24. The Healer
THE HEALER
Seraphina
“You want me to do what?” I ask, because there is no way Overlord Silver Ardentis, the Tamer of Beasts, the Iron damned Flame, or whatever you want to call him, just told me to strip off my training corset and lie face down on his bed.
“You heard exactly what I said, Scar. It’s your back that’s fucked, your ears are fine.” Something flips inside my stomach. “I’ll turn around if it makes you feel better.”
He turns his back to me and the bed.
“I don’t hear you getting undressed.”
“That’s because I’m not.”
He turns back around, exasperation apparent in his posture and the set of his jaw. There’s something close to a pleading look in his eyes, but minus the desperation. Then again, the sigh he lets out alone is confirmation enough that he thinks I am the one being impossible here.
“Look, Scar, I know you don’t trust me. A fact that pisses me off in itself because I’ve never, not once, given you any reason not to.”
I scoff. Liar.
Is he?
He must be lying. He’s part demon.
He’s probably given me a thousand reasons not to trust him since I met him. I’m just too rattled to think of them right now.
Has he?
“But please, do as I ask. If not because you can find it in yourself to trust a monster like me, then because, well, what other fucking choice do you have?”
“As in, you’ll force me if I refuse?” I take a step back, putting myself closer to the nightstand where a sharp and solid looking lamp sits.
I’d prefer one of the small throwing daggers on the table, but the lamp is much closer.
He doesn’t know the extent of my abilities. He just thinks he does.
I might not be able to beat someone as large, well trained and magically powerful as him pound for pound, but I have surprise on my side.
For that reason, I know I can take him right here and now if I need to.
Or in the least, I know I can hurt him badly enough to get out of here.
His face drops, looking genuinely offended. “What? Fuck no.”
He runs a hand through his hair and starts pacing like he did in the infirmary.
He pauses, rubbing a hand over the stubble on the bottom half of his face.
I tilt my head. My siblings taught me people mouth block when they are about to lie. Truth or lie, I’m certain that I won’t like what he’s about to say.
He clears his throat and lets the hand drop. “Because you are an injured, flightless little bird, taking part in brutal games designed to challenge, and kill, nephilim and cambion. Two species who have wings to aid them. To make the almost impossible games slightly more possible. Without them—”
“If not the others, the final game will kill me.”
“I can guarantee it.” He turns his back to me once more, hand dragging through his dark hair. “So please, Scar, take your top off, undo the bandages, and lie face down on the bed. I’m going to help you. Not that you deserve it with the way you are acting right now.”
Wow.
Apparently accusing him of forcing himself on me hit more of a nerve than I expected or I’d meant it to.
But his reaction does settle some of the nerves, and I find myself slowly loosening and removing the new leather training corset I was issued last night.
The movement pulls at my back, a familiar sting shooting along scars that should have faded to thin white lines years ago but never did.
I hang the material over the lamp, and carefully unwind the bandages next, gritting my teeth when I have to tug the last bit free of the dried blood, no doubt reopening the wounds once again.
Then, naked from the waist up, I climb onto his bed.
The sheets are cool beneath my uncovered stomach as I ease myself down, then rest my head on crossed forearms facing the opposite direction to where he stands.
All I can smell is him with my face on his pillow.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Mmhmm.” I turn my face toward him so my voice isn’t as muffled and lock eyes with him as he rolls up his sleeves.
I swallow.
“Lie still,” he says quietly.
Easier said than done. When I imagine him touching me, every muscle in my body coils too tight.
Rather than bolt though, like every instinct in me calls for me to do, I nod.
This feels like something my family would disown me for doing even under duress. By the angels, at knife point they’d expect me to choose death over lying down and baring myself to a demon like this.
Unlike his kind, nephilim are taught from birth to guard our bodies. To treat touch as something sacred.
Would you rather face tomorrow's game with or without flinching every time you step?
I take a deep, measured breath.
I need to do this… to survive tomorrow’s game.
“Will it hurt?”
He shakes his head. “Not you.”
I frown. What does that mean?
Before I can ask, his fists wrap around the bed sheets and he tugs them toward him sharp and fast, so I’m no longer in the middle of the bed but right on the edge.
