Healer

Chapter 8

     Talia sat in her usual place on the bed, mentally preparing for what she was about to do. She had taken a break and gone to the kitchen for a snack and some caffeine while Rhysand explained the plan, if you could call it that, to the others. The high lord and his general had changed into their fighting leathers in preparations to travel to wherever the hexed items were, find, and destroy them. Not a single one of them had any clue what that would entail. Every single one of them was all in. She had thought that her trials this morning were her last ditch effort. But this. This would be it, there was nothing else. There was no miracle on it's way. As strong as Azriel was, as hard he had fought up to this point, he would never wake up on his own. He would never fight his way out of this, but they weren't done fighting in his place. She had done this so many times but with children suffering from colic or elderly patients fighting a cold. This would be different. She wasn't even sure if it would work. She would take Azriel into herself in a way, and take on the Hex she had been fighting against since she arrived 10 days ago. Nesta approached the side of the bed and stood next to Talia.

"Thank you," she said. Talia looked at her, caught off guard. "For doing this. Even if it doesn't work, you don't know what it means to Cassian, to Rhysand, and to us, too."

Talia couldn't shake the feeling that the female's tone made it seem like a goodbye. "It's what I came here for." The healer smiled at Nesta and she reached for her hands, holding them both in hers.

They stayed like that for a moment, silent. "The guys have been so worried." She was looking at Azriel now.

"It's different, you know. There's a difference between the momma who brings in her son with a broken arm after seeing him fall out of that tree, or her baby girl with a cut on her leg from the barbed wire they both crawled through and a parent with a kid who has fallen mysteriously ill or who can't get rid of a fever. With the first, you know. You know what to do, what a healer will do. How to follow the right path to recovery, what signs of danger to look for after the fact. But with the second, it's a different kind of anxiety. You don't know what's coming. You feel especially helpless." The were both looking at the shadowsinger's face now. Talia felt butterflies at the thought of seeing those cheeks flushed with color, those golden eyes behind his heavy lashes. She shook her head and looked back to Nesta. She would have time to think on such things later, after the danger was eliminated. "Rhysand and Cassian know how to deal with battlefield wounds. They can see their fellow soldier fall and know what happened, how, whether they'll survive, what to do to guarantee they'll pull through. But this" she laid her hand on his arm. "This is different."

"They would stand here and tell you they aren't afraid, that they're the brave ones. But Feyre and I, we know the females win around here." She offered Talia a genuine smile, squeezing her hand again before turning to greet the males as they walked through the door. Talia turned back to her task at hand. Today had been terribly long, her morning trek up the stairs could have been days ago. Rhysand came and stood next to her. There wasn't much else to say, to discuss. They just needed to get started.

"Ready?" Rhysand asked her. He was infinitely more intimidating in the black armor, a sword strapped to his back. Cassian looked the same, red siphons ablaze. She prayed to the mother that the weapons were just a precaution and wouldn't need to be used.

"I think so." She said. She was so exhausted. If she could just get through this one last thing, she could finally rest. Feyre and Nesta came up behind their high lord, taking his place. The females would stay with her, helping her as she needed, while the males stood by, ready to leave as soon as they were given a destination. The same dagger she had used earlier lay on the side table, waiting. Feyre would bind their hands when she was ready. She took a deep breath. There was no better time than now. She reached for the dagger and slit her own palm, savoring how the pain grounded her so purely, how it made her so aware of her own physical being. She turned his scarred hand over and ran the dagger in a straight line down the middle of his palm, placing her own bleeding hand over his and pressing them together. She lifted his hand with hers and Feyre wrapped a strip of cloth around them, binding them. Talia nodded to her, indicating it was good, and she stepped away from the bed, standing next to her sister. Talia retreated in to herself, no need to focus on anything around her since their hands were tied together. All she had to do was focus on him, on grabbing hold of him and intertwining herself into his being, coaxing him toward herself. Toward healing. It didn't take as long as she expected. Within a few minutes she began to feel a coldness inside of herself. It started as a kernel of darkness in her middle, branching outward, encircling her heart in it's dread. This was it. It was working. She searched for anything that was him, not just the Hex. She felt him after a few moments, he felt as stone cold as he looked on the outside but she could sense the essence of him. His power and strength. Before she could stop herself, she was tumbling headfirst into his mind, just as she had with the girl she had mentioned in her story to Rhysand before. She hadn't expected to see behind the walls in his mind, but in a way, she was him, she was seeing through his eyes. And it was horrible. Whatever she was looking at, she was having to view between faebane metal bars, faintly glowing that nauseating blue. Outside looked like a battlefield. One that had been sitting for several days, blood curdled and sticky where it had pooled too deeply to seep into the earth beneath bodies that she couldn't quite recognize. She realized where she was, what was happening, and she pulled herself back to the surface, opening her eyes. Focus, Talia. She stared at him for a moment, of half a mind to go back in, not to see what he could see, but to grasp at a chance to see him. No, the clock was ticking, and she needed to try to use what little of him was in her now to find the Hex's creation items. Focus, Talia. She turned to Nesta who stood beside her but was suddenly unsure what to say. This part of the plan had worked, but none of them really knew what to do next.