Healing Ties (Ties, Book 2) | ✓

Chapter 1

Fanner stared down at his hand as Whelan bent his pinkie at the knuckle and twisted it from side to side. The movement didn't hurt as much as it had yesterday, but he still didn't have full feeling in it.

"How does it feel?" Whelan asked.

Whelan had just come back from visiting Mr Burrows and he'd brought a mysterious blue box with him. Technically it was against the law to leave Fanner alone like that, but there were a lot of things they were doing that weren't exactly legal. That's why they were living in this little cabin bordering the woods so far away from other people.

"Better than yesterday," Fanner said. He had been trained to be positive, never to complain, but Whelan wanted the truth. This was Fanner's compromise.

Whelan nodded and dropped Fanner's hand. "Well, I'm happy with that. If you can grow back half a finger, you can grow back other things as well. Strip down and go lay on the table."

Fanner froze. "You don't have to tie me down. I can stay still. I promise."

"Not for this you can't."

"Sir—"

"Fanner." Whelan looked him directly in the eye. "I don't give two shits about keeping you in check when it comes to your manners, but don't you forget who's in charge here. If I tell you to do something then you do it."

Fanner nodded and swallowed down a lump in his throat as he headed for the small room at the back of the cottage. He didn't dare ask what Whelan was going to do to him. He didn't want to know.

Until a week ago, all Whelan had ever done was cut him to observe his healing ability. Fanner had hated it, but it had become predictable enough, in a sense, that he could just send his mind elsewhere while he waited for his body to take care of it.

Then last week Whelan had strapped him to the table and brought out the big, heavy butcher's knife he used to slaughter chickens. Whelan had told Fanner to hold out his pinkie finger and Fanner had begged him not to do it because by this point he knew exactly what was about to happen, but that had only served to irritate Whelan. Fanner had presented his pinkie and Whelan had slammed the butcher's knife down on it, severing it just above the second knuckle.

Fanner hadn't known if it would grow back. Neither had Whelan, which was why he'd run the experiment. Fanner still wasn't sure why it mattered. Surely a healer's purpose was to heal others. What did having parts of their own body removed and growing them back have to do with anything? Did Whelan want to know if Fanner could potentially grow other people's body parts back? It had taken a week of his body working constantly to grow back just half a finger. Surely, in terms of potential usefulness, that wasn't an avenue worth pursuing.

Fanner stripped out of his clothes, folded them neatly and set them down well out of the way of whatever was about to happen, and climbed onto the table.

"On your back," Whelan said as he entered the room.

Fanner complied, shutting his eyes as Whelan began to do up the wrist straps.

"Now, I'm going to need you to stay very still for this," Whelan said as he did up the last of the leg straps. "I have a reference diagram, but I've never done surgery before."

"...Surgery?" Fanner asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Whelan picked up a piece of paper and held it up so Fanner could see. It was a diagram of human anatomy, displaying the positions of all of the organs.

Fanner twisted his wrists against the straps, but they were tight and unyielding. "What are you going to do?"

"If you can regrow a finger, you can regrow an organ — probably. If it turns out you can't, it won't be too much of a problem, though. I'm going to take a kidney." He poked his finger at a point on the diagram just below the ribcage. "You have two of those."

Fanner yanked against his bindings more insistently. "I—I don't think you can just cut things out of people without knowing what you're doing. You'll kill me."

"Of course you can't do that to people. But you can do it to a mage who can heal himself. You'll be fine."

"You could do another finger, or, or—"

Whelan shook his head. "Has to be an organ, and the kidney's the easiest and safest. Probably? I don't know, that's what I was told. Mr Burrows wants to know what happens if one of your organs is transplanted into someone else. I have a special box I went and picked up this morning that'll keep it cold, and the finger didn't seem to decay fast so I reckon it'll all be fine." Whelan went over to the table where all of his tools were spread out and selected a scalpel. "Seriously, though. Stay still. If I kill you, Mr Burrows will kill me."

"Nononono," Fanner begged as Whelan approached with the scalpel, but he knew begging was useless. Though Whelan was less concerned with discipline and proper behaviour than most of the people who had been responsible for Fanner throughout his life, he also possessed the least empathy.

As Whelan braced a hand on Fanner's chest to hold him still, Fanner squeezed his eyes shut and did his best to stay calm, but any chance of that vanished the second he felt the slice of the scalpel through his skin.

Fanner screamed and thrashed as best he could, but the straps were tight and well positioned.

"Stay still," Whelan said through gritted teeth as he used his elbow to pin Fanner and dug his fingers into the gash he'd sliced open on Fanner's side.

The smell of blood hung thick in the air, the wetness of it pooled under Fanner, and it pitter pattered as it dripped to the ground. Fanner struggled with renewed vigor as Whelan sliced the gash wider, deeper.

Blood sprayed out over Whelan and Whelan swore. The scalpel clattered to the ground as Whelan pressed both his hands down against the flow of blood. "Fuck," Whelan said as he moved his hands for a second to look at what he'd done, then glanced at his diagram that was now half soaked in blood. "I think I should've come in from the other side. Fucking intestines are in the way."

Fanner wasn't screaming or struggling anymore. Holding still was no longer an impossible challenge. Some deep instinct told him not to move.

"You need to fucking heal this, okay? I think I nicked a— what are the big veins called? Arteries?" He glanced at his diagram again. "Are there even arteries in that part of you? Fuck."

There was too much damage and Fanner's thoughts had scattered. He couldn't heal himself. Maybe if he'd had more energy, but Whelan never gave him time to recover between his experiments.

Just as Fanner thought he would just shut his eyes and give up, he felt something burning and desperate rise up from within him. He pulled against the wrist restraint again, but this time it snapped free. He grabbed Whelan's wrist and their eyes met, and then Fanner pulled, rapidly drawing energy from Whelan through the connection until gravity pulled them apart as Whelan dropped to the floor.

Fanner stared up at the ceiling, his mind going distant as Whelan's energy coursed through him and slowed the bleeding until the splattering of blood hitting the floor turned into a slow drip, drip, drip.