Page 109 of Healer to the Ash King
Rince is voicing a shaky protest. “They were going to be our leverage, to get her to comply.”
“You and Brayda are her childhood friends. You will serve as leverage if we need it,” says Triniden. “Bring her.”
The others in the room are sneaking glances our way, but they don’t protest the slaughter of the hostages. They’ve seen their leader do this before. They’ve seen him kill people, innocent people—my people. The people of Bolcan.
My shuddering, bleeding soul stills. Solidifies into impenetrable rock, hard as a mountainside.
The Undoing will not win. They will not take my kingdom.
I will see them undone.
Everyone is a mountain.
I am a mountain, a volcano with secret depths.
And with a dark and terrible scream, I erupt.
My hidden Rotter magic is voracious. It leaps from my body like black vines, flinging outward and coiling around each person in the room.
My vision changes, like a tinted glass dropping over my eyes, sapping the color from the world. Screams tear from throats as the magic sloughs away skin, melts flesh, eats down to bone. There is a vast, cosmic well of energy within me, and I cannot restrain it.
Brayda is on the floor, gasping as sores bubble over her arms. Rince is caught in a blast of my magic, roaring in agony, his fingers decaying, his skin corrupted. There’s someone behind him—someone using his body as a shield. But I cannot change the course of the magic. I can only let it feed.
When I destroyed the poison in the Ash King, I was in partial control. Less so when I was in his room and I rotted his hand and face.
Now I have no control. I am galvanized, hypnotized—a conduit for more raw, terrible power than I have ever managed in my life.
I am not ready for this. I cannot stop this.
My body jerks. My spine arches and my limbs go rigid as the corrosive magic spews out of me and brings the bodies down, one after another, each one a spider’s prey cocooned in black webs and tethered to me by rippling, shadowy tendrils.
A crash somewhere below. Shouts, and the clang of swords.
The distraction snaps a connection inside me, and suddenly my thoughts clarify and my vision clears. The Rotter magic festers and fights as I pull it back, but it is returning, slowly, leaving the dead and dying in its wake.
The door to the room bursts open, and the Ash King strides in, clad in his splendid black armor.
His eyes meet mine, flaming with fury—but the fury changes to shock as he stares around at the receding strands of my corrosive magic.
“Cailin,” he says hoarsely. “What have you done?”
My gaze drops to Brayda, glassy-eyed, a destroyed carcass. Near her, lying on top of someone else, is Rince’s body, his flesh slowly oozing.
What have I done?
My vow. I’ve broken my healer’s vow.
I have killed my friends.
Rince’s eyelids blink. He’s alive in that rotted husk. Barely.
The person underneath Rince’s body shoves him aside violently and rises, dripping with gore. Triniden. The side of his face is ruined, putrefied, his jawbone exposed. He’s holding the big sword, still scarlet with my parents’ blood.
The blade whips toward me.
A flash of pain through my neck.
My body won’t respond—
