COF 2: The Soul Spells

9 | Lockdown (III)

Xanthy winced, holding up her throbbing hand to her face. Relief gripped her gut to see that she still had five fingers. Gods, Reeca could squeeze.

June settled beside her and eyed her hand. She rolled her eyes. "I'm fine," she said aloud.

Reeca was asleep on the floor, curled into a snug ball. Nyxis worked still. His fingers wove threads here and there as he attached Reeca's wing back to the bones. Not a single complaint sprang from him even though his fingers were stained red and dark. A whole hour has gone by without him prodding his face despite what mess it was currently in.

Xanthy crouched next to Nyxis whose eyes never strayed from his work on the varichria's wings. "Why do you have to hurt Reeca like that?" The varichria's screams would haunt Xanthy's dreams for a long, long time.

Nyxis raised his eyebrows as he locked the thread with a neat knot. "Sometimes, to heal, we need to experience pain first," he cut the thread with a palm-sized blade. He pointed to Reeca's back without touching his stitches.

"Her bones were out of alignment as soon as the wing slipped from it. I guess she kept using it even in that condition," Nyxis explained. "She yanked it up once. The rod I inserted and pulled is just to set the bones in their right position as we reattach the torn wings."

"Are wings made of flesh?" Xanthy asked.

Nyxis glanced at the ceiling briefly, thinking. "Not necessarily. They are just...wings. They are too fragile to be flesh and bones. The closest thing to it is skin," he brushed his hands against the surface of Reeca's wings. "Moreover, the wings belong to another type of something that only fairies have."

"How do you learn these things?" Xanthy adjusted her legs on the floor. "It looks like this is not your first time. You were hardly surprised."

Nyxis shrugged. "I used to go to hospitals and other houses with the sick in them. I fixed a wide range of sickness, advancing my research in the process. It was a fun time," he heaved a sigh.

"But you treated humans," Xanthy leaned back and braced her weight using her palms. "There is no way you would know how to treat fairies."

Nyxis turned to her. "Xanthy, when you see those machines, you know what they do and what they are for, right?"

"Yeah."

"There you have it," Nyxis replied, turning back to his patient. "Inventors and doctors are not that different. Where it is machines for you, it is physiology for us. Humans, fairies, half-bloods—we are expected to understand what was wrong at first glance. It takes a lot of practice, yes, but once you get the hang of it, everything else will follow."

Xanthy pursed her lips. "What is going to happen to Reeca now?"

Nyxis tilted his head as he peered closer to the stitches he tied. "When she wakes up, she is going to feel like a thousand dagrine had stomped on her. Multiply that by a thousand more and that is probably it."