“I figured you wouldn’t want me straddling you. Healing is intimate, Scar. That’s unavoidable. I’m trying to make you a bit more… comfortable. Again, not that you deserve it. Satan knows it would be easier on my back to straddle your ass.”
My stomach knots and I swallow again.
My hair is down for a change, thanks to my schedule being completely off today. From waking up in the infirmary, to being told I wasn’t allowed to train with the rest of Ferrum as normal, Khali hadn’t had a chance to braid it.
I know the chestnut strands are going to be in his way, but still, I’m not even a little bit prepared when I feel his hands gather them, sweeping my hair out of his way.
Traitorous goosebumps rise as the tips of his fingers trace lightly over my skin.
His hands hover above my wounds for a moment before they make contact.
I feel the heat first. Then his palms settle against my back, and I bite back a sound.
His touch is careful, fingers spreading slightly as if mapping the damage. Every lump and bump of scar tissue, and every ridge of the new open slashes.
They are not pretty scars.
They never have been.
The skin there is hypersensitive too. More so under his touch than ever before.
It occurs to me that I didn’t turn my head back to face away from him, so I try to stare anywhere but at him. Except he’s so huge even my peripheral vision can’t escape him, blur him out or mistake him for someone else.
I stare at the floor behind him, at the dark stone beneath large, booted feet, forcing my breathing to stay even as his fingers press softly and flames that glow seep into me, their warmth sinking deep but not hurting at all as they flow past skin and muscle.
His hands continue to move, slow and methodical, and I settle on closing my eyes altogether.
But I can feel him leaning over me, his overwhelming presence a weight at my back. I shouldn’t notice the way his breath ghosts across my shoulder. Or how every nerve seems painfully aware of where he is and where he isn’t.
I remind myself this is for healing.
Nothing else.
But I can’t take it. I turn my head to face the opposite way.
And catch a glimpse of his face directly in a mirror near the wall opposite him instead.
Big mistake.
His dark eyebrows are drawn tight, sharp jaw clenched. His lips part on a slow exhale, then press together again as though bracing himself, nostrils flaring.
Pain flickers across his expression.
Not disgust.
Not revulsion.
Pain.
He’s hurting himself to help you.
The realization hits harder than the heat swarming my body at his touch.
I can’t seem to peel my eyes away from his reflection in the mirror as the flames brighten, flickering more insistently around his knuckles, like he’s working on a stubborn or more seriously damaged bit of skin now.
If I focus hard on the sensations, I can feel the raw edges of the freshly reopened wounds knit together beneath his touch.
I can hear the faint crackle of his magic, until he shifts suddenly, pulling his hands away, and all I hear is my own thundering heartbeat.
The loss of warmth is immediate.
“You can sit up now,” he says, voice unmistakably rougher than before. “Put your top back on.”
He turns his back on me without me asking.
I push myself up on shaky arms and reach over to grab my training top from where it hangs over the lamp.
Before tugging it on, I glance at the discarded bandages, stiff with dried blood. “Do you have fresh dressings? I—I can bandage myself.” I don’t think I could handle him doing it for me. Not now while my nerves are already shot.
I shouldn’t notice how broad his back is.
I shouldn’t wonder if his hands still feel warm.
I shouldn’t be imagining what it might have been like had he straddled rather than leaned over me.
Shame coils tight in my stomach.
“Can I turn around?” he asks.
I make sure my breasts are covered by the sides of my arms. “Mmhmm.”
Silver glances over his shoulder, checking my back one last time. “You won’t need them.”
I blink. “What?”
Sure, it feels like a lot has happened in the day since the duel, especially between the two of us, but is he forgetting the assault from Lilliana was only yesterday?
His gaze drops to meet mine. “You’re virtually healed.”
“Virtually?”
“Maybe one more session tomorrow night,” he adds, already turning away as if the matter is settled. “Then it’s up to you whether you want me to fix the scars or if you can learn to embrace them as part of your story.”
Tomorrow night.
Embrace my scars.
My story.
“Really?”
