Page 97 of Enspelled

“Keane, back off, okay? You’re distracting me.”

My gaze never moves from Briar’s unconscious form tucked beneath a white sheet in Erin Sue’s bedroom. “You said you could heal her. But she’s not awake yet.”

“I can—and I am. But it would go a lot faster if I didn’t have a wolf snarling behind me.”

She won’t admit that she’s afraid, but the bitter scent lingering in the air tells me otherwise. It’s been present ever since I gathered Briar’s badly burned and deathly still body in the forest and went looking for help to save her.

Fear.

And it doesn’t just belong to Sera.

But I can’t give Sera the space she needs, and I can’t do anything about my wolf snarling, eager for the chance to tear into Briar’s aunt for making Briar scream with so much agony that the sound followed me into unconsciousness.

It was the first thing I remembered when I woke at the base of a tree and realized Mel had gone.

I’d thought Briar was dead.

But then I heard the thinnest rasping breath, and I knew I wouldn’t have long to get her help.

I can only think that Sera and Bodie knew to find me sprinting through the forest with Briar’s slight weight in my arms because of Briar’s necklace.

Maybe it had warned Sera that Briar had been hurt, or she used it to track us. Ordinarily, the thought of being tracked like that would’ve made me kill Sera. But if she hadn’t been there, my gut tells me that Briar wouldn’t have survived.

“So, back off,” Sera snaps.

I turn on her with a snarl. “Witch, you—”

A hand closes around my arm, tugging me back a step. “Let's wait outside,” Bodie says.

I don’t look away from Sera. “You said you could fix her. You said the necklace would protect her.”

Sera angles her head up, her big brown eyes meeting mine. “And it did. To a point. If she hadn’t been wearing that necklace, she’d be dead. So move aside, wolf, and let me help my friend.”

The rest of her spiel drifts by me. But not the last. The last I pay attention to.

Let me help my friend.

Ignoring Bodie’s arm still gripping me, I turn to examine Briar again.

Sera started with the burns on Briar’s face, so they were the fastest to heal from whatever healing spell she started in the back seat of her car as I directed Bodie to Sue Erin’s house. That and regrowing her burned hair. Now that I’m paying attention, I notice the burns on her shoulder are gone too, and unless I’m mistaken, she’s breathing a little easier than before.

The rasping breaths that made it seem like each would be her last have eased. A little.

She’s out of danger, but she could still die.

“You can save her?” I ask, my focus on the pale woman tucked in bed—a woman I refuse to let die.

Anyone but her.

“She can.” It’s Bodie who responds, even as he tugs me to one side. “So let her work.”

I don’t fight him. Just move a step to one side, shrugging Bodie’s arm off my shoulder as I do. No longer pacing, but still focused when Sera lifts her hands and spins magic from her fingers, her whispers floating around her.

No matter how hard I try to look away, or how frequently Bodie tells me to sit down on the armchair in the corner of the bedroom, I don’t move from Briar’s side.

Her aunt was Mara all this time… disguised. And she used me to steal Briar’s power.

What that will do to Briar, I have no fucking clue. But nothing good.

---