I gasped.
The House WoodRaven.
Suns. The days when my heart did not break.
“It may help tomorrow,” he said. “Though I am not sure of anything anymore.”
My eyes stung as, with one hand, he slipped it over my head.
“Thank you, Aro’el,” he said. “For believing I was a better man. Perhaps, in some other life, I could have been.”
He drew his hand from the nape of my neck, but I caught it and pressed it onto my cheek. Skin against skin, theAro’elscar sizzled with power, heat crackling between us. My heart hammered. Broken and racing all at once.
“I cannot be what you want,” he said.
“Be what you are.”
“I do not know what I am.” His voice was low, raw. “I cannot even fly as I should. The bones are gone.”
He lifted his wrist, the bandage wrapped tight where his hand had once been. My chest ached. He had suffered this, had not fled, because I had disobeyed him. Because I had put myself in Ilvalour’s sights. Because of me.
“You’re still you,” I said.
His eyes burned. “What is a hawk without a wing?”
“Still a hawk,” I said.
I laid my hand across the stump. He gasped—pain, surprise, maybe both. The sound pierced me deeper than any blade. Chimeric flared under my fingers, a hiss of light and heat, and I searched his face, desperate for permission, pleading for hope.
“I can knit this,” I whispered, my voice as wild and reckless as my heart. My eyes begged his. “Please. Let me try.”
“It is not possible,” he said. “Not even for me, else I would have done it by now.”
“I spent my childhood watching my mother split tendon frombone. I know how they knit and how they connect. Please let me try.”
“You cannot do this,” he said, but his eyes were brimming. “No one can.”
“What if I can? What ifwecan? We’re runechasers both. We brought Dev back from the Old Sand. Who knows what’s possible for us?”
He was undone. This man, the last Priestlord ofLindurithain, wanmage become mirror become Dread, lord of all the runes in erthe, sea, and sky, was broken and desolate, and I had just offered him hope.
“May I? Please? Let me try.”
A lifetime passed, and then he nodded.
I cradled his wrist with both hands, unwinding the bandage with care, feeling the tissue cold and sticky beneath my palm. He stumbled back into the wall as I sent chimeric in wave after wave, up his arm and into his flesh. He hissed with the pain but didn’t flinch. Rather, he leaned into it, eyes closed, mouth grim, concentrating on the sensations and the runes. Chimeric would destroy what it was sent to destroy, but it would bind what it was sent to bind, and I would be damned if I didn’t bind this lost and broken man.
No. Not merely bind.
Remake.
Tecton Circulaia, Auctorus Permeatus.
Tecton Circulaia, Auctorus Permeatus.
Ferous Vivithari,
Laethe mira, laethe.
