WalkingDreamer12
Aria has spent her life believing her pain has a purpose.
As one of Aurelia's rare Crown Healers, she possesses the ability to take another person's wounds into her own body and heal them at an unnatural speed. Broken bones, mortal wounds, and injuries that should mean certain death can disappear beneath her touch. Every wound she takes is another life saved, and Aria has never questioned the price.
Why would she?
In Aurelia, Healers are revered. Protected. Raised to believe their gift is the greatest honor the gods can bestow.
Then the enemy prince is brought to the palace in chains.
Daegan of Veyr is everything Aria has been taught to fear: a ruthless commander, an enemy of the Crown, and a man blamed for the deaths of countless Aurelians. When interrogation leaves him on the brink of death, Aria is ordered to do what she has always done.
Heal him.
But the moment she touches Daegan, something impossible happens.
For the first time, a wound moves the wrong way.
Daegan possesses a magic Aurelia insists does not exist, the ability to take and divide another person's suffering. And as Aria is repeatedly drawn back to the prisoner beneath the palace, his questions become harder to ignore.
Why must Healers carry every wound alone?
Why are they forbidden from leaving the Crown's service?
And if Aria's gift is truly hers, why has no one ever asked whether she wants to give it?
As forbidden truths begin to unravel everything she knows about her kingdom, her magic, and the man she was raised to hate, Aria is forced to confront a terrifying possibility:
Perhaps the greatest threat to Aurelia isn't the enemy chained beneath its palace.
Perhaps it's what will happen when its most powerful Healer finally realizes she was never free.