I took in the deep, jagged claw marks in his side, the torn tunic, the flesh stripped and hanging from bone. The way his fingers twitched and his eyelids fluttered, his chest barely moving with the last few breaths his body clung to.
He was too young for this.
He wasn’t dead—not yet. But herbs and potions wouldn’t save him.
Moving to crouch by the weeping woman, I gently placed my hands on hers. “I can help him,” I said quietly, making sure the others were out of earshot.
She looked up at me, eyes swollen. “How?”
I didn’t answer.
Her breaths slowed as she blinked at me and nodded. Face paling, her eyes went round and filled with tentative hope. “Do what you must,” she whispered, backing away.
I took my dagger and sliced it across my palm, then pressed itto the boy’s cooling skin. Theodore’s words floated through my mind.
“Feel the injury. Imagine being able to see the shattered bones, the torn muscles. Look beneath the flesh and picture your magic, your blood, coursing through it. Replacing weakness with strength. Pain with comfort. Broken with whole.”
This was so much more than a broken wing. This was willing flesh to mend and organs to renew. This was coaxing the soul back from the precipice of freedom and into a mangled, torn body. This was magic beyond anything I’d dared to perform.
My head and heart pounded in time with the blood pumping from my hand and mixing with his. The healing spell dripped from my lips like a prayer.
“Revie scurae.”
Nothing happened.
No familiar power zipped through me, no lightning bolt of magic poured into his wound like it had with the bird.
Disappointment crashed into me and my shoulders sagged, a heavy exhale leaving my parted lips. Why did I think I would be able to do this? How could Ipossiblybelieve that a few days of practicing blood magic meant I’d be able to bring someone back from the brink of death? It was ridiculous. Impossible.
“Nothing is impossible, Rose. Not anymore.”
I bit down on my lip. What would Theodore say if he were here with me now? If this was simply another lesson in his study?
He would tell me to stop thinking of my limits, to stop living by the rules of magic that once bound me. To remember thatthiswas my birthright. What I was born to do. He would say my power was more than I could possibly dream.
I took a deep breath. I calmed my heart and focused on the sound of it thumping resolutely in my ears.
I am unlimited.
Magic sparked in my blood, lighting my veins on fire.
It happenedin an instant.
It felt like my very being was ripping apart and molding into something new. Something stronger. Something that transcended the magic I once knew, that broke the barriers my own mind had placed on me for all these years. It was as if a cage had not only been opened, but completely shattered. Power like a sweet siren’s song flooded me, drowning me, filling me.
I let out a gasp as the boy’s heart picked up speed beneath my touch, his skin warming as blood rushed through his body. The gashes in his side pulled back together, sewn by an invisible hand. His cheeks pinkened and his chest rose as he took a full breath.
He was alive. He washealed.
“By the Fates…” his mother murmured, awestruck.
I pulled my hand away, leaving a bloody print where his wound once was. Hastily, I moved his ripped shirt so it would cover the spot, elation at what I’d done quickly falling to panic that the others would find out. They wouldn’t understand. They’d think it was an abomination, like I once did. But they didn’t know thegoodblood magic could do.
His mother gripped my hand, keeping her voice low. “You saved him. When he couldn’t be healed, you saved him. Whatever you want, I will give it to you. I—I can never repay?—”
“Tell no one,” I said, cutting her off. “That’s all I ask.”
She met my eyes, understanding passing between us. “You saved him,” she whispered again, more to herself than to me.
