Healer

Chapter 6

     Talia spent the next few days in the same rhythm. Get up, grab some breakfast, study for a while, sit with Azriel, healing, trying to determine how much time they might have left. She tried to eat when she remembered to, sometimes forgetting until Cassian or Nesta showed up to the room with something for her. She fell in to bed each night reluctantly, wishing she had the energy to do more. When she had arrived, she had told Rhysand that they maybe had a week, and 4 days, 5 days, 6 days had slipped by before she knew it. She had been down to the library several times, Nesta offering to escort her when Rhysand wasn't in the house. Talia had felt more comfortable there in the stacks with Nesta, Gwyn sometimes joining them on their search. She was thankful for the extra set of eyes, but their findings had become sparse. The rules of a Hex were simple and it was not long before they had realized that reading and reading in to the black magic was leading to a resounding dead end. They had shifted their focus instead to healing, searching for some way to stop the Hex's spread, while Rhysand had traveled back to Day court in hopes of finding something in their vast libraries about how to break through the walls in Azriel's mind. She stood next to Nesta, deep in the stacks, a list in one hand as she carefully searched the spines in front of her by fae light. Gwyn was somewhere on the opposite side of the shelf and their conversation had dwindled. Talia's tiredness and determination had drowned out any fear she felt in the library. Nesta spoke up after the silence began to drag.

"Feyre said you grew up with humans. What was that like?"

Talia straightened, stretching her arms above her head and rolling her shoulders to loosen the muscles in her neck. "Just as you'd imagine, I'd bet. I was hidden most of the time." Nesta nodded her head, not turning around. "I stayed inside with my mother until I was old enough to travel out with my.....human grandmother. That's what my mother called her, anyway. She was a midwife."

"Your mother lived with humans too?" Nesta asked.

"Yeah. She was tossed over the wall, pregnant. She said...it was because she was pregnant. My grandparents found her, took her in. They hadn't been able to have kids of their own and they pitied her."

"And your father?"

Talia shook her head. "No idea. My mother never mentioned him except to say that he wasn't supposed to be with her and that's what got her banished. I suspect he gave me my gift, though. It wasn't my mother's."

"You healed humans?" Gwyn's voice sounded muffled through the rows of books.

"Yeah. I did. Mostly children. Their mothers often noticed I was.....special in some way. They called me an angel." Talia smiled to herself at the memory. "They chose to look the other way." Both females were silent so Talia went on. "When I was 16, I had left in the middle of the night with my grandmother to assist in a birth. It was a bad one. The baby was breach and the mother was already bleeding out. He was barely even showing yet." She shook her head again, remembering the graphic scene in the small, firelit home that night. "My grandmother begged me to be careful, the father was a well known hunter and he was already suspicious of me. But the mother was young, not much older than me, and couldn't stop asking about her son. I couldn't stop myself. I saved her." Nesta had stopped scanning the shelves and was watching the healer. Talia could hear silence from Gwyn through the stacks. "The father left as soon as he knew the mother would live. My grandmother thought it suspicious so she sent me home to my mother for safety. She thought he might come back with help, to question me. But she had it wrong. When I got home, the house had been ransacked. There was blood everywhere. They had taken my mother instead."

"What did you do?" Nesta asked quietly. They had known the shit she had been pulled from in Hybern, but no one, not even Rhysand or Azriel knew this. She hesitated before deciding she had nothing to lose.