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I flung up my hands to protect my face, but a growl from the ground beside me made me scream.
“Ember, no!” I flung myself sideways, landing protectively over the small body of the fox.
She tried to slither out from under me, but I clasped her in both hands, curling over her and leaving my back exposed to the eagle. I braced myself to feel slicing pain across it, but instead I heard running feet, a thud, and then unsettling silence.
Pushing off the ground, I peered back at the eagle. It was no longer standing or hovering but lay still on the ground, one wing spread out and the other trapped beneath it. It wasn’t moving.
I scrambled up and raced over to it, pressing my hands against the closest feathers. But my power didn’t respond when I tried to push it into the bird. There was no life left for me to connect with.
“No, no,” I sobbed, trying again. But I was too late.
I looked up at Nik, the source of the running feet. He stood beside us, sadness in his eyes as he looked at the broken bird.
I scrambled up and threw myself at his chest, beating it with my fists.
“What did you do? How could you? You killed him!” Tears streamed down my face.
He captured my hands, stilling me. “It was a mercy.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “I could have healed him.”
“You had to be touching him for that. Were you going to let him kill you while you worked on him? He was too far gone to see you as anything but a threat.”
I pressed my face against his shirt and sobbed again. A gentle hand stroked my hair, and somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered our first few meetings and wondered how we’d ended up here.
“Even if it hadn’t been a mercy for the animal, I would have acted to protect you, Delphine,” he murmured against my hair, and a shiver ran through me.
A moment later, a sudden thought made me push against him, staggering backward and staring around. Before Nik’s arrival, someone else had protected me first.
My eyes found the falcon, and I raced toward him, Nik only half a step behind. As I dropped to my knees beside him, I held my breath, desperate for him to still be alive.
“Please, please, please,” I murmured to myself as I laid a gentle hand against his feathers.
My power connected with him, and I nearly collapsed with relief. But the relief didn’t last long.
I had never healed a bird before. I’d never even connected with one, and his system was unfamiliar and strange. Too much of him seemed to be lungs, his hollow bones structured around air sacs that seemed to fill most of his body. Vaguely I remembered a comment Clay had once made about birds. They didn’t breathe like a human or a fox, with their lungs inflating and deflating. They should maintain constant volume, not lie still like an empty balloon.
Grasping the thought, I let my instincts take over, pushing air through the falcon. As it moved through his body, my power followed, healing the crushed airways and sacs.
He twitched beneath my hands, the movement growing until he shook his head and hopped to his feet, regarding first me and then Nik with one beady eye. I pulled back and gazed at him in return.
“Is he healed?” Nik asked, sounding equal parts fascinated and wary.
“I think so,” I said cautiously. “I don’t know much about birds.”
For several seconds of silence, the three of us continued to regard each other.
“But I do know there’s something strange about this one,” I added.
Quickly I explained his behavior to Nik, detailing how he had helped me, first by distracting the eagle and then by launching a true attack to protect me.
“I’ve never seen a falcon act like that,” I finished.
Nik rubbed at his jaw. “It’s unusual, certainly, but not completely beyond the scope of what I’ve seen before.”
“You have?” I stared at him.
He leaned forward, and I expected the healed falcon to dodge back, but the animal held his ground, one of his eyes glued to Nik.
