Chapter 37
ARK
Inside the hospital room, Ark stood near the foot of the sickbed, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the pale rise and fall of his father’s chest. Nurses moved briskly, checking vitals, murmuring stabilization spells.
Sir Harland’s elf physiomancer—violet-eyed, composed—conferred with the human surgeon, her partner for this difficult surgery, over a floating pane of his father’s organs.
His mother stood at the head of the bed, her hand resting on his father’s shoulder. Oromon lingered by the door, too still to be calm.
Ark said nothing. Every part of him felt like a bowstring drawn too tight. He hated this. Hated hospitals. Hated not being able to fix it himself. Power burned under his skin—and still, none of it could keep his father from failing.
A warmth flared at the back of his neck—sharp, unmistakable. His breath caught.
Cassia.
The room collapsed into irrelevance, drowned by the pull beneath his ribs dragging him toward the door. His jaw locked against her name.
Then the warmth began to ebb—a slow retreat, like fingers laced through his, slipping free one by one. She was leaving. Each step she took dimmed the mark further, until the blaze became a whisper, and the whisper became an ache he couldn’t reach.
A tap on the glass door pulled him back. Caius stood just outside, motioning for him to come. Ark took one last glance at his father, then followed.
In the corridor, Caius held out a thick glass vial wrapped in cloth. “Miss Aura brought this. Told me to tell you to give it to your father. Before the surgery starts.”
Ark blinked. “She was here.”
Caius met his gaze evenly. “She handed it to me herself. Said it was important to have your father drink this.”
Ark’s throat locked. For a moment, he couldn’t move. The vial was warm in his palm, the aquamarine liquid within catching the low light.
“She came all this way,” he murmured, voice rough. “Why didn’t she come and see me herself?”
He looked up, and for one wild second, he thought he might bolt after her. Might chase her through the city, past festival lights and snow-slick streets, just to—
“She already left,” Rhodes’s deep voice sounded behind him. “She didn’t want to make things harder for both of you.”
Ark’s breath caught. Of course she didn’t. That was Cassia all over—selfless to the last, even when it hurt. Even when she was the one hurting.
He stared at the bottle in his hand, the warmth of it slowly seeping through his glove, faint traces of magic still clinging to the glass. No one had to tell him how precious this liquid was. He didn’t know what she had to do to conjure this, but he knew her.
He knew she’d bled herself into this gift, to turn hope into this blue liquid.
He wouldn’t let it go to waste. Not a single drop.
Jaw set, Ark turned and pushed back through the ward doors. The surgeon looked up when he entered. She was a human woman with silver-threaded temples and the unmistakable steadiness of someone who’d held lives between her fingers.
“We’re nearly ready,” she said briskly.
“I want my father to drink this,” Ark said, his voice leaving no room for debate. “But you may check if it will negatively impact the surgery.”
The surgeon accepted the vial with a raised brow, uncorked it, sniffed once, and passed it wordlessly to the elf physician beside her.
Ark’s eyes shifted to Healer Virelinne of the Sélwyn House. He knew her by reputation alone—an elf physiomancer and the first to pioneer magical suspension therapy, still too experimental for the Meredith medical board, but too effective to ignore.
Human surgeons excelled with precision tools and advanced technology, but even the best machines could not overcome the fragility of mortal flesh. A body wracked by disease—or worn thin by time—could falter under the strain of hours under the knife.
This was where magic stepped in. Through enchanted stasis, the body could be gently suspended—its functions steadied, its thresholds stretched.
Blood flow slowed without clotting. Pain dulled without chemical anesthesia.
Vital systems preserved in delicate balance, allowing the surgeon’s hands to work longer, steadier, safer.
His father couldn’t have been in better hands—in theory.
It was a fusion of disciplines, still considered risky. But when it worked, the results bordered on miraculous—proof, Ark thought, of what the Four Factions could achieve together, if they’d only stop tearing each other apart.
