Page 54 of Vibing Unity

“I suggest you not speak to the future Queen of Faerie like that,” one of the captains working on this project interjected. He was a skilled healer and one of his grandparents had been a royal healer. When he asked to be part of this rapid response group, I was all for it.

Ignoring the five male objections since he was hot.

Seriously, all fairies were hot. My guys needed to get over that.

I hadn’t even learned the man’s name yet since there were always so many to remember.

“I apologize,” the man said to the captain, even dipping his head tohim. “But we’re all concerned about the girl’s life. That’s what matters, not the details to—”

“Most competent people can handle both,” I chuckled darkly. “I’m sorry if you cannot.” I met the captain’s curious gaze. “Take the parents into custody for questioning. Any of her siblings take into protective custody and make sure they’re checked out and cared for.”

“On what grounds do you think you have to decide that?” the man demanded, taking a step towards me. He stopped when the captain put his hand on the man’s chest. “You will destroy this program if people hear how you—”

“What? Make sure everything is above board and people are protected?” I pushed, stepping towards him to make it clear that I wasn’t afraid of him.

He wasn’t deterred though. “How you want to make everyone grow up without a father figure like you did and clearly needed.”

People were aghast that he dared speak to me that way, but I was more than ready for it.

I smirked at him as I leaned in. “You mean herabuser, right? Meaning you knowexactlywhat is going on here and her situation. So you only called because there was no chance of her surviving this like his other abuse for you to hide and you had to. You didn’t report it like you should.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth and—”

“The princess doesn’t need to when I’m wearing telepathy runes and you were preparing what to attack her with when she saw whatever proof of abuse you were worried about,” the captain said firmly. “Which is why I called a team in.” He leaned into the guy. “And I was raised by two parents and all my grandparents, so enough with your bullshit.”

Wow, that was impressive. He gave the guy over to the team that arrived and relayed my orders, nodding that he’d handle it.

We just had to worry about the girl who was still in a bad state and knocked out.

I joined the healers and thanked Calarel when she arrived. They went back and forth with how to move forward and the priority. Then they agreed on that, and the problem was we could only heal her to a certain point.

“This is the point I don’t understand,” I cut in. “Yes, you cannot see exactly how the bones should be given her age and size—everyone is different. But you know how a bone should be and have the pieces inside of her.”

“Some were basically ground to nothing from what we’re seeing, Your Highness,” someone explained.

“Right, but those will repair. Bones still grow—she’s still growing,” I pushed. “They will have time to fill in. It’s not like a tooth where it’s grown out or am I misunderstanding this?” I glanced between them.

“You’re not but more missing a piece,” Calarel sighed as she glanced at the girl. “She is so young that she has—matching everything with her growth plates is the problem. We can’t—nothing will line up how it should. There’s no magic that can fool the body that the trauma never happened to her.”

“Why not?” I pushed back, holding up a hand when people immediately went to jump on me. “Hear me out because the point of this is to push further and hopefully even develop new ways to heal.” I gave them a moment to remember that.

I realized I didn’t know how to explain where my head was, and I glanced around for a moment before finding just a cotton swab. I grabbed it and set it on the rolling table near us.

“Say that’s her bone. What it was. It’s organic, but it’s not a tree. You can’t turn a tree into sawdust and then return it to a living tree. I get that. That’s turning back time.However, you can refresh things. Fabric. Wood. We did it with the furniture in my house—filleddentsand missing pieces by refreshing it back to what it was.”

“Intheory, you’re not wrong,” one of the warlocks in the group agreed with me. “But this isn’t something we can just test like on a dresser or desk, Your Highness. I’m not talking down to you when I say this is a little girl and we could do more damage than good.”

“Fair. More than fair, and I’m not judging anyone here.” I gestured around the group. “This is how humans progress and invent. They brainstorm and think tank things. That’s what I’m trying to do. It’s what we do in Faerie.” Again, I held him off.“And wecando something less invasive than messing around with her bones.”

“Get you a cadaver,” someone whispered, sounding a bit shocked and also horrified.

I frowned. “I was kinda thinking like a chicken bone to start or something.” I felt better when several of the fairies snickered like that was of course where my mind had been at.

The woman dipped her head to me. “I apologize, Your Highness. You mentioned humans and their studies—my mind went right to medical school. I think it’s a smart idea, but then I realized what we might have to do to make it happen and my mind spun out a bit. Plus, I have a newborn and I’m a bit sleep-deprived.”

I nodded, accepting that, grateful she even made it clear that it wasn’t a slight against me. “I think we should get—I know it’s crude, but let’s get some damn turkeys in here and smash them to rebuild. I’ve never even seen this process. I understand dead turkeys won’t regenerate like live turkeys but…” I looked at Calarel for help.

“It’s the right way to approach the situation and start coming up with more ideas,” she agreed. “It’s living tissue around the bones but not live, so we’re not causing pain. There might be some way to start and stop the process like when we restore things like you mentioned your furniture. You put in the power to do the whole item, but I could do just a section.”

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