Page 169 of Bonds of Starfall

He would still be Kiton Blackfall, her son, only better.

Blood spurted from the stump where his arm had been, covering her coat and turning it a grisly red.

The thermal cauterizer was already prepped. Sabine stepped aside to allow the secondary surgeons to begin cauterizing the wound before he died of blood loss.

The monitors beeped erratically. He neared dangerous territory.

Talor’s gloved hand settled on her shoulder. "He will make it," her husband said.

Sabine forced the faint tremors from her frame—there was no place for such weakness here. "He will. We didn’t go through all of this for him to die on a table."

They would build him anew, piece by piece, until not a single flaw of humanity remained.

Kit fadedin and out of consciousness for days—weeks—as his body healed.

His arm was a stump. Thick, white bandages over the side, wrapping around his chest. He felt turned inside out.

A phantom ache swept through his right side, where his arm once was. The fingers of his left hand flexed. The hospital gown was scratchy and uncomfortable. His head was still foggy. The doctors said the chances of ever being healed entirely were slim.

He struggled to speak. Mornings and evenings were the worst. His words came disjointed and ragged, snapshots of broken-up thoughts, all discordant.

One face always managed to pierce the veil of disordered fog.

White hair, grey eyes.

When it was bad and he felt like he might never survive this, the shade shifted—the pale skin turned softly tanned and the hair turned brown, glittering under sunlight, eyes to match. Vesperin. He repeated the name aloud when he was alone. In the quiet dark of night, when the door to his room was shut and the monitors beeped, still closely tracking his vitals as he healed.

A constant mantra.

"Vesperin, Vesperin, Vesperin."

There were times he couldn’t say her name because too many eyes were watching. So, he did it a different way. Eight letters—three vowels, five consonants—traced into his thigh by the trembling fingers of his left arm.

He would never let himself forget.

His mother and father were here, wherever he was. He knew that was a bad thing. He knew they didn’t love him like parents should, but the fear felt distant, as if a thick sheet was between him and his emotions.

Kit sat by a window, the wheels of his wheelchair locked as a nurse had rolled him here to watch the midmorning sun, covered by thick clouds. Every so often, the image would glitch, distorted. He blinked, and it disappeared.

They would bring him breakfast, plain oatmeal and water, countless vitamins, and yet the window would display sunset. Sometimes, he caught the clouds overlapping strangely, skipping and pausing, then their flow would repeat. Only to do it all over again.

Kit’s head throbbed. It was hard to keep upright.

He coughed, chest catching painfully. Parts of his shoulder blades, sternum, and ribs had been replaced with metal plates.

He shiveredon the examination table, lying flat on his back. The metal fused to his flesh formed a harsh, rigid line. His skin was still red and inflamed, struggling to accept the intrusion.

The doctor pressed along the seam. "You’re healing well," he said.

Kit hadn’t seen his mother in a few days. She came less and less, and his father even more rarely.

"I suspect within the next few days we can fit you for your new arm."

A flicker of sadistic glee darkened the doctor’s eyes. Kit was aware enough to understand that any doctor in this place was evil.

It wastime for the transfusion of his new arm.

Both Sabine and Talor were here. Kit had stopped referring to them as his parents. They no longer were. Not when they viewed him as an experiment more than a son.