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He moved without thinking, before he could second-guess, knowing that if he didn’t reach now, he might never.

Skye wrapped an arm around Kato’s shoulders. And for the first time in his life, he hugged his brother.

“I believe you,” Skye said.

Kato didn’t move, but something in him gave. Skye could feel it.

All this time, he’d been waiting for the pain of the past to fade. But maybe it didn’t work like that.

Maybe forgiveness was just… deciding to stop holding on.

Aiden did not allow himself to think. To feel. He banished every speck of recognition for the woman bleeding out on his table.

Because if he didn’t, if he let himself see the gold hair matted with blood, the pale, battered face beneath it—if he began to connect them with the mangled skin of her back and too-shallow breathing…

Aiden clenched his hands into fists, squeezing until they stopped shaking.

Just another patient. Fey. Female. Sub-30 juvenile.

Diagnosis: Vorpal Vine

One of the minor Curses, it was a parasitic vine that propagated through the nervous system. The seed had been planted at the base of her spine and allowed to grow from there,thorns curling along the nerve roots. They burrowed outward, mapping her pain in lightning strikes. Blooms were already forming around the patient’s shoulders, where the thorns had punched through mangled flesh, glistening red buds made redder by the blood staining their petals.

He had until those blooms opened, however long that might be. Right now, it was still feeding off the residue of her aether, but once that was gone and there was only her anima, the flowers would bloom. And she’d be dead.

Aiden breathed in. Then out.

Method of treatment: address the Vorpal Vine first, then rebuild the muscle and nerve tissue before applying a fresh layer of skin.

Aimee finished cleaning the many open wounds. She stood back, awaiting orders.

Aiden stared at her from across the table. “It’s alright if you don’t want to stay and watch. I can get one of the maids to help.”

But his sister stood straighter. Complete and utter trust shone in her eyes, faith in his skills, his knowledge, that he knew what to do.

Just another patient. But his heart wouldn’t stop pounding as he pulled a large earth crystal from his kit.

Aimee’s eyes widened in equal parts shock and horror when she saw the rune engraved on the surface.

Vorpal Vine had to be cut out, removed thorn by thorn and disentangled from its host. That took hours. With it this close to blooming, he needed to kill the vine before it killed her.

And there was only one way to kill a Vorpal Vine: convince it the host was already dead.

“Hold her down,” he said, his voice mercifully even. “We get one chance at this.”

When her heart stopped, Taly hoped that was it. Then it started again.

Fact: The brain had a limited capacity to process pain.

Fact: An earth mage’s pain-relieving magic didn’t immediately take effect.

It started at the farthest edges, smoothing away the softest aches first. Invisible points of pain Taly hadn’t even noticed beneath the deluge of larger agonies in her body, and only visible to her now by the tension left behind in the muscle. The strain where her neck had arched, and her back had bowed, and even her legs had begun to cramp, reshaped by suffering.

Then came the more immediate aches. The cuts on her face, the broken bones, the slashes on her arms, legs, and shoulders, still riddled with thorns and leaking blood—one by one, they became invisible to her senses as the magic spread beneath her skin.

Leaving bit by extra bit of her focus for that one ultimate, unbearable, unrelenting pain raging on her back.

Making it burn brighter, hotter,deeper.