“Well, Mags.” Peter forced his voice to remain confident when he felt anything but. “Addie and I won’t let anything bad happen to your mum or the babe.”
“What you gonna do?”
“Pray.” Peter closed his eyes, opening his mind, as he’d done the night the winds filled theSeabird’s sails.
He stood in a small room, the heat nearly unbearable. A woman lay on the bed, features twisted into a mask of pain, covers tented over her swollen belly.
“Shh…” Addie soothed, looking under the blanket placed over the woman’s waist.
Another woman sat at the head of the bed, holding the first’s hand, silent tears running down her face. The scent of blood filled Peter’s nose.
The woman and her child were dying. “Do something,” Addie hissed under her breath.
Peter didn’t know what to do, why, or how, but he raised his arms like he had during the attack on theSeabird. Power. Power flowed through him, around him. So much power, making him giddy like strong drink. He pulled the power to himself.
The laboring woman screamed. Peter directed the power at her, willing her to peace, willing her to live, willing the baby to live.
The moment he stopped concentrating, the screaming began anew.
“Focus,” Addie snapped.
Peter did. Using his body as a conduit, he collected and poured the mysterious power into the woman.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there. Time lost all meaning.
“You did good,” Addie said, from vast leagues away.
He opened his eyes to find himself still crouched outside the house, the night full dark now and stars twinkling overhead.
A haggard-looking Addie trudged out of the house and patted Peter’s cheek. “You did good, but we must leave now.”
They scurried away, not how they’d come, but through less desirable neighborhoods of tumbledown houses. Two men approached in the darkness. Thieves? Peter braced himself for a fight, fully prepared to push Addie behind him.
Addie’s snarl sent the two men scuttling away. “I’m sad to say those might be kin,” she mumbled to Peter. At last, they reached familiar territory, where gaslights lit the streets. Raucous laughter sounded from a tavern, cut off when the door slammed shut. An inebriated patron wended his way down the street.
Peter and Addie quietly padded down a side street and to her dark house off of the main road.
Upon opening the front door, Peter reached for a lantern. Addie slapped his hand away.
“No. If any watch the house, they must think us asleep. Any who might have come to the tavern, Mitta would have told we came home as you were ill.”
Peter dropped into his usual chair by the hearth, totally drained.
Addie puttered about in the darkness, pressing a cup into his hands. “Here. Drink this.”
His hands shook. Addie helped him get the cup to his mouth. He swallowed half of the bitter brew and gave her back the cup. One of her many healing elixirs. “Thank you. What just happened?”
Addie placed the cup on a small table and sat across from him in her own chair, letting out a weary sigh. “The women I help think the power lies in my herbal concoctions or learned skills. They don’t know there’s more.”
Chills ran up Peter’s spine. “What’s more?”
Even though they were in her home, alone, she whispered, “My mum was mage-born. A healer. I’ll never have her talents, but I do what I can.”
Having shared the woman’s cottage, the news came as no surprise. “Then why did you invite me?”
“You have power. Like me, you hide behind an amulet, but it’s there, bright enough for anyone to see if they know what to look for. I would have lost the mother and daughter without your strength to lean on. I’m sorry. I put you at risk. That much power? The Chosen could have come. But I thank you.”
“I… I saved her?”
