“How much of it do you have?” I ask.
Eres hesitates. “Enough for a few doses. I don’t know if it will be enough to clear the effects completely.”
I breathe in. “All right.”
He steps closer and tips the vial to my lips again. “You’ll crash afterward. Your body’s been restrained for days. If you push too hard—”
“I know,” I lie. I try to push confidence into my words.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve never been allowed to heal, not that I ever thought about it. But I was certainly never trusted with anything but destruction.
But I have to try. Eres pulls a cloth back from Sera’s wound, revealing the path carved by the blade. The bleeding has slowed, scarlet oozing out in a slow seep.
“Internal bleeding here,” Eres takes my hand and points at where I need to focus. “Likely organ damage. And the spine—”
His voice breaks slightly, then steadies. “The spinal column is severed around the lower thoracic, which is here. She has no movement below that, and her body is shutting down. If you can do anything, focus on structure first. Bone. Then nerve. If the rumors are true, luminth can… harden. Become permanent.”
I nod, throat too tight for words, and lift my hands over Sera’s abdomen. My palms glow instantly, luminth spilling between my fingers. I yank them back, fear filling my throat. I don’t want to burn her.
“Take a breath.” Eres stays beside me, his words low and comforting. “It’s alright. Think about it before you move.”
The luminth is warm and terrifying in my hand. “What if I hurt her?”
Elspeth clears her throat. “You can’t hurt her anymore than she already is, Lightbringer. None of us will fault you for trying.”
Even Valcor remains silent. I close my eyes and picture the spinal column the way I learned it in scrolls I read as a child. Vertebrae stacked, the protective canal and the delicate cord inside it. I picture it severed, broken, wrong.
That’sall too familiar. My studying had nothing to do with healing.
“Do you need an image?” Eres whispers. My head shakes in silent refusal. And the light in my hand grows. I can visualize it inside my hand.
“This is madness,” Valcor mutters, voice tight.
I ignore him as I breathe in and let the luminth sink inside. The sensation is akin to pressure behind my eyes, like my awareness is somehow being pulledinward.
The room around me disappears.
There's only Sera, her body a landscape of heat and pain and fading life. I approach the rupture in her spine like a cliff edge, sensing the nerve endings, frayed and raw. I sense blood pooling where it shouldn’t, organs bruised and split.
The sight, this strange, internal map, shouldn’t be possible. Wonder fills my mind.
It’s beautiful.
A segment of spine slowly forms in my mind, each curve precise and aligned with almost terrifying precision as if my mind's filling in blanks I’m not able to name. But I can’t quite hold the complexity. It flickers in my vision, attempting to become a spear instead of a spine, because that’s what my bodyknows.
I grit my teeth. “No,” I whisper to myself. “This is not a weapon.”
And then it hardens, as if it’s responding to me—
My heart stutters with shock.
Darian inhales sharply, somewhere close by. “Lyra.”
“Quiet.” Eres says it before I can. “Please.”
I guide the hardened segment of luminth into place at the rupture, aligning it with Sera’s existing vertebrae as if I’m fitting a key against a lock. The connection is delicate. One wrong angle, I sense, and I could shatter what's left. Sweat beads under my hairline. My arms ache from holding my hands steady.
The new bone segment settles.
