Page 91 of In Her Own Rite

I swallow, willing him to look at me.

“What if this is some kind of healing power we’ve lost?” I ask. “What if it could help Seb?”

He clears his throat. “I don’t want to get his hopes up.”

“So we don’t get his hopes up,” I say, shaking my head. “We’ll just try, the two of us, until we’re sure. And if I can’t get it to work on you, he never has to know what we thought.”

Gabe turns off the stove and faces me. I take in his expression, his thick brown brows knit, dark eyes clouded.

“I was thinking about it,” he says finally. “Our healers lost the art of bone healing, but it wasn’t that long ago that we could still do that here. We have records—we know what it looked like. But it wasn’t like what you did. I don’tknowwhat you did.”

“Me either,” I say. “But it felt real. I think it’s… I don’t know. Something lost, something ancient. It came from the ancestors. And they wouldn’t give it to us if they didn’t want us to use it, right?”

“Shouldn’t we talk to my mom, or Helen?” he asks. “You just started healing this year. You won’t know how to wield it yet.”

“They won’t, either,” I say, shaking my head. “Nothing in my healer training told me about this. And I don’t want to make them think it’s something if I can’t do it again. I just want to try, for Seb. Will you let me?”

He hesitates, then lets out a low laugh. “We haven’t had bone healing in generations. And you want to use it as a warm-up.”

I nod. “Yeah. I do.”

“Alright,” he says finally, nodding. “I guess it’s not the craziest idea you’ve had recently. Let’s give it a shot.”

He leads me to the living room, and I help him down into the couch. I come to my knees on the ground before him, looking at his leg cast.

“I’m just gonna try for a bit, okay?” I say. “I need to close my eyes for this. If something changes, or if something hurts, you tell me and I’ll stop.”

“Okay.” He nods.

I swallow and bring my hands over the leg, closing my eyes. I’ve never even probed a body for bone breaks before; we know that art is lost to time, so trying to feel for one as a trainee feels more like ego than anything else. But I bring my focus towards his leg, feeling for the energy of his muscle, then going deeper.

I can see the bone in my mind’s eye: two blurry gray shadows separated by a jagged break. The sight of it makes me sick. It’s a bad break, and seeing that this is what Gabe’s been dealing with makes me hurt for him. I try not to show the reaction in my face.

I take a deep breath and move my hands the way I do for flesh wounds. I know it won’t work, but I can sense my own nervousness in the air, and I need to ease myself into this. I can feel the muscle around the bone respond, but the break stays immobile. Gabe lets out a low breath.

“Bad?” I ask, eyes still closed.

“Yeah. Don’t do that.”

I nod and take a deep breath. “Okay. Sorry, I just wanted to try. Give me a second.”

I ground myself in my body, breathing out slowly, then send something from my core down to the earth. Next, I tuck in my chin, letting the crown of my head rise up, lifting my energy.

“What are you doing?” he asks quietly.

“Grounding myself and connecting to the ancestors,” I say. “I learned it from Quinn, sort of, but I do something a little different than she taught me. I don’t know how to describe it.”

I let out a low breath, feeling for something. Each time I’ve done this before, I’ve vaulted some part of my energy up to the ancestors’ space, not quite knowing where it goes. I still can’t see where I send it, but this time, I feel a soft buzz of warmth at the back of my mind, and then my shoulders and back. It’s dancing, playful, brushing around my body like heatless flames. I’m not just sending my own energy up; thekiyyulitare here with me.

I feel a shiver go over my spine. It’s going to work, I know it. They wouldn’t come down if they didn’t want to help.

Something forms in my gut, strong and certain.

“Okay, Gabe, are you ready?” I ask, and I hear my voice waver. Eyes still closed, I reach my right hand out for his without quite knowing why.

“Yeah. Okay,” he says. He’s nervous, too.

“I think it might hurt.” I swallow. “I think it may have to hurt, to heal. If it’s too much, you tell me.”

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