Chapter 17 The Mana Doctor #3
Celise subconsciously flexed her hands, thinking of the Starlight Dahlia, then of the many times she had imagined holding power in her balled fists.
“Here at the base of your spine, this main branch extending upward from your terminal bud has been clipped.” Dr. Forrest made a cutting motion across a thick silver vein that connected the root terminal to the rest of her energy centers up the spine.
“Without power from your root, the rest of your mana body has remained undeveloped.”
“So it’s like having a broken spine,” she murmured.
“In the mana-casting sense, sure. But try not to catastrophize it. You’ve lived a happy life so far without knowing about your condition. Please don’t think less of yourself, Lady Celise.”
Celise realized she was holding her hands over her abdomen, pressing against her belly as though she were in pain.
She rearranged her hands and clasped them in her lap.
Catastrophize? Well, perhaps she wouldn’t go that far, but she certainly wasn’t unaffected by the news.
In all honesty, she didn’t know how to feel.
She had always assumed she was a dunslug.
She had daydreamed at times about being a hidden Luminary, with some delayed power and specialness waiting to be unveiled within her bones. But this? She hadn’t expected this.
Celise gnawed on her bottom lip as the room remained quiet.
Faced with this new knowledge of her crippled mana body, Celise felt a strange sense of loss, as though a precious gift had been handed to her and stolen away in an instant.
If her powers had manifested in her youth, as they should have, her life would have been very different.
Marcella and Katrina would not have bullied her—at least, not so brutally.
Why was she clipped?
Celise tried not to let her devastation show as she struggled to accept this new knowledge about herself.
Elias leaned in close to her. She was ashamed to meet his eyes.
“Do you know why someone might have clipped your mana channels at such a young age?” he asked, his voice rough and low. “Would anyone in your family have knowledge of this? Would they hide it from you?”
Celise blinked to clear her thoughts, then she shook her head.
“No! No, I don’t think so. My father, Lord Sebastian Dhastel, would have celebrated a Luminous daughter.
When he found out I was a dunslug, he . .
. .” Celise swallowed, refusing to admit to her father’s discard. “Why would he believe anything else?”
Celise’s voice trailed off under Elias’s suspicious gaze.
She couldn’t think of anyone who might have wished to harm her in such a way.
Even Marcella seemed beyond such cruelty.
Her stepmother had married into the family when Celise was four years old, many years after the midwife had announced her a dunslug. The timing didn’t make sense.
“What about the midwife?” Dr. Forrest asked. “Would she have any reason to do this?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure. She was my mother’s handmaid, but she was sent home after my mother’s death.”
“To Sera’naya?”
“Yes, I think so. I really can’t say. I don’t know much more than that.” Celise struggled to make sense of it all. “I can’t think of anyone who would do this on purpose. Is there any way to . . . fix it?”
Dr. Forrest hesitated, sharing a look with Elias. Then the doctor came to kneel down in front of Celise. He pulled something shiny out of the pocket of his long robes.
“We call this a lens,” he said, holding up a large metal disc.
It was slightly dome-shaped like a cymbal.
“It helps convert mana energy into different frequencies to stimulate your body’s natural healing.
” The healer’s hand started to glow a soft pink color.
“As my mana strikes the lens, the shined material emits a sound—not a sound we can hear—and activates your own body’s ability to heal. ”
“I see,” Celise said, trying to follow, but her mind was filled with strange sorrow.
“This lens is shined with a special dust we call ‘Bluelight,’ because it stimulates your blue channels. Those are the main arterials running through your mana body up and down the length of your spine, which vibrate to a specific frequency. You have red and green channels as well, and some people even have yellow channels, which extend outside the body in a sort of aura. Every mana body is somewhat unique from the next—”
Elias cleared his throat, and Dr. Forrest noticed the glazed look on Celise’s face. At another time, she would have found this information fascinating, but after her hectic evening, she had reached her limit.
“I’ll have to give you a full tutorial another time,” the doctor said with a sheepish grin. “To put it simply, if we can stimulate your terminal bud to grow, we might be able to restore some functioning to your mana channels, but . . . well, let’s just see.”
Celise felt a tendril of hope stir in her heart.
“Do you think there’s a chance, then?” she asked.
The doctor sighed. He exchanged another solemn look with Elias.
Then to her, he said kindly, “There’s always a chance, my lady.
