I groaned, hating him for being right. “Rose said you were gruff, but she didn’t say anything about merciless.”
“Hmm.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I have plenty of mercy. Just not when the suffering is self-inflicted.” He called over one of the fae lights bobbing through the yard, caught it in his palm, and mashed it into the ball. “Especially not when Bastian will inflict even more suffering on me for not doing my job.”
So training it was. I tried to hit the balls as he threw them. Once I was even successful.
After, for when I didn’t want to kill, he took me through some basic self-defence, which he summarised as “go for the soft bits, then it doesn’t matter how strong you are.”
Eyes. Ears. Nose. Groin. Throat. Knees. Instep. Not all soft, but places that hurt and would send an attacker reeling—hopefully long enough for me to escape.
As Faolán dodged my attempt to stamp on his foot, I reminded myself that at least I was better at archery than self-defence… or magic.
The past couple of days, Rose had tried to teach me, explaining how she turned inward and found it.
But when I turned inward, I couldn’t find any magic, only my own thoughts. Despite my hard work and her patience, the whole session had been pointless.
Like my poison, magic was something that had been done to me and now lingered, not something I could use.
As Faolán and I finished in the training yard, I wasn’t sure if the sweat coating my skin was down to the hard work or my hangover. Why didn’t fae, in creating their magically infused alcohol, also make it so it didn’t make you feel so shit the next day? Maybe they didn’t suffer from anything so mundane as hangovers.
But I would be able to enjoy regular alcohol again soon. On my return to Bastian’s rooms, a message waited from Elthea, summoning me for another appointment. So soon after that checkup—this had to be a cure, or at least progress towards one.
That hope still buzzed through me later as I squared my shoulders and left Dusk’s side of the palace with Rose. She walked me to the Hall of Healing, but even if she hadn’t, it felt safer on the streets with the yew bow on my back and the boot pistol at my thigh. I waved her off to wait for me at Ariadne’s shop and headed inside.
Elthea sat me in the sparse treatment room I’d woken up in. A thin mask of the same material as the gloves she wore around me covered her nose and mouth. But I knew her well enough by now to know she didn’t smile in greeting.
“I have a theory.” Straight to it, no niceties.
It was actually refreshing in a way. I knew where I stood with Elthea. I was her patient. That was all. A set of notes in her neat book, a lump of matter to be theorised about.
And she was my healer. The person who could rid me of this accidental magic that left me poisoned and poisonous.
I canted my head when she said nothing more. “Does that theory lead to a cure?”
“If I’m right, yes. I need to know how this affects your body.” She nodded at the purple stain on my fingers. Today it had receded to barely lick at the first set of knuckles.
“How do we find out?”
“I need to see.”
I bit back an impatient sigh. “Meaning?”
She turned a pointed glance to the low table beside the bed. An array of sharp instruments gleamed upon its surface and a chill as cold as steel whispered through me.
“You need to… cut me open?” I swallowed. I would do it. No doubts there. I would do anything. But that didn’t dull the fear.
“That isn’t how I would put it, but I suppose in a layperson’s terms, yes.” She rolled her eyes and motioned for me to place my hands on the bed. “Ready?”
“Aren’t you going to… knock me out or something?”
She strapped my wrist to the bed. “That will stop you from moving.”
“That wasn’t my concern.”
“It’s better if you’re awake so you can tell me what you’re feeling. I need to understand how the poison travels through you. If your nerves are the problem, that’s different from if it’s your veins.”
“And you can’t tell that with your magic?”
“Not clearly enough. I need to apply this dye”—she held up a small vial of silver liquid—“and see how it travels through your body.”
“Fine. Do it.”
She acknowledged me with a soft sound as she turned to her tray of blades. “I’d recommend lying down. My magic will prevent you dying from blood loss, but you’ll probably feel lightheaded.”
“Comforting.”
She selected a small scalpel and I lay back. I didn’t want to look too closely at the other blades or the strange little clamps.
“Do try to stay awake,” she said, as though me passing out would be a terrible inconvenience to her.
She ran a gloved hand over mine and the vibration of magic in the air intensified. “That should numb some of the pain.”
Should. Really comforting.
I watched as she pressed the scalpel to my forefinger and blood welled. The pain streaked through me an instant later. My nerves told me to pull away, but I held still, not even straining against the straps.
I’d endured worse.
Long, slow breaths got me through the incision from fingertip to palm, keeping the worst of the nausea at bay. More magic hummed against my skin, and I dimly registered that there wasn’t as much blood as I might’ve expected, though it felt like I watched from the other side of the room.
She took one of the tiny clamps and used it to hold the cut open.
I caught a glimpse of something yellow and faintly lumpy and something else red and stringy. That was when I decided to lie back and look at the vaulted ceiling.
The pain was bad, though not as bad as I might’ve expected, but I could feel her poking around and pulling. At one point, I glanced down and found that she’d peeled the skin of my finger back completely.
Nausea lurched through me.
“There’s a bucket on your left.”
I barely grabbed it in time to throw my guts up.
Panting, I collapsed back onto the bed and tried not to think about what’d I’d just seen or the continued prodding inside my body.
“There. Now we’re ready to begin.”
“You haven’t even started?”
Above her mask, her eyes barely crinkled. “That was just the preparation. Now for the experiment.”
I stared up at the ceiling.
This wasn’t me. Not my hand. I wasn’t here.
It would be fine. Cutting me open had to be the worst part.
Flaying you alive.
I shoved the thought away.
Out the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of silver. The vial of dye. Just a couple of drops and—
My whole body went rigid. The blood roared in my ears. Every instinct yanked on my arm, screeching that this was me and that I needed to get away.
Pain scraped along my nerves like a rusted razor.
I gritted my teeth as a scream scratched at my voice box, aching to be let out. Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. I tried to breathe—in out, in out, calm and relaxed. Breathe through the pain.
But it was impossible.
“Interesting. Just a little more.” I caught her voice between the thundering of my heart.