A small crowd of people had already gathered by the time I arrived. The sun was just setting, casting a rosy orange hue across the nobles and servants that swarmed around the mystery patient. In truth, I’d never healed a real person before, but I’d passed every single Corlixin healing exam with flying colours and could name over a hundred different illnesses. How hard could this be?
“Step aside!” I commanded as the small crowd parted to make way for me.
In the centre of the mob, a young, finely dressed boy was lying flat on his back against the grass. With his small frame and innocent-looking features, he must’ve been no older than fourteen. As I studied him, I noticed his clothes were soaking wet and covered with pondweed, while his lips were a ghostly shade of blue. But I didn’t need to be a healer to realise what was wrong.
The poor boy had drowned.
“How did this happen?” I asked the crowd urgently, lowering myself to the boy’s level.
“Nobody knows,” someone answered. “We just found him face down in the water. He must’ve slipped in.”
My fingers desperately searched his neck for a heartbeat. There was no rise and fall of his chest, so he wasn’t breathing, but perhaps there would be some life still. When I felt no pulse, my mind raced.
‘Think,’ I hissed internally. Any other kingdom’s healers would’ve given up at this point. With no heartbeat, that meant the person’s soul had already departed. But the Corlixins had a way to bring them back. There was no magic involved, it was pure science – compressions on the chest and air into the mouth. Only it’d been months since I practised heartflow restoration, and even then, I’d never tried it on a real person. But still, I had totry.
Bracing my intertwined hands over his ribs just like I’d been taught, I began pumping into his chest. His lifeless body squirmed underneath me as I pumped, sending gasps echoing around us. A few tried to question me, but I remained wholly focused on the patient and the counting I was doing under my breath.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.” The whispered number increased with each compression. There was no change in the boy, but I didn’t stop. I remembered my teachers insisting that sometimes you would need to do this for ten minutes before heartflow would be restored.
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” I leaned forward and pinched his nose tightly, bringing my lips to his. Shocked noises radiated through the mob surrounding us, but I ignored them, forcing air deep into his lungs.
“She’s kissing him!” a man gasped. “This is obscene!”
“One, two, three, four,” my whispers continued, his commentpassing straight over me.
‘Come on,’ I begged silently, ‘You’re so young and I don’t even know your name, but I need you to breathe.’ How long had it been since I’d started? Surely no more than a minute, but I had no idea how long he’d been in the pond before someone had fished him out. Heartflow restoration was most effective when it was performed immediately after the heart stopped beating.
I leaned down to force more air into his lungs.
“Come on,” I growled, out loud this time. He was far too young to die like this, and drowning in a fish pond – of all the ways to die!
I continued compressions for what felt like hours, but it must’ve only been a few minutes. Around us, time seemed to slow, and all I could focus on was pumping and breathing, pumping and breathing, pumping and—
The boy gasped beneath me. It was strained and waterlogged, but still, a breath was a breath. Green murky water spouted from his mouth as he coughed and sputtered into the grass. Pulling my hands away, I finally noticed how much they were shaking. I’d never felt such overwhelming relief like this before. It was deep and raw and made me want to scream.
“She used magic to bring him back!” someone accused from within the crowd. “The princess gave him a magic kiss of life!”
“She’s no princess. That’s dark magic! No one can bring someone back from the dead,” another voice snarled.
Dismissing their shouts, I remained focused on the boy as I helped him to sit up. His face was pale with shock, and his whole body shivered like a little mouse. “D-did you s-save me?” he wheezed.
I nodded, then tried to speak in the gentlest voice I could muster. “You were found unconscious in the water. I used an advanced healing technique to restart your… to wake you up again.”
The boy shuddered, seeming to not notice the arguing mob surrounding us. “Th-thank you.” He shivered, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his drenched tunic.
If only everyone else was as grateful. The people that circled us had descended into chaos, their accusations and suspicions swirling around like a dark storm.
“Did you see that? She kissed a dead boy!”
“It’s some kind of trick for her to win favour. The boy wasn’t even dead.”
“The prince will handle this; he’ll throw the wicked mage out on the streets!”
Amidst all the commotion, a deafening scream pierced through the crowd, forcing all their mouths to clamp shut in unison.
“Nathan!” A familiar highborn woman shoved through the mass of people. Her frustratingly beautiful face was speckled with tears, and she wasn’t wearing her usual smirk, but still, I recognised her immediately.
“My sweet brother,” Giselle wailed, almost collapsing to the floor as she pulled the boy’s shaking body into a tight hug. Her whole body shook with violent sobs. “Thank the Forges you’re alive. Someone told me you’d drowned! What happened to you?”
