Dark Heart of Magic (Black Blade #2)(88)

“Lila!” Deah rushed over to me. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” I rasped through the pain. “You need to get out of here . . . go get . . . some help—”

Thump-thump-thump.

Thump-thump-thump.

Thump-thump-thump.

Outside, footsteps pounded, coming closer and closer. Deah got to her feet, stepped in front of me, and whipped up her sword, ready to face whatever new danger this might be.

The door burst open, and Devon and Felix raced inside, both of them holding swords.

The three of them stared at each other for a second before Deah let out a tense breath and lowered her weapon.

“You guys need to help Lila. She’s hurt.”

Devon dropped to a knee beside me, his eyes going wide with shock at all the blood on me. “Lila—” he said in a strangled voice.

“Here,” Felix said, crouching down beside me as well. “Let me try to heal her, or at least stop the bleeding until Dad and the others get here.”

Felix put his hands on top of my wound, making me gasp with more pain. But he ignored my choked sobs and let loose his power. His magic seeped into my body, trying to stop the bleeding, pull the ragged edges of the wound together, and undo all the damage that Katia had done.

And, for a moment, I almost thought it was going to work.

But Felix only had a minor Talent for healing, and my wound was definitely major all the way around. He was able to stop the bleeding for a few seconds, but then his magic burned out of my system, and blood started seeping out from between my fingers again. Felix had stitched up the wound as best he could, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Felix cursed. “It’s no use. Her wound is too severe, and I don’t have enough magic to heal her myself. If I had a bottle of stitch-sting. . . .” His voice trailed off because we all knew that he didn’t and that there wasn’t time to go get one from the fairgrounds before I bled out.

So Felix leaned forward and tried again, letting loose another burst of magic. I could feel his power inside me and my own transference wanting to kick in, even though it wouldn’t do me any good. My transference power made me stronger, but right now, I needed magic to heal me, not give me enough muscle to swing a sword. If only Felix was as strong in his magic as Devon was, he could have easily healed my wound. But Devon’s compulsion didn’t have any sort of healing element to it, and he could only give people simple commands, like telling me to hold on when we’d been on the rope ladder or to run the night we’d been fighting Grant. Devon’s magic had mixed with my own then, giving me the strength to run far enough to save us both from Grant and his goons.

I looked at Felix and Devon both huddled over me, and a crazy idea popped into my head. Felix might be the only one here with healing power, but he wasn’t the only one with magic—and maybe raw magic was all I really needed.

I reached up and clutched Felix’s hand in mine, then reached for Devon’s hand, so that I was holding on to both of them at the same time.

“Felix,” I rasped, blood bubbling up into my mouth. “Try to heal me again. Use . . . as much . . . magic as you can at once. Devon . . . at the same time . . . you tell me to heal. Put as much force behind it as you can.”

Devon’s eyes widened as he realized what I wanted, and he shook his head. “No. It’s too dangerous. I’ve never used my magic like that before. I don’t know how or even if it will work. It could kill you outright.”

He didn’t say anything, but I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he thought about it, trying to figure things out, the way he always did.

“If we don’t try, I’m dead anyway,” I rasped. “Do it . . . give me a chance . . . please. . . .”

My voice trailed off, and black and white stars began to flash in front of my eyes. I didn’t have long, maybe another minute or two before I’d pass out. A couple minutes after that, I’d bleed out and die right here in the boathouse.

“We have to,” Felix said. “I don’t know if it will work either, but it’s her only shot.”

Devon nodded and stared back at his friend. “On three then. One . . . two . . . three!”

Felix tightened his grip on my hand and let loose another burst of magic, this one stronger than ever before, as though he was scraping up every bit of power he had left and funneling it into my body. Even as he blasted me with his healing magic, Devon leaned down so that he was staring straight into my eyes. He only said one word.

“Heal.”

The sharp crack of magic in his voice sounded as loud as a clap of thunder booming in my head. From one second to the next, his power took hold of me, and my insides started squeezing and squeezing together, trying to mash everything back where it was supposed to be. I screamed and arched back, my body growing colder and colder as Devon kept repeating his heal command to me over and over again, and Felix kept pouring more and more of his magic into me at the same time.

But then my own magic, my own transference power, kicked in, and all I felt was the cold burst of energy pulsing through my body, more intense than any I’d ever experienced before. Devon’s command still tugged at my body, so I focused on obeying that order as much as I could, trying to add Felix’s healing magic to the mix to get things done. It was weird, but I could almost picture my insides in my mind, all those torn muscles and severed blood vessels pulling themselves back together. And I realized that I could only feel the cold burn of magic in and around my stab wound—nowhere else in my body.