Page 174 of House of Embers
“Just cleaning up,” Kerrigan agreed.
“A healer! We need a healer over here!” a voice screamed on the battlefield.
And it wasn’t the only one.
Darby had been right to say that the humans and half-Fae were going to need more help on the battlefield than the Fae. Whatever happened here had gone seriously wrong.
As Kerrigan marched forward, she noticed just as many dead soldiers wearing amulets as guards. “It went wrong. Oh gods, Clover!”
And then Kerrigan was running, heedless of everything else going on around her. Clover was blackened from head to toe, her brownskin smudged with soot and debris. Hadrian had her head in his lap, tears streaking his face. Darby had a bag open at Clover’s side, metal instruments discarded to the side with bloody fragments of metal on a sheet. Clover’s chest was a map of bloody wounds from the removal.
Kerrigan skidded to her knees beside her friend. “What happened? Is she already…”
“She’s breathing,” Darby said, “but barely. We need Amond. I don’t know…I don’t know if I can save her.”
Kerrigan jerked up, and Fordham held his hands up. “I’m on it. I’ll go get him.”
She nodded thankfully as he rushed back to Netta. “You can do this, Darbs. I believe in you. You’re a great healer.”
She wished that she hadn’t let Isa walk off with the Ring of Endings, but it had been her bounty, and she hadn’t thought to fight for it at the time.
“I’m not Amond.”
“We don’t need you to be Amond,” Kerrigan told Darby as she took one of Clover’s hands. “We just need you. Amita needs you. Clover needs you.”
Darby scrubbed tears from her eyes and nodded. “Okay. I’ll try again.”
She closed her eyes, and the water magic came to her at first like the tears from her eyes and then a small puddle and then a stream, as if she were draining all the water from their vicinity.
“Hold her steady,” she whispered.
Then Darby directed the water over Clover’s body. She pushed down, down, down, with both hands on Clover’s chest, where the wounds appeared to be deepest. Blood flowed freely, painting Darby’s hands crimson as she worked her magic. Healing magic was intrinsic. It could be studied to improve, but you either had it or you didn’t. Kerrigan never had.
The use of healing magic took from the user as much as from therecipient. Without Clover’s amulet up and running, Darby was using solely her magic for this healing, draining her own reserves to bring her back from the brink.
Kerrigan was still shaky from the metal crown, but she could help in this way, and she would. She put her hands on Darby’s shoulders, and then she pushed her magic, letting it flow from her to Darby.
Darby gasped as the extra power bolstered her. This wasn’t something that could be done often. Helly and Fordham had done it for hours when Kerrigan had fallen into her magic sickness and had drained them both nearly as much as Kerrigan. But without it, she surely would have succumbed.
She couldn’t survive if Clover didn’t. None of them could.
Isa had been right to say that Clover was the leader. She was the leader of it all. The glue to their resistance. Kerrigan was the face, but it was her human friend who had sparked the whole thing.
Clover had been the one to first rebel. Clover had been the one to get Kerrigan to go to protests. Clover had been the one to push her to become the symbol. Clover had gotten them this far. She had to be here to see it come to fruition. Shehadto be.
“Hadrian,” Kerrigan said, taking his hand too.
And then a drop of his magic flowed toward Darby too.
It was that final piece of him that tipped Darby over. Clover’s wounds began to knit together, healing over until her stomach was once again whole. Kerrigan concentrated even harder as if she could see deeper to whatever internal injuries were at the crux of the problem. And she pushed more and more.
From one moment to the next, Clover inhaled sharply and then coughed. “Gods,” she rasped.
Darby dropped her hands with a gasp. “Clover!”
Kerrigan squeezed her hand. “You made it. You made it through.”
“You’re okay,” Hadrian said. “You’re okay, sweetheart.”
