“Your earlier visit seems to have done him a world of good,” the young healer says, joining us. “He’s had slow but steady improvement since this morning.” Color has returned to Ace’s face, but the sudden shift in his expression alarms me. With mock seriousness, he takes my hands and pleads, “Mira, save me.”
Unsure if this is simply a bit, I answer with tentative playfulness. “Anything for our hero,” I whisper.
“You must save me from Tarris,” he says, eyeing the young healer over his shoulder with theatrical suspicion. “He’s trying to kill me.” Ace’s melodrama is the greatest peace I’ve felt in what seems like an eternity.
“Then he must be stopped at once,” I say, giving the man an over-the-top look of warning.
“I’m just here to change the bandages,” Tarris protests, hands raised in surrender. From the faint pink visible at the edge of the gauze, I can tell the dressing has been changed since morning—and the wound, while still angry, seems to have slowed to little more than a trickle.
“Never fear, Ace. I will defend thee.” I extend my hand, and Tarris places the fresh bandages in my palm. No stranger to tending wounds, I set to work.
After washing my hands at the nearby basin, I return to Ace’s side and begin to peel away the gauze. The stitching is finer than my coarse bindings on Vale in the dark of the cabin. Pressing a damp cloth over the injury, I try not to dwell on how deep into his chest the dagger struck. The way he’d sputtered blood in the immediate aftermath was evidence enough. With each gentle swipe across fragile skin, I focus on the love I bear the man beneath my touch. Family too precious to lose.
“You know you’re one of my favorite people, right?” I say, keeping the tone light because I can, because he’s still here to hear it.
“How could I not be?” he says. He seems to have more to add, but then he flinches, and I worry I’ve brushed too close to the wound.
Our eyes both drop to the mark—just in time to see it. Shimmering golden light threads along the edges of the injury.
I smile, remembering the faint glow that shone when I cared for Vale that first night. I have never seen such a thing in my own rapid healing. Perhaps it’s magic only awakened among their kind.
But then I see Ace’s expression. He looks down, eyes wide with disbelief.
“Mira,” he breathes. “Did you do that?”
“What do you mean? Isn’t that… normal?” I trail off as I ask, his face answering before his words can.
“Magical healing light?” he says. “No. Absolutely not normal.”
Tarris starts to approach, perhaps thinking I’m out of my depth from the pause in my work. Ace quickly waves him back. Let the healer grumble at my methods so long as he keeps his distance.
Ace stares at the wound again, its color now more rosy than foul. “Best bandage me now,” he urges. “Before we have much explaining to do.”
I act without thinking, still not sure what there even is to explain. I affix the fresh gauze. I move a bit too fast, and it tugs at the stitches. He winces. “Alright. So only slightly magical.” He settles back against the pillow and looks up at me, more awake now than when I arrived.
“Why weren’t you surprised by that, Mira?”
I explain what I saw the night I tended Vale—a similar shimmer, fainter, but unmistakably akin to what we both just witnessed.
“They told me the blade that struck me likely carried dark magic,” Ace says. “They weren’t sure how I survived without something to counter it. Mira… I think you may be the light that kept that dark from claiming me.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The ward glows softly with lantern light as Soria closes the door behind her. The healers’ relief at Ace’s steadier condition—and the fact that his care no longer requires frantic intervention—makes it easy for Vale to dismiss them. Someone will return to keep watch. For now, they are sent to rest.
Vale pulls another chair close for Soria as Odrin stays near the door. The four of us gather around Ace’s bed.
He looks better. Not well—but present. Awake enough to follow, sharp enough to tease, alive enough to matter.
Vale speaks first, ensuring Soria is with us. “When Mira tended his wound,” he says, measured, careful, “there was light.”
Ace lifts a brow faintly. “Hard to miss,” he murmurs. “Rather distracting, actually.”
Vale turns to me. “You said you saw the same thing when you cared for me.”
I nod. “Fainter. Subtle. I thought it was… normal. For you.” Silence settles.
“We heal differently,” Vale says at last. “But not like that.” He rubs his jaw, thinking. “Though my injury and Ace’s were not a typical kind of wound.”
