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“Shay!” Roman took off after her, gravel shooting under his heels. “SHAYLA!” he screamed, her name ripping his throat apart.

She rounded the fountain—

And literally disappeared.

Roman cursed but kept running. Shouting her name. “Shayla!” He thumped to a stop by the wrought-iron gates that were still closed, the magic having not picked up on her illusion. “SHAYLA!” His head swiveled, eyes wild as he looked for her, breaths raking through clenched teeth. “SHAYLAAAAA!”

But she was gone.

And when she’d fled, she had not bothered to look back.

91

Yveswich General Hospital

YVESWICH, STATE OF KER

Going to see a Healer was quite possibly the best advice Arthur had ever given Darien.

He sat in a chair in a private room on the third floor of Yveswich General Hospital, his hand cradled in the careful touch of the young brunette Healer kneeling at his feet. Tanner was keeping watch out in the waiting area—and probably playing that retro frog game again, if Darien knew Atlas at all. They’d left for the hospital shortly after Shay had learned that her sister was dead—and had sprinted off Roman’s property too quickly for anyone to stop her. Darien and Tanner had stuck around long enough for Roman to fill them in, telling them that he’d gone with Shay out to the desert to search for Anna Cousens, who, as it turned out, had been at Motel 58 with Blue and the same men who’d turned up dead in Angelthene.

Small fucking world. Small, bizarre fucking world.

Roman would be going after Shay soon enough, Darien knew. It was what Darien would do if it were Loren who’d ran, Loren who’d needed comfort. Roman could lie through his teeth all he wanted, but Darien could tell that he’d fallen really hard for that girl.

Darien stared at the clock on the wall, listening to it tick away. They were halfway through the procedure. The Healer had taken the bandages off his hand, needing skin on skin contact for the magic to flow properly from her aura into his. The gray mat she knelt upon was covered in runes that glowed all different colors, the magic emitting a hum that reminded Darien of hornets.

“How are you feeling?” the Healer asked him as she gently tipped his hand, using her nails to apply pressure to the tips of his fingers. It was a bit like acupuncture, but without the needles. And far more enjoyable.

“Way better,” Darien said. “What’s the mat for?”

“It helps me draw energy up from the anima mundi. The higher the floor we’re on, the harder the magic needs to work to travel. If we were on the ground floor, I wouldn’t need to use a mat.” She tilted his hand the other way, the movement causing her wedding ring to catch the fluorescents, the diamond winking like a small star.

“Did you pick that ring out yourself, or did your husband choose?”

She smiled up at him. “I dragged him to a few jewelry stores before he proposed. Gave him an idea of the style I liked.” She rubbed her thumb up his palm, little ripples of warmth curling lazily through his hand. He almost groaned with pleasure. This was heaven compared to the setting of his bones. The pins and plates Arthur had inserted had already been dissolved by magic, no longer necessary now that his healing process had been sped along. Having Arthur set his bones beforehand had saved Darien from spending extra time here in the hospital, though the process had been painful as hell without morphine. “The rest,” the Healer concluded, “he did himself.”

“Is there a name for that style?”

“It’s just a round-cut diamond.” She rubbed the muscle in his thumb with the tip of her own. The firmer pressure caused Darien to tense, a bolt of splintering pain zipping up to his wrist. “Sorry,” she said. Her eyes flicked up to his, filled with apology. “We’re almost done. There must have been a spark of magic left in that spot.”

He drew a steadying breath through his nose. “It’s fine.”

“Do you have a lady you’re thinking of proposing to?”

“It’s crossed my mind. I saw your ring and thought the style would suit her.” He’d done a lot of thinking—fantasizing, really—about engagement rings after finding his mother’s in Blackgate Manor, but he didn’t know the first thing about proposing, and there were so many cuts of diamond, it was ridiculous. How was he supposed to know what to choose?

“I would take her to a few jewellers,” the Healer advised. “Or, if you want to surprise her, maybe see if her friends can find out what she likes.” She let go of his hand and got to her feet. “Wait right there.”

As she rummaged through drawers and cupboards on the other side of the room, Darien turned his hand palm-up, studying it. Then turned it the other way, examining the other side.

It already looked way better, the bruising and swelling all but gone.

The Healer returned with what looked like a compression glove. “Give me your hand, please.”

He extended it to her, and she carefully tugged the glove onto his hand, shimmying it down and securing the velcro strap around his wrist. The glove was black, the stretchy material ending just beyond his major knuckles.

She stepped back, and Darien held his hand up to take a look, resisting the urge to form a fist to test the glove’s flexibility. Fuck, not making a fist was going to be a challenge.