Page 142 of Keldori By Daybreak

I nodded and trained my gaze on my hands where they rested on my real body’s ribs. Ciarán’s magick flowed easy, willingly given through our tether.

Bones shifted beneath my hand as I worked. Kamryn had snapped several of them when he’d kicked me, but they snaked back into place at my bidding and sealed their own fractures shut.

Bone was the easy bit, however. I’d learned healing magick on bones.

My lung, collapsed and shriveled, was next.

I found the wound. Fresh lung tissue sealed the organ shut, but when I took a heavy breath and waited for my real body to mirror the action, nothing happened. That terrible heaviness remained like the left side of my chest was full of sand.

“There’s air in the space outside the lung,” I muttered. Pneumothoraxes weren’t something we were qualified to treat in high school Sports Medicine, but we had at least discussed how they worked.

I needed to remove the air that had escaped into my chest if I wanted the lung to work again.

I’d stolen Skal out of pipes by fashioning my fingernail into a siphon once. This would work the same way. My nail elongated, thickened, and hollowed into a straw, and I transformed the keratin into stainless steel and stuck it between my ribs.

Air hissed as it escaped through the exit I’d given it. I sealed the puncture wound as I withdrew my nail, and my ribcage expanded and fell beneath my hand.

“It’s working,” Ciarán breathed.

“Maybe.” Pain seared in my abdomen. I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. My pancreas, maybe? Or spleen?

Whatever it was, it hurt like hell, and whatever it was, I would will it back together.

The metal taste of Ciarán’s magick flooded my mouth and sinuses, turning my head light. I wanted more, and luckily, as long as I needed more, Ciarán would happily give it.

I relished the way the magick buzzed along my extremities and electrified my abdomen as organs, serosa, and sinew stitched themselves back together.

I did my arms next, and watched in fascination as the gaping holes my bone blades had left in my muscle sealed shut.

“Wren…”

I turned to see Ciarán breathing heavily and leaning back. He’d gone pale, and sweat shone on his brow, but he kept his eyes focused on the gentle rise and fall of my real body’s chest.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He nodded, but I could feel his exhaustion. His magick was fueling mine, and I was creating new life, interweaving it with the cells that already made up my body.

It was a massive feat, and he was shouldering the burden as I drained him dry of Skal.

“Did you do it?” he asked. “You still look so…”

He trailed off, and we both stared at my real body in tense silence.

I still looked like I was dying.

It was because I was. I’d fixed my bones and healed my organs, but there was one last thing my body needed.

“I don’t have enough blood,” I admitted. “And you don’t have enough magick.”

“But I have blood.”

“I don’t suppose you happen to know your blood type.” My laugh wavered over a sob.

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means if your blood doesn’t match mine, it’ll hurt me. There’s a good chance it could kill me with how much I need.”

“And if you don’t take it?”