But I don’t wish to mislead you. Restoring a mana body after this kind of damage would be similar to rescuing a jade plant from a hard frost. It will likely prove unsuccessful. ”
Celise could still see the hope in the healer’s eyes despite his caution. She glanced up at Elias. The duke’s face was unreadable, a grim frown marking his scarred features.
“You don’t have to undergo a procedure if you don’t want to,” Elias reminded her.
“I feel like I owe it to myself to try. It’s not painful, is it?”
The doctor shook his head. “No, my lady. I will make sure to sedate you. If it works, you might feel some discomforting sensations during the days to come, but . . . I have to be honest, the damage is extensive. It’s worse than, well .
. . .” The doctor cast another look at Elias.
“Worse than piecing this raggedy tin soldier back together.”
Celise blinked up at Elias, noticing the bond between the two men. It finally clicked. “Did you help His Grace recover after the war?”
Dr. Forrest nodded. “Yes, my lady, I was one of the surgeons who had the honor of saving his life. I assisted Dr. Maeve Shelley, a genius medic and scientist far ahead of her time.” He noticed how Celise’s eyes traveled to Elias’s scars. “Unfortunately, we could not make him more beautiful.”
Celise stifled a laugh. Sharing a hesitant smile with Drandem Forrest, she felt a bit better. She nodded. “I trust you. I’m willing to try.”
“Then lie down on your back and get comfortable. This will take a few minutes.”
Celise nodded and rearranged herself on the table, pulling up her legs and lying down on her back.
The cold metal radiated up through the thin linen sheet.
Celise waited, holding her breath, as Dr. Forrest rubbed the amulet again between his hands, focusing his power into it, and then rested the shined disc on her abdomen, just below her bellybutton.
“Don’t worry,” Elias said from her side. “Forrest is one of the best healers in the kingdom.”
“Kingdom?” the healer joked. “Try the whole continent of Agea!”
“You always did have a big head.”
“I’ve more than earned it, bringing you back from the dead. Speaking of which, I saw Kiran earlier today. He looked distraught. Mentioned something about you skipping your medications?”
“I can’t fathom why he would say that.”
“How are you sleeping?”
“Better than a corpse.”
Celise listened as the men’s conversation became more and more muddled. The soft vibrating sensations were making her sleepy. Her thoughts felt cloudy and far away. She yawned, her eyes dropping closed.
The metal disc was warm through the fabric of her medical gown. Dr. Forrest secured it with a leather strap. Then he began charging up a second disc.
“Don’t worry, my lady,” he said, noticing her look. “You’ll be asleep soon enough, and then all of this will pass like a dream. You’ll wake up tomorrow right as rain.”
“Thank you,” Celise said softly. She was beginning to feel very drowsy, an effect of the healing mana seeping up through her belly like a tranquilizer.
Elias leaned over her. He removed the Starlight Dahlia from the buttonhole in his vest and placed it beside her on the table. “I’m leaving now to join Officer Kindale on the grounds. Do you need anything?”
“No, I’m alright," Celise murmured. Then, softly, she added, “I meant to tell you sooner, but everything happened so fast.”
“Tell me what?”
“That I’m a dunslug. I don’t have mana.”
Elias was quiet.
“So?” she asked, barely conscious. “I suppose that makes the betrothal impossible. You must call it off to save face.”
“Is that what you want?”
Celise squinted at Elias, her thoughts growing fuzzy, her head light. “I don’t deserve to wed a duke.”
Her words slurred. She wondered if he understood what she meant. She felt drunk.
"Please rest, my lady," he said.
Celise hovered on the verge of sleep, thinking back over the evening, trying to understand the unpredictable series of events.
The soothing, humming mana energy washed over her, triggering strange sensations in her body.
She felt little flashes of intense heat, then cold chills.
Little tickly sensations in her armpits, then down her spine.
Without the sedating effect of the amulets, it would have been quite maddening.
But mostly, she felt the urge to fall asleep.
Celise closed her eyes. She didn’t dare to hope. Dr. Forrest had told her outright the operation wouldn’t work. The damage was too severe.
So then, she gained nothing and she lost nothing.
She would wake up tomorrow still a dunslug, with her farce of a betrothal already over.
She felt a little wistful, but she knew she had done the right thing, telling Elias to call things off and save face.
He had picked the wrong bride. But now he knew better.
She wondered if she would wake up tomorrow in her bed above the Dhastel stables and discover the whole weekend had been a dream.