Page 120 of Gift from the Wing

“I can’t. We’re running out of time.”

“And your mind is running in overdrive. If you do not give it a break, it’ll never find what it’s seeking.”

Sighing, I bow my head and blink away the water collecting in my eyes. She’s right. My mind hasn’t stopped since…well, since I laid eyes on Jamie lying on the ground outside our ward and Nikoli’s petrified eyes told me all I needed to know.

It’s been running a mile a minute at every turn since then, but now, all I find is dead ends. I can’t find a way out of this for her. And I simply can’t accept that. I won’t survive without her.

“Tanith wants to see me. I’ll be back in a minute,” I mumble to no one in particular, but my voice still draws everyone’s attention.

“I’ll walk you, child. Maybe some fresh air and conversation with Tanith will spark something for me,” Gaster volunteers. I give him a tight smile and lace my arm through his when he offers me his elbow.

We walk in strained silence through the healing wing and out the doors to where Tanith is sitting with her head tilted toward the sun.

I almost forgot it was daylight still.

The darkened windows in the healing wing obscure the sun and heat, keeping the area cool and dimly lit. Comfortable, I guess for the patients in there.

To me, though, in this moment, it just makes it feel cold, empty.

Hopeless.

“The two of you feel drained. Be one with your realm for a moment. Take in the magic,”Tanith says softly as we approach her silently.

“Thank you, Tanith,”Gaster says respectfully as he bows to her, but I can’t even muster up that much.

The warm rays that are heating up my chilled skin make my throat close, and another wave of tears gathers together. I don’t think I should be out here enjoying the sun and the natural heat while my best friend is inside, internally burning.

Gaster doesn’t give me much of an option, though, as he grips my elbow and pulls me down to the ground beside him.

“My lord has shared what all you’ve learned, and I believe I understand, but maybe one of you should spell it out for me. See if there’s something we’re missing.”

“Gaster,” I croak out.

As he relays the information to Tanith, I close my eyes and tilt my head to the sun, mimicking her and begging it to give me an answer.

Besides Jamie, Draken, and the healers working away at pumping their magic into Oakly nonstop, plus Elementra only knows the number of healing vials, the only other solution we’ve tried is giving her the Poison of Essence cure. We hoped that maybe, even though she’d only been given a drop of the poison, the cure would help do something.

It didn’t.

She’s still just as hot and on the cusp of death as she was without it.

“Let us assume the best as we speak,”Tanith says with full conviction.“The Poison of Essence cure stopped the flow of the poison in her blood. Draken, her Nexus member, and other healers are feeding her magic, which is keeping the Aconight plant at bay. So that leaves this disease from the nonmagical realm. What do we know of it?”

I grit my teeth painfully. This question has already come up and all eyes turned to me for an answer. A fucking answer I didn’t have because I didn’t have to worry about sicknesses of that degree in the nonmagical realm.

My illnesses were physical injuries. My nose never even ran unless it was bloody, or I’d been crying. I know very minimally about what people truly suffer in the nonmagical realm.

What I do know is about the flu shot, colds, breast and ovarian cancer, and birth controls because of the posters in the doctor’s office that I read a million times when I was getting my IUD implanted. Other than that, Franklin had doctors come to the estate. For obvious reasons.

I’d hear people at school talking about deadly things. Heart attacks, strokes, cancer, but it’s not like anyone was giving me breakdowns of what any of it meant.

“Only what Darstein said. I didn’t have to face these things during my time there, nor did I ever have to learn about it. I never even met anyone who mentioned it,”I bite out.

“Do you remember Stephanie? From kindergarten?”

CC’s voice causes Gaster to flinch and Tanith to growl low at the sudden invasion. My mental block was down and open to both of them so we could communicate. I didn’t expect him to come through. Seeing as I’ve been fucking begging and crying for his directions all day.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Do you seriously expect me to remember kindergarten? Especially at a time like this?”I ask harshly.

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