50. Chapter 50
She slept. She wasn’t sure how, or for how long, but she awoke abruptly the next morning, sunlight spilling through the broken windows of the infirmary.
Her eyes snapped to Vaelin, still lying unconscious on his own cot, Aurelia at his shoulder.
“Good morning,” she smiled at Isla. “No change. His pulse is holding steady, and his lungs are clear.”
Isla nodded gratefully, then pressed a hand to her temple as her head spun. Aurelia moved around Vaelin’s cot to Isla, helping her ease into a seated position.
“The others?” she rasped.
“Fine,” Aurelia replied, dabbing at Isla’s brow with a wet cloth. Isla winced at the sting. “Evric’s sulking, but I told him Vaelin wasn’t imminently dying and that seems to have calmed him down some. He’s in the training room, punching things about it now.”
Isla snorted. “And Drae?”
Her reaction was so minute, Isla might have missed it if she hadn’t been so close to her — an almost imperceptible intake of breath, a brief pause in her ministrations — and then she was dabbing again, reaching for a dressing. She shrugged, “He seems fairly unscathed.”
“And he made sure you got some rest?”
Aurelia went still, her eyes snapping to Isla’s.
Isla’s brows lifted slightly. “You… don’t remember?”
“Remember what?” she asked sharply
“You passed out after healing Vaelin,” Isla explained. “Burnout. Drae carried you back to your rooms so you could rest.”
The faintest blush passed over Aurelia’s cheeks.
“I — didn’t remember that, no. I know I felt the after effects of burnout, but I don’t remember much after the battle.
I just assumed Evric…” she trailed off, shaking her head.
“Anyway. Yes, I rested. I’m not at full strength today, of course, but I’m fine. I can help.”
“Excellent,” a familiar voice said, and Isla turned to find Asmarin.
Seemingly untouched by the battle, the Seer appeared as calm and commanding as ever in her sweeping, golden robes.
“Because our healers have their work cut out for them. We could use your help. Both of you,” she said, looking pointedly at Isla.
Isla looked to where Vaelin still lay unconscious.
“He will be right here, and well looked after, I assure you,” Asmarin said, her voice almost gentle.
“If nothing else, healing others might help to take your mind off things while you wait.” A pang pierced Isla’s chest painfully as her eyes traced the line of Vaelin’s jaw. Wait. It was all they could do, now.
After Isla had changed in clean clothing - she had declined a bath, not wanting to leave the infirmary in case Vaelin should wake - Isla and Aurelia trailed Asmarin as she showed them to those who needed stitching and other treatments in the wake of the battle with the Hollowborne.
Once they had done all they could for the injured, Asmarin took them to the farthest end of the infirmary, where six beds sat against the east wall, each with an occupant.
“These are our patients who have contracted the illness,” Asmarin murmured. “I thought perhaps you may be able to ease their suffering somewhat.”
“Is this everyone who has fallen ill in The City?” Isla asked, hardly daring to hope.
“No. Only those who wish to be treated,” Asmarin said, a thin line forming between her eyebrows. “Many have chosen to embrace the illness, along with the expanded Sight.” The Seer’s tone was tight, as though she didn’t approve of the choice.
“I see,” Isla murmured, remembering what the Novices had shared about the way the illness had manifested in Dunovarians.
“We’re happy to help where we can,” Aurelia assured her, and Asmarin inclined her head in thanks, gesturing to the first bed.
Isla greeted the patient warmly, a young, Dunovarian woman with strikingly dark, almond shaped eyes. Aurelia began to examine her, gently pressing her fingers to the women’s neck, as Isla asked how long she’d been ill and how her symptoms had progressed.
“It’s been about a week, now,” the young woman estimated. “It began like the others - just a simple cough - but it worsened over time, and then the fever started.”
“I’m sorry to hear you’ve had little success in Dunovar with medicinal remedies, as have we,” Isla said.
“Actually, I’ve been feeling much better,” the young woman added, a note of hopeful caution in her voice. “Perhaps the remedies have begun to work, or… the illness is simply running its course?”
