Sleight of Hand

Chapter 33

Trebor will not die. He can't.

He's too good for that. He doesn't deserve it.

Aivilo repeated the sentences in her head, determined to pour life back into his broken body. Her illuminated hands shook uncontrollably as she passed them back and forth slowly over him. His mother was on his other side, doing the same thing.

Healing him.

Re-inflating his lungs and piecing his bones back toge-ther. Drawing blood back into his repairing veins, through his resuming heart.

Blitz sat beside Aivilo, sniffing at Trebor's hair and face with ears flattened against her head. Her high-pitched whin­ing was the only noise Aivilo could hear. Everyone and everything else was silent. Even the nature around them was hushed in mourning.

She couldn't look at Trebor's face. Aivilo knew if she did, she'd be overcome with grief. She'd glanced at him once; briefly enough to know that blood leaked out of his nose, that his unnaturally pale lips were slightly parted in a desperate attempt to collect air, and that his eyes were shut tight against the unimaginable pain he must've endured as life was ripped from him. The glowing of his power that had illuminated his irises was gone. That small glance alone had almost made her sick with anguish.

It all suddenly made sense now. Why the Mage had cre­ated those infernal cards. It was ingenious and wicked and cruel. They were still trapped, unable to reach their full poten­tial because the cards constantly stole power from them to keep them alive, and unable to defeat him because he would just kill them all with a simple movement if they rebelled.

Aivilo's eyesight was all but gone as the tears kept com­ing, kept rolling down her cheeks and spattering onto Trebor's chest. She would not lose another person she cared about.

She needed him.

He was the only person that even remotely understood her pain. The only one who'd seen it, and taken her in—he had saved her, and in more ways than one. While it was true that he physically saved her life, he also—too many times—pulled her back from the crevice of despair and anguish she constantly teetered on from the loss of everything else she had ever loved. Had he not done that... where would she be now? He was the only one whom she didn't need to be afraid of being weak in front of because he knew why, and he let her.

The silence pressed in like a vacuum, sucking all the air from around them. It made breathing hard. Aivilo gasped, was practically hyperventilating. But she was determined not to let herself fail. She had let down her team before, when she held back her power. When she hadn't stopped the Mage that fateful day, and sent every Superhuman to their imprisonment, dooming them all to ultimate power­lessness.

None of them were safe. She failed to stop the Mage that day twenty-five years ago, and now her best friend was dying because of her failure.

She would not fail again. She hadn't been able to save her parents. She hadn't been able to stop the Mage and save her people. She couldn't fail Trebor, too. She was pouring every ounce of the flame inside her through her hands and into Trebor's body.

He will not die.

But he already has, a voice sneered inside her head.

It was undoubtedly the Mage's. Trying to distract her. Trying to keep her from healing Trebor.

Your friend is already dead. There is no way you can save him. I watched the life leave his body, could feel it as it ebbed away slowly. I felt his power abandon him. His last remaining thoughts weren't even about any of you. He could only think of the pain he felt.