Healer

Chapter 38

TW: Blood/Severe Injury

     By the time she could comprehend what had happened, Talia had lost feeling in her legs and she wondered if maybe the beast had ripped her in half. Quickly, searing pain shot through her back and hips proving that it hadn't. She had felt the long claws pierce her skin, but it was the sound that sent her rigid, fighting the only way she could. That strange squelch of flesh wasn't foreign but her mind twisted anyway, trying to understand as her body tensed against it in vain. That wasn't what was supposed to happen, it wasn't what she had braced for and it wasn't long, the time they spent in the freezing, wet sky. It was enough for her to feel that the thing gripped her in two of its clawed feet, the eight inch talons lodged in her chest and back. Warm blood mixed with the cool rain on her skin. They hung, suspended, long enough for her to manage at least part of a breath. She hadn't felt the altitude change until, from about fifteen feet, she was dropped to the rocky ground. The thud she heard as the earth rose to meet her seemed heavier than she would have guessed and she moaned, tasting her own blood as it threatened to choke her. And it was hot, so hot, and salty. She tried to calculate how far they had gone, where they might have dropped her but her world was tilting and her brain couldn't focus long enough. Focus, focus, focus. She was somewhere rocky, but the tree cover was sparse. Out of the mountains, but not far.

She felt the hug of the wet earth beneath her but had the strange sensation that she was still falling, and in every place she had been pierced, she felt cold. Like the touch of water that's so hot it feels icy, forcing the senses to become further confused, and she pulled and pulled air in, hoping for at least one more breath before the thing returned to finish her. In her mind, she was screaming but no sound came from her ruined chest and blood filled throat.

She had failed. She was supposed to fulfill the prophecy and now she wouldn't have a chance. She was supposed to bargain herself for the freedom of her night court family, and she had been unable. She was supposed to marry her shadowsinger and now she hoped he came nowhere near her.

She registered that her eyes were open because the raindrops that dripped into them hurt. She squeezed them shut and focused on her body. Her legs were numb, and likely broken from the long fall. Her hands had lost their feeling, too, and she tried to reach one to her torso to feel for the damage but couldn't. She knew her chest cavity would be full of blood by now and even over the rain she could hear that she was sucking air through one of the deep holes they had left in her. Her head pounded loud enough, harsh enough that she wished for it to end quickly, to end now. It didn't, and she pushed on.

She fought for a bit of focus. So it was too much, then, to survive. She knew. She had seen this type of injury already, and even she couldn't have healed herself. They would follow, they would be distracted by searching for her, and she would force their failure with her own. Her concentration slipped again and she couldn't tell if she lay on her back or her front, the suffocating pressure came from both sides.

She changed her mind about the shadowsinger. They, the horrible black creatures, were lying in wait for her mate and she feared for him but as her wet breaths spread out further, she wished desperately for him to appear. She knew he had followed her and her soul cried for him to hurry, she needed one last look. She had been alone her entire life, and she just wanted to see him, to be sure he was real.

If she could open her eyes again, that is. She had shut them against the rain and thrashed what little she could in panic as she struggled to open them once more. In the space of one long, shallow breath, she reached for him through what she knew they shared and guided him to her.

She lay still for a seconds-long eternity and gathered her strength to face him should he come, but before she could she was back in her village, the blood she smelled was her mother's, her grandparents', the Hybern village girl's, the soldier's she had failed to save. Azriel's on the floor of that cave. She thought her eyes were surely open now but instead of the wet branches above her, she saw his wide eyes and then her mother's dead ones. They switched moment by moment as she stared ahead, confused and mesmerized by the horror of it.