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The static between them thickened with electric energy laced with starlight and wrath.

‘You know who I am,’ she said, voice soft but firm. ‘I’m a surgeon on your team.’

‘That’s not the question I’m asking,’ he growled. ‘Whatareyou?’

She arched a brow. ‘Is that what matters now?’

Ki’Remi stepped forward, close enough to see the flickers of light under her skin, like distant supernovas trapped beneath the surface. ‘You owe me honesty, Issa. Don’t talk to me like I’m just some grunt you’re humoring.’

That struck a nerve.

Her eyes flared. For a breathless second, her irises lit with white-hot fire, reflecting the raw, burning energy still simmering inside her.

‘You want to interrogate me like I’m some specimen?’ she said, voice cold. ‘Gofokkyourself.’

Ki’Remi stood still, blood pounding, throat tight.

‘I want to know what you’re hiding; you appear to wield a force that can raze gunships.’ His grip on his rifle tightened. ‘The same chaotic power I suspect you used to tamper with my patients without authorization. It’s out of control, and I won’t let you use it without understanding what thefokkit is and who you are.’

She laughed under her breath, soft and knowing. ‘Won’t allow me? What are you going to do? Restrain me? You and I know how that’ll turn out. As for my force, you’re still framing it through your lens of science and medicine. You think what I do is some rogue alternative therapy technique that you can dissect, analyze, categorize.’

She turned her gaze toward him, the amber light of the jungle casting golden hues across her features. ‘It’s not.’

He scoffed. ‘Oh, so you’re going to tell me it’s divine intervention?’

‘Not intervention,’ she corrected, her tone maddeningly patient. ‘Transference.’

Ki’Remi sucked his teeth, signaling his disdain.Transference. Energy healing. More witch talk.

She still went on, her voice quieter, measured but insistent. ‘Healing practices, real curative therapy, is about transferring energy from the healer to the recipient. It’s about promoting self-regeneration, allowing the body to restore itself by realigning any disrupted cells. It’s about balance. Vitality isn’t mystical, Sable. You, of all people, should know that. You work with bio-electric currents, synaptic pathways, and neural stimulation. It’s not so different.’

His jaw clenched. ‘The difference is that my techniques are based on empirical data. Hard science. Established methods.’

She let out a breath, shaking her head. ‘Even the most skeptical of people can be healed, Ki’Remi. You also don’t have a monopoly on healing and its techniques. There are ways more archaic than you that have proven more effective, now forgotten, yet you disdain them without understanding and true comprehension.’

She gestured toward the dense foliage above them. ‘People always talk about being drained or bursting with energy. Why? Because it’s a reality. Whether you acknowledge it or not, the body is a conduit for a celestial force more ancient than you can imagine, and that’s thefokkin’ truth.’

The jungle loomed around them, a living entity of sound and breath.

Trees stretched skyward, their twisted trunks thick with bioluminescent moss. The canopy filtered the moonlight intosilver ribbons, casting spectral shadows along the narrow path they walked.

Damp, rich, loamy earth mingled with the scent of Allorian spice bark, a native tree that exuded a natural incense-like fragrance.

Shaking his head in disbelief at her preposterous statement, Ki’Remi prowled on, his movements instinctual, practiced, a predator’s grace.

Issa kept up beside him, her pace effortless despite the uneven terrain, as if she belonged to the wild.

So far, he considered her untamed, a force of nature wrapped in human form.

However, today’s events threw her into the realm of alien improbability, and he struggled to understand it all.

Her gaze sliced at him, cutting through the dense air like a blade.

‘You don’t believe in any of it, do you?’ she finally asked in a murmur.

He didn’t need to ask what she meant.

Ki’Remi exhaled, tilting his head toward her. ‘I trust in facts, in science. In tangible matter that I can touch, measure, prove.’