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Cade sounded disgruntled as he finally turned back to his work. “If that was his intention then I will have words with him. A breach of trust of that magnitude cannot go unanswered.”
The knot in my gut rolled over. “Please don’t. It doesn’t really matter.”
“Of course it matters. Charms are one thing, acting on them is another.”
Heat gathered in my face. “I cannot be certain he was using a charm when it happened.”
Cade had gone rigid. “Blast his bloody hide. He doesn’t even need those charms half the time.”
I quirked a smile, equal parts humiliated and relieved. Something about Constable Cade put me at ease, and it was more than a little validating to hear his displeasure with Derrick. The charms were a dirty trick, no matter how justifiable in the field, and the man must have known I was innocent long before he stopped using them. Still, he had been so gentle at the safehouse and his unguarded confession echoed through me: I’ve never wanted anything so much as I want you.
That couldn’t have been a charm, could it?
Cade lowered the pliers toward my hand. “I need you to be as still and as quiet as you can.”
Shoving Derrick from my mind – again – I concentrated on being still. My shoulders ached with the effort, and every inch of me wanted to shift in the chair, to find a more comfortable position, but Cade was murmuring something, and I could recognize the cadence of an incantation at work. The slender needle-like object flared a brilliant orange at its tip a heartbeat before Cade lowered it into my palm.
It touched the runestone and it was as if a million drums struck all at once, reverberating power through me. Pain jolted up my arm, and I ground my teeth, ordering my body to stay still, to keep frozen. Frozen like the lake in winter. Frozen like death. Frozen, still, quiet. Winter’s deepest nights, bereft even of wind. Not an inch of movement.
I let out a shaky breath.
Cade maneuvered the needle, leading it through the loops and swirls of the rune, his voice a soft melody as he continued the incantation. The hair at his temples was damp, and a fine sweat broke out across his forehead. His body was tense, straining against the spell that bound me, and I began to worry what this might cost him.
Maker help me, was there risk on his end as well? I hadn’t thought to ask.
Agonizing moments past. Dizzy lights crowded my vision and my head bobbed, equal parts light and heavy.
My ears popped as though I’d been suddenly dropped into deep water, muffling the world around me. I blinked, seeing the aether and then the mundane, and then the aether again. The vines were here, I could see them now, but they seemed dormant. Silent, sleeping beasts coiled around bookshelves and the desk, crawling up the walls with their thorns, but something more was wrong here.
I glanced at Cade, who was drawing out the runestone with his thin medical pliers – were they called pliers in this instance? That seemed an inelegant word for them. Ribbons of magic curled around him, and I watched as he set the runestone aside and took up the needle once more, this time prodding at one of the ribbons with its sharp end. The end flared, the ribbon disappearing into the needle itself, and I watched, fascinated, as Cade began etching healing runes onto each broken bone in my hand.
There was no more pain. Where his left hand held my wrist, I could see water swirling, pouring into the wound, and I could sense his magic numbing everywhere his water touched.
My bones began to shift. Cracked bits filled. Those that had been closest to the runestone reformed, and the spot where bone and stone had fused together began to glow. The process took ages, and the muscles in my back and shoulders screamed with the need for release. I might have shifted a time or two, but a quick glance from Cade’s twilight eyes forced me to still once more.
And then he was unpinning my skin, gently replacing each flap so that they fit against my palm. Water flowed from his hand, swiftly enveloping the incisions, knitting it back together until all that was left was a thin, silvery scar shaped like an X. At long last he released me, his shoulders slumping as his magic cut off.
Still afraid to move my hand, I asked, “It’s done?”
He nodded, his face drawn as he leaned against the desk. “It will be sore for a while. Bone healing runes need time to fully work. And I wouldn’t access magic with that hand anytime soon.”
Tentatively, I lifted my hand and curled each individual finger, watching as muscles and bones flexed the way they should. He was right, there was some soreness, particularly with my index finger and thumb, but they all moved, and I could have kissed him in relief. But when I looked up again, his pallor was still ashy, the hair at his temples still damp.
I rose from the chair. “You should sit. Maker help me, what has this done to you?”
“Fussing over me when you just underwent a surgical procedure? You are a wonder, Nora Grayson.”
“You look like death,” I said and tried again to usher him into the seat.
He waved off my attempts and this time he actually chuckled. “I’ll be fine.”
I frowned at him, dubious, but I was beginning to sense other things in the room, my magic coming to life. A chill poured from the pinned butterflies. I stared at them, realizing after several shocked seconds that I was sensing their last moments of terror, that moment when they’d been caught. The tangle of the net that stole them from the air, the calculating gaze that pinned their wings in place, trapping them forever.
The same way he captured warlocks, I realized. Only for my kind, he did not place us on display. He dismembered us. Sold our pieces to the highest bidder. And ate what was left.
“Nora?”
Unable to tear my gaze from the butterflies I murmured, “He’s awful.”
