“Vesryn.” Serenna caught his wrist. “Stop.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “I can’t save him.” The words tore out of him, raw as their open wounds. “I can’t—”
His shoulders shook with each heaving breath, mending unmoored in his palms.
“Vesryn.”
Serenna hauled his arm back, hard enough that he had no choice but to look at her. Still slitted with dragonsight, his open eye burned feral with fear.
Her breath hitched when a deluge of his guilt and helplessness punched through her defenses. For a heartbeat she was back in the wraith fortress with Fenn slipping away beneath her hands. The instinct to recoil, to break under the memory of nearly losing him once already, hit so hard her vision quivered. Fingers trembling, Serenna forced the memory down with a slow draw of air, shoving the past back into its grave.
She tightened her grip on Vesryn’s arm and pressed her other hand firmly to Fenn’s chest. Letting purpose eclipse fear, she rethreaded her healing weaves.
“You don’t have to heal him alone,” Serenna said softly, steadying her voice as much for herself as for him. “But you’re overwhelming his wounds. We have to guide the magic, not drown him in it.”
Vesryn’s gaze dropped to Fenn’s body. Something fractured behind his eye—not only guilt, but the terrible certainty that Fenn was already gone. And that the fault lay with him.
Releasing the prince, Serenna reached through her Starshard. She drew from the gem’s reserves, her Well nearly wrung dry from calling sunfire. Essence unfurled from her fingertips. Glimmering like crimson starlight, she swept the magic across Fenn’s chest, sinking it deeper.
“I know it looks bad,” she murmured, steering the healing current outward to map the damage. “His wings aren’t broken, but his legs definitely are. Most of this blood is from the blow to his head. It looks worse than it is.”
Serenna’s awareness drifted instinctively toward Vesryn—to the burned edge of his scalp, the shoulder hanging out of joint, the eye swollen nearly shut. A protective urge flared to send a wave of healing through him too.
Vesryn shook his head the moment her gaze found his.
“Worry about him first.” He jerked his chin toward Fenn. “I’m not the one bleeding out.”
Serenna nodded, redirecting her focus to the thread of Fenn’s life still pulsing bright. “He has a few bruised ribs,” she said, finishing her assessment. “But nothing’s collapsing. He’s still fighting.”
Some of the wildness drained from Vesryn’s frantic exhales. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” she assured him fiercely, thinking to herself that Fenn had been dragged out of worse.
Uncertainty still rippled from Vesryn in quiet waves. His fingers hovered near one of Fenn’s ruined wings before curling back on themselves, as if he feared his touch might harm more than it healed.
“You can help me,” Serenna said softly, weaving the mending lattice into a cohesive pattern. “I’ll braid our magic together. Let me guide it. You can follow. Like at the Bramblemaw den when you steadied sunfire for me.”
For a moment, Vesryn didn’t move, doubt creeping between them like a toxin. “I can’t be the reason he dies,” he whispered. “Because if I am…” His voice splintered as he dropped his gaze back to Fenn. “You’d never forgive me. Would you?”
“No,” Serenna said.
He flinched and she gentled her voice. “Not because I’d ever blame you,” she added. “But because you’d never stop blaming yourself.”
She reached for his hand and squeezed. “So let’s not give either of us the chance.”
Vesryn exhaled, jaw clenching before he gave a tight nod. He drew away, fingers shaking as he pulled his Starshard from beneath his armor, Fenn’s blood trickling down his palm. Astream of Essence bloomed from the crystal’s core, spiraling outward in wavering arcs.
Serenna gathered his summoned current of magic and threaded it into her own. His power met her in a resisting jolt, still tangled with guilt, strung tight with the conviction that he’d only make things worse.
She didn’t force it, only channeled her own power into Fenn first, shaping a path the prince could follow. With a gentle tug, she coaxed Vesryn’s magic closer.
Slowly—painfully slowly—tension unwound as he surrendered to her guidance. His Essence flexed around hers until she could steer it fully.
Serenna twisted their magic together—one strand hers, one strand his—weaving them into a single stream. Light from both Starshards spilled into the mending lattices anchored across Fenn’s wounds.
The rhythm of the merge felt…peculiar in its ease. As if the gems anticipated her intent, slipping Essence together before she steered it.
Her gaze flicked to Vesryn, but his attention stayed riveted on the rise and fall of Fenn’s chest.
