Where am I? I wish I could fade away in this darkness, avoid that strange power coursing through me. So much power. Disgusting, terrifying power.
Zorwal’s magic. I remember what I was doing—and open my eyes.
The sky is blue above me, while Ziven and Lidiane are crouched by me, their faces worried. Renel, Azur, and Ferer are standing at a distance, also staring at me.
I sit up quickly, and realize my back hurts from falling onto the uneven, rocky ground of the edge of the island.
“I’m fine,” I mutter, even though it’s hard to speak through my throat, as if it was fighting that awful blood, rejecting that foul magic.
But Ineedthat magic.
“Are you sure?” Ziven asks. “Do you need anything?”
“No, just… a moment.”
Many moments, in fact, to find my bearing again, to come to terms and connect with that eerie magic. With slow, deep breaths, I try to reach for it, feel it.
The first thing I feel is not mine, but other people’s magic. Magnificent power emanates from Lidiane, Azur, and Ferer, and then, more muted, I see Ziven’s stone on his neck emitting power, and even some trace of magic in Renel’s chest, or maybe not magic, but some life force.
I can also sense some of the air around me, a fraction of what I’ve felt before with Marlak’s or Azur’s magic. But what I need is healing, and I hope it’s something I can use like that, with only my basic training from the Elite Tower, when we learned howto identify—and hit—vital organs or how to care for common wounds and ailments. So little.
Lidiane’s face changes from worry to expectation while behind her, Azur stands with his arms crossed, his expression a hard mask. I understand that mask. He’s afraid to hope.
And then, all of a sudden, it comes to me. I can sense tissue, organs, veins, and see them like I would hear a harmonious song, each part of the body a note. I stand in front of Azur and look at him. His breathing is stiff, his pulse accelerated. I look at his hands—but don’t see anything wrong. Does the magic poisoning start in the hands, or are the hands just a symptom? I still think I should see or sense something.
“Can you remove your gloves?” I ask.
Azur hesitates, his breath contracting.
“I won’t hurt you,” I add.
He clicks his tongue. “It’s not that.” His tone is surprisingly gentle, perhaps because he’s glancing at Lidiane.
Her eyes are tense as she stares at him.
Slowly, Azur removes his gloves. When he raises his hands to show them to me, I flinch, horrified. For a second, I wonder if it’s an illusion, if my imagination is distorted by this horrific magic, or if it’s a trick of light.
I take a better look, and there’s no denying it; his fingers are entirely white.
Does the magical poisoning spread that fast? And if it continues like that, how long does he have? Two, three days at most? Perhaps a little more than one day.
With a deep breath, I tell myself that I can’t entertain those gloomy thoughts. I look at his hands again, this time trying to see it through this strange magic pulsing through my veins.
The healing magicisworking. I can see the skin, tissue, muscles, and the way the bones are joined together, I can even sense the blood flowing to the tips of his fingers.
Good. Normal.It’s what the magic tells me. Perhaps I should search for the root of his predicament elsewhere in his body. I look at his chest. Blood flows through his heart, air through his lungs, everything healthy, whole. His head is fine. No. There are scars on top of his head, but they’re old, healed. I can sense that there’s something missing there, but from years and years ago, its energy gone. I don’t understand what it is, but it’s clear that it has no relation to his magical poisoning. Other than that, everything is fine, as far as this magic tells me, and yet it’s not fine.
“It might take a while,” I mutter, since everyone’s watching me. “And I need to test something.”
I don’t want to give them false hope, but I don’t want them to know that I’m at a loss. At least not yet. The magic might leave my body at any moment, so I have to be fast.
The truth is that I don’t know how this magic heals, so I look at my companions, trying to see if I can sense anything different.Whole. That’s all I get.
I pick a dagger and make a small slash on my own palm, then look at it.Not whole. Yeah, no kidding. And yet it’s as if the tissue wants to reform itself, to become whole again. The magic wants to heal it—and I let it.
The cut is healed in one second, not a single mark remaining. Fair. So Icanheal. I could cut too, reverse this magic and cause harm, but its greatest power lies in healing.
I look at Azur’s hand again.Whole.Well, no. It’s half white.Look again,I tell the magic.