I’m not sure if I’m asking for clarity on only needing one more session, or that he could actually make the scars look less… hideous if I ask him to.
“I’m more skilled with my power than I was the first time I used it like this,” he explains. “Eurya was years ago. And being around her and the others every day since has given me a lot of practice.”
“It was one of the Sisters who lost her wings?”
I knew it.
He shakes his head, still looking away as I shrug into my top, bracing for pain but feeling none. “Not lost,” he says. “Had them taken. Forcibly removed. Sliced cleanly off at the hand of a seraphim and their supposedly just blade, no less.”
I shake my head to deny it but he can’t see me. “Not possible. A seraphim would never.”
“Are you dressed?” he asks, his tone sharp.
I flex my shoulders slowly. The ache is gone. So is the familiar pull of wrongness, the constant reminder of what was taken and what remains. “Ye—”
Before the word is fully out, he’s facing me again. “I assure you, Scar, it is very possible.”
I scoff. “Only a demon would be so cruel. Who do you think did this to me?”
He looks genuinely blindsided but shakes his head. “I’d bet my life the opposite is true.”
“Pha,” I laugh. “Then tell me, why was one of the Sisters in Virtus in the first place?” The accusation is clear in my tone. The deep-seated dislike too. “If what you say is true, that a seraphim did it to her, she obviously brought it on herself.”
Careful, Seraphina. You won’t be allowed in their army talking like that.
As though he suddenly can’t stand to look at me and needs some fresh air, Silver stalks away and busies himself near the window.
I sit on the edge of his bed, fingers curling into the dark linen, trying to make sense of his words. He’s many things, but delusional isn’t a word I’d use.
“How? For what?” he asks, refusing to look at me. I don’t answer. “Exactly, you don’t know.”
“Then tell me,” I say, moving to stand. When he still doesn't step away from the window or so much as glance my way, I move toward the door. It’s time to get out of here.
“She was in Virtus going after a group from Gula who dealt in seraphim blood. She’d tracked them all the way through Ira and watched them breach the front lines with no run-ins at all from the seraphim forces.
They entered Patientia undetected, so despite the risks to herself, Eurya went after them. That’s why she was in Virtus.”
“W-When did this happen?”
“A decade ago.”
I suck in a breath.
The demons who hurt me…
My father told me how the demons had shredded the wings from my back so the lawn of the citadel had looked like the site of a massacre. He’d had to cancel the annual High Seraph’s High Tea that year because of me.
I was thirteen then, I’m twenty-three now.
Silver’s probably ten years older than me, mid-thirties at most.
He’d have been around the age I am now when this happened. When he helped her.
When I don’t say anything, he continues.
“Rather than catch the demons she was after, the real threat, your holier-than-thou army captured her. Took her and tortured her for days. She took it all, every evil bit of it, conserving her strength until the opportunity finally came for her to escape.”
As he tells Eurya’s story of her survival, I realize I have to think about my own.
One of my secrets is out. Even those who weren’t there to witness my scarred back will have heard all about it by now.
I continue toward the door, my hand skimming over the map table as I pass.
I glance over at Silver.
He’s still not looking.
Silently, I snag a dagger and tuck it up inside my thick leather corset top.
Not a second after I’m done, he finally turns to me.
“Despite what they did to her, she’s been back to Virtus since, many times, to help the Virtishans in a similar way even though her mere existence would bring their scorn.
We’re not hindering or hunting your kind, like you would so obviously sooner believe, but helping them. Saving countless lives.”
I don’t want to believe him, but I know a lie when I hear one, and he truly believes what he’s saying.
“I’ve heard Khali talk about Eurya,” I say, not ready to have the world as I know it turned upside down for the twentieth time in as many days. “Her face brightens up when she talks about her, more so than Tiriel or any of them.”
He nods but doesn’t say anything. Something flashes over his features, and I swear he’s gone a shade paler than the usual gorgeous golden brown.
A memory?
There is more to the story. There has to be.
Fortunately, I have another healing session with him tomorrow to ask him about it.
The worst part, the truly unforgivable part, isn’t that I’m looking forward to it so I can hear the rest of the story.
It’s that a part of me already aches for his touch again.