Asmarin’s gaze sharpened on the patient. “How long since you’ve noticed improvement in your condition?”
The patient’s lips parted in surprise, appearing to be somewhat taken aback at being addressed by Asmarin directly. “Just… since this morning, I’d say. I awoke at dawn feeling as though my chest was lighter, and my breath could come easier.”
Aurelia ran a hand gently over the woman’s brow, noting that her skin was cool to the touch, and her eyes clear. She turned to Asmarin, “She’s not feverish. We haven’t seen a case where the fever has broken, yet.”
Aurelia turned back to the patient, smiling. “May I examine your lungs? It won’t hurt, you’ll simply feel some warmth.”
The young woman nodded, and Aurelia placed a hand gently on her chest. “Her lungs are quite clear,” she murmured.
Isla smiled encouragingly at the young woman as Aurelia’s brow furrowed, the now-familiar warm glow spreading from her hands and enveloping the woman’s chest.
Aurelia smiled. “I think I can have you rid of this entirely,” she said to the patient, and the woman nodded eagerly.
Isla’s chest swelled with hope — finally, a good outcome. But what had turned the tide? She looked to Asmarin, but the Seer’s eyes were fixed firmly on Aurelia as she worked.
“No, stop. Stop now.”
Both Isla and Aurelia jerked at Asmarin’s sharp command, Aurelia withdrawing her magic as though she’d been stung. The patient gasped sharply at the abrupt loss of warmth. Aurelia apologized, and Isla looked to Asmarin, an unease curling at the base of her spine, though she couldn’t say why.
“Why did you do that?” Aurelia demanded of Asmarin, “She’s improving—”
“No,” Asmarin said sharply, “she is not. Look.” Her expression hadn’t changed but there was a tension in her voice that had not been there before.
That unease had spread now, clawing its way up Isla’s spine as both she and Aurelia looked back to the woman, who had begun to clear her throat.
Within the span of two breaths, the cough intensified, growing thicker and more demanding as it weighed down the woman’s chest. She doubled over, gasping for thready breaths of air between bouts of coughing.
Aurelia reached for her automatically, but Asmarin grasped her wrist, firmly but gently drawing her away from the cot.
The Seer called sharply to one of the Novices, telling them to administer the usual remedy, as she drew Aurelia across the room, Isla following as if in some horrible, waking nightmare.
Aurelia allowed herself to be steered away, shaking her head in confusion, her fingers now trembling.
Isla reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly.
“What just happened?” Isla asked Asmarin, knowing that Aurelia could not.
Asmarin glanced behind them, as though ensuring they wouldn’t be overheard before meeting each of their eyes in turn, her jaw tight.
The line between her brows etched deeper as she focused on Aurelia, speaking quietly, “You’re an earthwielder.
The Shattering comes to pass when the source - the earth itself - has become corrupt, broken beyond repair.
I believe…” she trailed off, breaking eye contact for a moment, a choice that made Isla shiver.
“I believe that when you use your magic, you are not healing the illness — you are feeding it. Accelerating it.”
Isla watched the words hit Aurelia like a knife, hot and sharp.
The fae’s lips parted, horror-struck, as she staggered back a step.
“No,” she breathed in a voice Isla had never heard her use, her striking blue eyes brimming with tears as they met Isla’s.
She felt an answering anguish turn in her own chest.
Then, like a death knell, Isla heard Vaelin’s words from long ago in a forest outside Brackenford drift back to her as he described the astonishing speed with which the illness had progressed among the fae. Among his mentor, Sereth Starfire.
And then she fell ill — the cough, the fever. Aurelia — my friend, a fae healer — tried, but it moved so fast…
Aurelia had treated Sereth mere hours before she had died — or at least, she had tried to treat her.
How many people had Aurelia tried to heal, tried to draw the illness from, over the past month?
She thought she’d been doing what she’d done for centuries, what she’d always been called to do — help people. Heal people.
But she hadn’t been helping people… she’d been killing them.
“Isla! It’s Vaelin!”
