A Promise of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles, #1)(87)

“You saved us. Again.” He reaches up to touch my cheek. I try to turn into his hand, but his fingers fall too soon.

“You should have taken me with you!”

The anguish in my voice makes him frown. “How did you know?”

“Soothsayer. Remember?”

He smiles faintly and then coughs. Blood bubbles in his mouth, drips from his lips. “…thought that was a front.”

“Usually. Not always.”

His eyes lock on mine. They lack their usual piercing clarity. “My kingdom’s treasure. My treasure. So glad I found you.”

My eyes sting, and my heart aches, and I want to rip someone apart with my bare hands. He coughs, and there’s more blood. Too much blood.

“Merciless, merciless Cat.” He sounds proud of me. His voice is weakening. There’s blood everywhere. I’m kneeling in it. It’s on my hand, which is pressed to his wound. It’s in the air, damp and metallic in the dry heat.

I yank the healer’s hand down and hold it to Griffin’s chest. “Heal him.”

Her eyes are huge. “Not him. Not Hoi Polloi southern warlord scum.”

Everything in me flattens. My anger is surprisingly cold, a torrent of emotion frozen solid in an instant. I shove her hand away from Griffin and blow on it. The softest breath melts the entire appendage, leaving the charred stump of a wrist bone and mangled, blistered skin.

Her breath starts coming in short bursts. Her eyes turn unfocused. I’m afraid she’ll lose consciousness, so I give her a shake. “Heal. Him.”

She spits on me. “I’d rather die.”

There’s no searing pain, no roasted organs to tell me that she’s lying. Why would she do this? Do idiocy and prejudice run this deep? Griffin is a thousand times better than any royal Sinta has ever seen. She should be falling on her knees to kiss his feet.

I don’t have time to teach her a lesson in humanity, or to show her how little I have myself. I grab her head and squeeze. She screams as magic rips from her and jumps to me. I’ve never absorbed a healer’s power before. I’ve never actually taken any magic that wasn’t either given to me or directed at me, except that euphoria in Velos. There’s something liquid about healing magic, but it’s not a soft current. It’s a raging tide, and it hits me so hard it knocks me over.

My back hits the ground. Carver sits me up, holding me steady while I grab the healer again. Like a swamp leech, I take everything she’s got. I drain her until her skin turns gray. I drain her until she’ll regret denying me until her dying day. I drain her until she slumps to the side, limp and vacant.

Jittery with power, I bring trembling hands back to Griffin’s chest and send magic into his wound. It tears from me like layers of skin peeling off one by one. I cry out, and Griffin pales, fighting to stay conscious. Magic seeps into him, agonizing for us both. I grit my teeth and keep going until I realize he’s not getting better fast enough. He’s too far gone.

“Get me a knife!” I yell.

Griffin focuses on me one last time before his eyes close.

“No! No! No!” I shriek, shattering on the inside.

I don’t know who hands me the knife. I grab it and make a long, shallow incision from Griffin’s shoulder to his elbow. Flesh splits, and crimson wells up. I flip the flat sides of the knife in his blood, coating both surfaces. No one taught me to make a Death Mark or say the chant. Most of the times it happened to me, I was unconscious. The few times I wasn’t… It’s not something a person forgets.

I raise the knife to Olympus and pour healing magic into the blood, chanting fast and low. I say the incantation ten times. It’s either six or ten. Anything else invites chaos, and more is always better, right?

With the last words, I smear the blood back onto Griffin’s arm. Tossing the knife aside, I put one hand on his chest and the other on his arm and drain myself of the healer’s power. I empty every last drop of it into him. When it’s gone, I pour in some of myself. My magic doesn’t knit wounds, but I have power I don’t understand, that I didn’t even know existed before today.

Once I start, I can’t stop. I was never any good at self-control. My magic begins to shred. It’s startling and painful to feel it ripping free. Disjointed threads collide and splinter, latching on to parts of me that I then dump into Griffin with the single-minded focus of a person on the verge of unbearable loss.

Time is irrelevant. I have no idea how much passes. The flow of magic ebbs as I weaken, leaving me numb. I’m only dimly aware of the first part of the army arriving. Dust swirls, catching in my nostrils and sneaking grit into my mouth. People talk. It’s indistinct, but I think they’re stunned by what they see. The carnage—my carnage—seems far away now. Over. It doesn’t concern me.

Piers falls to his knees across from me, his face washed of all color. Griffin’s face is even paler, and frighteningly still. I want to shove Piers away, but I can’t move. My vision is dulling, my senses cloaked in an ever-thickening fog. Low voices sometimes penetrate it. I hear Kato and wish he would pat my head while Flynn says “shhh” in my ear. This is a nightmare, and I need them to wake me up.

My eyes close and won’t open again. I wage a fierce battle against fatigue. It wins, and I collapse across Griffin’s chest. His tunic is wet and sticky with blood. I want it to be cool like a Fisan lake, but it’s hot. He’s hot. I force my lips to move, to continue a chant I’ve heard healers use, but after a few mumbled words, they stop. I’m heavy on the outside, empty on the inside. I probably did something wrong. I don’t feel my magic anymore. I can’t feel my blood or my breath or my thundering hate. I can’t even tell if Griffin is alive, and I want him to live so much I’d make dark bargains with shadows in the night.