Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(62)

Finn winced and leaned sideways, gripping at the wall. The cloth wrapped around her ankle was soaked with blood, the more she moved, the more she bled.

“At least let me heal you.”

“I don’t want anyone’s maldito help!” she spat, her words snapping like a whip.

Alfie’s anger flared to match hers, and then they were chest to chest. “You may not want it, but you certainly need it!”

Finn glared up at him for a long moment. He returned her glower with one of his own, unrelenting. Finally, she staggered away and perched on the edge of her bed.

Alfie knelt before her and carefully untied the blood-soaked cloth. She cursed as he pulled it free of her skin. He held his hand over the wound, the word for healing on his tongue.

“Sanar,” he said. Nothing. His hand was shaking. The reality of what they’d seen in the Brim had shaken him to his core and the magic was slipping through his fingers, responding to his feelings of uncertainty. It didn’t feel safe in his hands. Too much arrogance and the magic would flee, too little confidence and the results were the same. Balance. He needed balance.

He cleared his head and thought of his mother bending a hand over his scraped knee when he was a boy. He thought of what she’d said whenever he hurt himself.

“Sana, sana, colita de rana. Si no sana hoy, sanarás ma?ana.” The magic flowed through him. Finn’s heel slowly mended under his touch.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Something my mother would sing to me when I was little and hurt.”

It was a nonsense song about a baby frog that had lost its tail. Magic had a language, and bruxos were taught that certain words led to certain results, but if you were truly fluent in magic, the use of the language didn’t have to be strict. Those words his mother would sing made him think of healing, so they became the words he could use to heal. It was what Alfie found the most fascinating about magic, how it was painted by one’s experiences, memories, emotions.

She looked at his left hand, where the two fingers that the man had broken were newly healed before he’d traveled to find her. “What does she say when you get hurt now?”

Alfie pulled that hand back. “I make sure she never knows I am.”

Silence spread between them. She touched her heel gingerly.

“Finn.” He rose from his kneel to stand before her. “Will you at least let me explain why I need your help? Please.” Healing her seemed to have granted him some currency because she gave a barely perceptible nod.

“I need to fix this, stop the magic I released before it hurts more people. To do that, I need help with your propio. If I’m away from the palace for much longer, my family and the guardsmen will notice my absence. So first, I need you to come back with me so you can change Luka’s appearance to match mine. That way I can leave the palace to fix this without anyone knowing.” If he was going to stop this, he needed someone to cover for him in the meantime. The thought of telling Luka what he’d done made his stomach roil, but if he wanted a chance to fix this, he would need Luka’s help. “After that—”

Finn looked away from him, her eyes flinty. “There’s no point in telling me what’s after that when I can’t do the first thing. I can’t change anyone.”

Alfie stared at her. “You lied when I asked if you could?”

“I didn’t lie,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I just can’t do it right now.”

Alfie shot her a look. If it was her propio she should be able to do it whenever she pleased. Was she just trying to get more out of him? He’d already promised her the maldito cloak. “You can’t or you won’t?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “My propio is blocked.”

“How is that possible?” Alfie asked, his brow furrowed.

“I tried to steal the cloak because I was forced to by Kol. She’s a mobster in the Pinch. Her propio is that she can block other people’s magic. She blocked mine and refused to free me until I got her this stupid cloak.”

“Oh,” Alfie said, the word falling heavily from his lips. “That’s awful.”

“The understatement of the maldito century.” She leaned back against the wall.

“Where is she now? Can you find her, make her return your magic?”

She crossed her arms. “Gone. Left town with my magic still locked up inside me. That pub we were at, the Blue Thimble, is Kol’s pub. She’s certainly not dead because my magic’s still gone. But there’s no way she stuck around after that massacre. So my propio’s gone.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alfie said. Propio magic was something so intrinsic, so essential to him that he couldn’t imagine losing it. If she didn’t find Kol, she might never have her propio again.

“Wait,” she said, her eyes widening. “Your propio is that you do weird stuff with other people’s magic, right? Like you did with my trump card after the cambió game.”

Alfie resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “In a manner of speaking, yes. I can manipulate other people’s magic.”

“Then give it a go.” When he looked down at her, confused, she added, “Fix me.”

He blinked at her. “It’s not that easy; I can’t do it just like that.”