Virelinne turned the vial in her palm, disappeared down the hall, and returned minutes later.
“No toxins. The brew is stable.” Her gaze lifted to Ark’s.
“It has healing properties, but it’s unlike anything I’ve worked with.
I can’t predict how it will interact with the stasis field.
It could bolster or fracture it. We cannot guarantee the outcome.
If he drinks it, the effects—positive or otherwise—will be beyond our control.
” She held his gaze. “This decision belongs to the patient. And to the family.”
Ark pressed his lips together. “I will ask him.”
The surgeon nodded. “If he agrees, we’ll deliver it intravenously. It’s the fastest way to circulate the magic through his system.”
Ark went back into his father’s sickroom. Upon the door latching, Kassenor slowly opened his eyes. His gaze found the vial in Ark’s hand, and recognition flickered behind the exhaustion.
“Ah,” he murmured, a ghost of something wry in his voice. “So she kept her promise.”
Ark’s brow furrowed. “Promise?”
A faint curve of a smile appeared on his father’s lips. “She found me in the conservatory on the night of the ball.” A pause, shallow breath drawn in. “She told me . . . she’d perform a ritual and beg the sea goddess for a healing elixir. She said it eased her father’s suffering.”
Ark stared. He hadn’t known that. Hadn’t even imagined she’d had the time that evening. “You spoke that much with her?”
At that, Kassenor finally looked up. “She’s a difficult one to ignore. Your Cassia.”
Ark’s throat tightened.
“Yes,” he said softly. “She is.”
The lull that followed was heavy, brimming with all they hadn’t said over the years.
Now, they had only minutes. How did one condense three decades of unsaid words into a handful of minutes?
How did one convey the depths of hope, despair, and love buried so deep when such a great challenge lay ahead?
Ark stepped closer to the bedside and sat, the weight of the moment pressing down until he couldn’t hold it in anymore. He placed the elixir on the bedside table and took his father’s hand. “You have to come back.”
Kassenor’s expression didn’t change, but his gaze focused.
Ark pressed on. “I haven’t always made things easy for you. We don’t talk—not like other families. But I’m not ready to let go.”
His throat closed. He forced the words out.
“You’ve never seen where I live. You don’t know what I do when I can’t sleep.
I never asked what you were like before Mother—or if you were proud of me after I left.
” His jaw locked. “I spent years thinking I didn’t matter to you. And it turns out, I just never asked.”
Kassenor didn’t speak. His hand reached, slow and trembling, to rest over Ark’s clenched fist.
“I want more time.” Ark’s voice cracked. “I need you to fight. Please.”
His father held his gaze for a long moment. Then his eyes drifted past Ark’s shoulder, toward the foot of the bed.
Ark turned.
His mother stood with her arms folded, chin lifted—dry-eyed, unmoved, as always. Oromon beside her, one hand on the bedframe, knuckles pale.
“This is just another fight,” she said. “Like all the others. Easy.”
His father’s mouth curved—that wry smile Ark had seen only across dinner tables, usually after Delphyne had said something that would’ve earned anyone else a war. “I thought, after all these years, I’d finally get a soft word out of you.”
She didn’t falter. “You’ll need to come back for that.”
Ark watched his father’s smile deepen into something that looked, against all odds, like a reason. Conviction.
Oromon’s grip tightened on the bedframe. “We’ll wait for you, Father.” Quiet. Steady. And Ark let his brother’s steadiness bolster his own.
His father’s hand tightened around his.
“You don’t need to become me, Ark.” His voice was quieter now. “You were never meant to. You have something far more dangerous than power—you have conviction. And now, you have a reason.”
Ark squeezed back.
“She kept her promise,” he said, handing the vial over to the nurse. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Well then,” Kassenor said. “Let’s do it.”
And for the first time tonight, Ark smiled.
Because hope—battered and brewed from seawater and a Kitchen Witch’s faith—was now in the room with them.