the details. He is offering me a different kind of pain, and right now that’s the only thing I want.
I want to hurt somewhere that isn’t my chest. I want a pain I can locate. A pain with edges, one I can press a hand against and feel start to fade. Anything but this.
“The bite,” I whisper. “Just the bite. Nothing else.”
He goes still. For a half second I see something flicker behind his amber eyes, calculation maybe, disappointment, I don’t know. Then it’s gone, and that lazy smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.
“Whatever you need, Red.”
He doesn’t ask if I’m sure. His hand slides from my hair to my jaw, tilting my face up, and I look anywhere but at him. His mouth comes down toward mine, and I turn my head before it can land. His lips graze the corner of my jaw instead, and he huffs a quiet laugh against my skin.
“Have it your way.”