“I’m … sorry, my people are … I mean they’re lovely, it’s just…”
“Whatever,” he growled and crossed his arms over his chest.
Mara raised an eyebrow but then went back to her magazine. I was about to respond to him when the door opened and Kira walked in with her healing kit.
The second she saw Liam, she looked at me but said nothing.
“Heal him first,” I told her.
Liam stood and backed up to the wall. “No. I’m fine. She’s lost more blood.”
Mara coughed and then continued to flip through her magazine.
I rolled my eyes and beckoned Kira over. She took out her scissors and gently cut the sleeve off my shirt, careful not to touch my wound. I hissed at any sudden movement, a sting lacing up my arm.
“Pain elixir.” She handed me the shot of thick brown fluid and I chugged it down in one big gulp, relishing the warmth as it burned its way down my throat to my belly.
“This is … extensive damage, Lily. Were you shot?” She undid the tourniquet and quickly set her warm hands over the wound to staunch the blood. Pink glowing light emanated from her palms; a soothing chill settled over me. The pain meds were working. I didn’t feel drunk like Fae mead; this was more of an anti-anxiety feeling. You just … chilled out. The pain receptors in my brain turned off and I could finally think.
“Kind of. Shot with an icicle,” I said.
Shetsked-tsked. “This will take a few days to fully heal. I can stop the bleeding and close the wound, but the ligaments and tendons are torn as well. You’ll need to take light therapy.”
I nodded.
“Light therapy?” Liam peeped up from the wall. He watched Kira’s hands on my arm in fascination.
Kira looked at me, as if asking permission to tell him, and I nodded.
“Light—” she held up her hand, which glowed an insanely bright pink “—therapy is when I place my healing light into a crystal, or glass jar, and she can lay it on the wound when I’m not around.”
Liam nodded, but it was hard to read him. What did he think of all this? Did the Winter King have any healers? Did any of the Sons of Darkness have healing powers? I wanted to know everything.
Kira whipped out a bandage and wrapped my arm, handing me a felt satchel with three light stones in them. They glowed pink and I was careful not to touch them and discharge the healing early. “One a day for three days should do it,” she told me.
I nodded. “Thank you.” I felt so much better, but I was suddenly hungry. It had been a while since those pancakes in New York.
“Let’s see it.” Kira walked over to Liam. He stood there for a full minute, calculating.
“She’s harmless,” Mara finally called out, and Liam relaxed, showing her the hole in his jeans.
“I’m going to need to cut those off.”
He nodded and my throat went dry. He was already shirtless; I wasn’t sure how much more undressing I could take.
She went to work cutting off the right leg of his jeans while I tried and failed not to check out his muscular thigh. Mara caught me looking and my cheeks reddened.
After Kira gave him the same pain medication drink and healed his leg, she also gave him three light stones. “You lay it over the injury until the stone stops glowing,” she told him.
He nodded and took them in their velvet satchel. “Could these … cure cancer or aids or human stuff like that?”
Kira froze and Mara and I shared an uncomfortable look.
“I’ve never healed a human. I don’t know,” was all Kira said. She left without another word, leaving Liam and I alone with Mara. Interfering in human affairs was forbidden. Healing one of them? I couldn’t imagine such a thing. It would expose our kind to them and create a witch hunt. Or at least that’s what we’d been told. King Cypress didn’t seem to mind about revealing the magical world to the humans in his … group.
Mara set down her magazine. “I gave a healing stone to a human once.”
I gasped. “You did?”