Isla tore her eyes from Aurelia’s, whirling at the sound of Maya’s cry of alarm. And then she was moving, weaving between healers, crossing the massive infirmary in moments.
Novices hummed around him like insects, and Isla pushed them aside, halting in her tracks as a hand flew to her throat.
Vaelin’s abdominal wound was bleeding again.
But this time, it wasn’t blood soaking into the fabric of the cot.
Isla watched inky black shadow seep from the now-stitched, jagged tear the spear had left in Vaelin’s chest. She tore off the dressing, moving to palpate the wound, her hands trembling.
Horror-struck, she watched as black lines of shadow slowly spiderwebbed outward from the wound moving across his chest like veins.
“No,” she breathed. “No, no, no…” Isla heard herself repeating as her eyes darted over Vaelin’s body, as though she might find the answer mapped somewhere on his skin.
She glanced up as Aurelia skidded to a halt across from her, face stained with tear tracks. “Can you—?” Isla asked, but cut off. No, she couldn’t. Not knowing what they now knew. A fresh flood of tears cascaded down Aurelia’s cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Isla looked to Asmarin.
“Help him,” she pleaded.
The Seer levelled a look at her. “I cannot.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a wound from a shadow blade. It cannot be healed by earth magic or human remedy.”
“No,” Isla refused, her anger outweighing the anguish that clawed its way up her throat.
“No,” she said again, looking back at Vaelin.
The black veins had doubled, rippling across his abdomen.
She narrowed her eyes, trying to blink away the tears that clouded her vision, making his wound look blurred — but she wasn’t crying.
She peered at the origin site of the wound where Vaelin’s skin was beginning to look blurred, unnatural, like it was… losing its solidity somehow.
“What is this? What’s happening?” she demanded, eyes darting to Asmarin.
The Seer looked grave - sympathetic - and that alone struck a chord of icy fear in Isla’s heart. “I am sorry, child.”
Isla ground her teeth. “Don’t be sorry, just tell me what’s happening. What is it doing to him?”
“The Hollowborne are the twisted, corrupt forms of the forgotten. Shadow blades are rare, sacrificial weapons. The wielder perishes upon striking a blow. Their purpose is not only to kill, but to erase.”
“Erase?” Isla asked, shaking her head.
“The shadow blades erase their victim. From memory, from existence,” Asmarin said softly. “He is… being unmade. Forgotten.”
Panic wrapped around her heart, squeezing painfully.
“What? No.” She turned back to Vaelin, and shook her head, an odd calm enveloping her.
“No,” she said again, and this time her voice was steady, calmer.
She splayed both hands across his chest, one directly covering where the spear had struck, and allowed her eyes to flutter closed. “I could never forget you.”
Memories from the last few weeks flooded her mind, as though a dam had come loose.
They struck her with as much force as the flash flood had, and she closed her eyes, letting them wash over her.
Her, a “completely unremarkable” human healer from Terravern, and him, a formidable, battle-hardened windwielder.
Both with buried trauma and insecurities that had carved them, shaped them into who they had become, for better or for worse.
But together, they had grown these past months, somehow molding to one another without ever whittling away at who the other was.
She thought of how their sharp-edged snipes had gradually shifted into teasing banter, so slowly she almost hadn’t noticed.
How overprotective motions had softened into the gentlest of touches, reminders of strength and shows of solidarity.
A gentle smile curled her lips upward. “I won’t let you be forgotten,” she murmured, opening her eyes.
And light exploded from her.
She welcomed the warm light, pushing it into his chest, his soul, tethering it to her own.
I remember you, she thought. The black lines of shadow seemed to recoil from the light, flinching away, receding into the wound.
Then the shadow shrunk in on itself, dissipating like the Hollowborne they’d struck down.
The jagged tear in Vaelin’s chest sealed shut, the tanned skin smoothing over.
Isla laid her hand against his chest, and beneath her palm, his heartbeat thumped — strong and steady.
And this time, when Isla closed her eyes, she let herself fall into the darkness that awaited her.