Page 11 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

My throbbing headache from using so much magic earlier would only allow me to keep up a slow jog toward their house without collapsing.

“Pa said there were royal guards scouting the road south of the village last night. Said even their horses had armor!”

His eyes gleamed with an excitement that was harmless now. But life in Avanfell would teach him about mortality, about the grim reality of the world outside our tiny village.

“There were purple-robed mage-men asking questions in the market town too,” Louie added, lowering his voice with all the solemnity of a child delivering a ghost story.

I gulped down air through rising worries. If royal scouts were headed this way, did that mean border tensions were getting worse? Decades ago, when the old king who had a Fae bloodline still ruled, my family had enjoyed an air of respectability. Now there was only his mostly human son who’d forgotten that the borderlands existed.

I’d have to keep the wards strengthened until I fell to pieces. The thought festered in my stomach like spoiled meat. I was tired of being a sacrifice in an unofficial war none of us had chosen.

But if Assembly mages were in the area, I needed to make myself scarce. My parents had been clear about all the horrible things they’d do to me if they found me.

After that, Louie kept up his rapid-fire talking the whole way there. I welcomed the distraction. The village children were my only reliable source of news since no adults would talk to me.

We found his little sister cradled in their mother’s arms on their front porch. Lana pressed a wet cloth to Celine’s face with one hand while the other held her arm in a steel grip. On my approach, Lana pulled her hand away, revealing a long gash along the four-year-old’s cheek and lip.

The wounds dripped blood steadily, and Celine’s thin shoulders shook, her sobs muffled against her mother’s chest. The keening sound she made was the kind that burrowed into a woman’s chest and held tight.

Someone so small didn’t deserve to suffer. Children still believed help would come when they called for it. The world would teach them otherwise. But I wouldn’t.

Lana’s face showed the usual mix: relief that I’d come and the careful distance of a woman who had to keep her hands clean of my taint. The village needed me close enough to use and far enough to deny. She knew I’d healed a neighbor just this morning, so she likely worried I wouldn’t be able to help her daughter as much as she hoped.

“Please,” she said, voice thin. She didn’t hold my gaze for longer than necessary.

I turned to Louie. “Get clean linen or bandages you can wrap around her head and arm.”

As Louie ran into the house, I kneeled, pressing my fingers over his Celine’s arm.

It was time to stand up for myself. I thought of the bare patches on my roof and the buckets I’d need to set across my cabin to weather the coming storm. Gathering my courage with a deep breath, I prepared to ask for something outrageous: basic survival. Even so, it felt like the cost of asking far surpassed any magical price my body had ever paid, because magic didn’t look at me like I’d overstepped simply by existing.

My pause forced Lana to look at me. I nearly lost my nerve.

“I’ll heal her,” I said, keeping my voice even. “But the wards need more upkeep with the frequent raids and I can’t keep pouring magic into stone while rain pours into my bed. I need someone to help repair my roof after the coming storm.”

Lana’s mouth tightened as if I had dragged greed onto her porch instead of her daughter’s blood. After a long moment, Lana nodded. “Agreed.”

I started breathing again. The world hadn’t ended from my asking. No one had shouted or called a mob to take my head.

I should’ve been more specific about how much help, but at least I’d found the courage to ask for more.

Tense exchange at an end, I began my work.

“Keep the rag under her,” I told Lana as Louie returned with the requested cloth. “The bleeding will worsen before it gets better.”

Whenever I sent threads of my magic into a person, it sent back vague images of everything it touched. My worry about Celine nicking an artery was proven correct; the broken pot had scratched a small one. If the cut had been an inch to the side, Louie’s baby sister would’ve bled to death while Lana waited for me to arrive.

Considering how drained I still was and the fact that I needed to shore up the wards tomorrow, healing just that nick would take a significant amount of magic, but it had to be my priority. I hated the importance placed on beauty, but I’d do my best to persuade Celine’s face to heal faster and with more finesse. It wasn’t the girl’s—or even her mother’s—fault that we lived in a place where being an unprotected female was incredibly dangerous.

I did it only because I had no other choice.

I tugged on the weary magic surrounding my heart, coaxing threads of it to travel down my arms. It left a chill behind as it drained from me, hands on her bloodied arm. But I was stubborn. The threads obeyed, working their way into the sobbing child’s skin. One thread sealed the artery closed, three more bound spongy flesh, and two closed her torn skin more perfectly than nature had intended.

Celine hissed in pain then sagged with a shaky sigh as the wound became a thin line of pink. I moved my hands to her face and repeated the process much more quickly this time. When I was done, Lana visibly relaxed.

“You’re going to be okay, darling,” she whispered against her daughter’s bright hair.

Still, the woman’s eyes wouldn’t meet mine.