Something slams into me from behind before I can catch my breath. A fourth attacker I didn't see, some kind of force user, and the impact sends me skidding across the canyon floor. My wings flare to catch my balance, but she's already winding up for another hit, the air between us warping with compressed energy.
Harlow steps out of nothing directly behind her. She doesn't see him, feel him, or even know he's there until his hand closes around her wrist. Whatever he does drains the fight out of her instantly. Her eyes go blank, her knees buckle, and she drops. Harlow meets my gaze over her crumpling body, one eyebrow raised like he's mildly inconvenienced.
"You had something on your back," he says, and then phases out again before I can respond.
Green contract light flashes somewhere to my left, and a loyalist screams as Harlow materializes behind him. The battle is turning in our favor. We're winning. And then I see Stellan fall.
The earth spike catches him through the side, punching through his body with enough force to lift him off his feet. Time slows down. I hear someone screaming and realize it's me. Stellan's fire flickers, dims, his eyes going glassy as blood pours from the wound. I'm moving before I know I've decided to move.
The earth elemental who impaled my mate turns to face me, satisfaction written across his features. He doesn't have time to enjoy it. I hit him with every ounce of demon power I possess, draining fear and confidence and life force and everything else until he's a husk that crumbles to the ground.
Stellan is on his knees, hands pressed to the wound, fire guttering like a candle. I drop beside him and catch him before he collapses completely. "No." The word tears out of me. "No no no, you don't get to do this, you don't get to leave me—"
His blood is everywhere, soaking through my clothes and slicking my hands. The earth spike is still in him, and I know I can't pull it out, knowing that will only make him bleed faster, but I don't know what to do, I don't know how to fix this.
"Jade." Skye's voice cuts through my panic as he runs toward us, the battle still raging behind him. "Jade, let me—"
"I don't know how to help him!" The words come out broken. My hunger responds without my permission, but not the way it usually does.
Energy flows out of me instead of in, everything I've consumed in this fight transforming as it passes through my demon nature. Fear becomes courage. Pain becomes relief. Stolen life force becomes healing energy that floods through my connection with Stellan and into his broken body.
The bleeding slows as the wound starts to close around the spike, flesh knitting itself back together. Stellan gasps, his fire flaring bright again, the color returning to his face. Skye stops beside us, his expression shifting from fear to wonder. "Jade, what are you—"
I pour everything I have into Stellan, refining and transforming and giving back better than I received. The earth spike crumbles as his body rejects it, healed flesh pushing out the foreign material. Within minutes, the gaping wound has become pink new skin, tender but whole.
Stellan's eyes flutter open and stares at me like he's never seen me before. "What did you do?"
"I don't know." My shakes a little as I sit back. "I just... gave you what you needed."
The healing energy doesn't just flow into Stellan. It bleeds outward through the bonds, every drop of transformed essence rippling through our connection like a shockwave. Rumi's black threads flare bright enough to light the canyon, absorbing thesurge and redirecting it outward in a wave that sends three loyalists flying off their feet.
Ambrose's contracts snap taut with borrowed power, the green light blazing as his barriers become walls of solid force that pin two more attackers against the canyon stone. Harlow uses the distraction to slip between planes entirely, reappearing behind the remaining fighters and dropping them before they even register he's moved.
The last few loyalists break and run, scrambling up the canyon walls. Skye's essence tracks their retreat until they're well beyond range, and only then does the tension in his shoulders ease.
The canyon goes quiet. Bodies litter the ground, some unconscious, some not, and the smell of scorched earth and blood hangs thick in the air.
"Demons aren't what the Council taught." Skye’s mutters, almost in awe as he looks over at Stellan. "They're not parasites. They're transformers. They refine essence, change it, improve it."
"He healed me." Stellan's hand comes up to touch the new skin where the wound was. "I should be dead, and he healed me." I look down at my hands, covered in his blood and the blood of the attackers I killed. My claws are still extended, still stained with evidence of what I did.
"I killed them. I killed people."
"You protected us." Stellan's grip on my hand tightens. "You protected me." Rumi crouches beside us, his presence warm despite the darkness threading through his aura, and tells me I did what any of them would have done.
The weight of it settles on my shoulders. Three lives ended by my claws, my hunger, my choice. I wait for the guilt to crash over me, the horror of what I've become, but it doesn't. They threatened my mates. They hurt my Stellan. I would do it again.I would kill a hundred of them, a thousand, to keep the people I love safe. Maybe that should scare me. It doesn't.
We make camp quickly after that, finding a better position in a cave system off the main canyon. Stellan falls asleep against my chest almost immediately, his body forcing the rest his stubbornness wouldn't allow. His fire burns steady beneath his skin, the wound fully closed, but I keep my hand pressed flat against it anyway.
Skye sits down beside us after the wards are set. He leans back against the cave wall, arms crossed over his chest, staring at the far wall for a while.
"I didn't know I could do that," I say eventually.
"Neither did I." He's quiet for a moment. "I've read everything I could get my hands on in Mother Nature's library about demons. Everything the old Praestes records say. None of it mentioned healing. They all called it parasitic. Every single source." He looks at me, there's something raw in his expression. "They were wrong about you. About all of it. And I'm the Praestes. I'm supposed to be the keeper of knowledge, and I didn't know."
"Nobody knew."
"That's not good enough." His jaw tightens. "Three books of records. Centuries of Praestes documentation. And not one of them thought to ask whether demons could give back what they took. They just assumed the worst and wrote it down as fact, and every Praestes after them believed it." His hand finds my arm. "I won't make that mistake. When we get through this, I'm rewriting every record. Starting with yours."
