Page 82 of Eternal Light

“Perhaps Sasha could have a look? Once he’s feeling better?” Jay asks, his calm appearance belied by his red eyes and descended fangs.

Grayson will not wait for the stranger to check on his mates—he loathes the mere idea that Sasha would be rummaging around inside Luca’s head.

It takes seconds to determine that the spell is not on Nix. He’s not surprised; it would be hard to touch Nix magically without alerting Grayson.

Although he doubts Withers would know why that is.

He holds his hand out to Luca. “Where?”

Luca points to the base of his skull.

Opening The Plain’s flow to a trickle again, Grayson easily sees the gray cloud of magic stuck like a leech to the base of Luca’s brainstem.

He pokes it with a magical, metaphysical finger, making it jiggle like jelly before bouncing back.

“You have a Healing strand?” Sasha says in his ear. The sound manifests as a mirage of the Healer beside him.

They’re standing beside a flowing blue ribbon tied to the man’s waist like a sash, but it billows out behind and in front of him—like a cool healing stream.

Grayson hasn’t thought about it like that at all. He’s not even sure he could use it for anyone other than his mates.

When he’d bolstered Jay, he’d used The Plain’s deep red to build up his alpha instinctively.

Maybe the same would apply to Luca. Nix had said the beta’s soul bond looked purple to him. So, Grayson calls a long lavender stream toward him.

It spins and swirls, coming when called but dancing to its own inner song.

When he finally wrangles it, he directs it like a conductor’s baton toward the gray, gelatinous mass. He pushes as much energy as he dares into it until it bursts into a million tiny fragments.

The purple light follows each tiny seed of evil, drowning it out and gobbling it up until none remains.

Opening his eyes as Luca hugs him tightly, weaving his arms in and around Nix’s tight grip so that their mate is pressed between them, but he can still give—and get—the hug he desires.

Sasha looks a bit awed, but maybe that’s the consequence of the excess magic use. “Brilliantly done. No training, you say?Pffft. You will come see me at The Guild.”

“Thank you for helping Ansel. Will he wake up? Is he better now?” Winnie asks from her spot near the bed.

Sasha shrugs. “He is better, but not perfect…he’s been sick for a while. Maybe more than half his life. It will take time forhim to find himself and feed his soul. It will be difficult. He’ll need…watching.”

“Watching?” Leo asks. “Why?”

For the first time, Sasha looks uncomfortable, as if he knows his news will be difficult to hear. “Someone has eaten away at his soul for a long time. Being soulless—or even mostly soulless—means he won’t feel…good things. Not for quite some time. Until he can regrow it, he might be tempted to go down a dark path, and twelve is the gateway to adolescence.”

There’s a tense beat of silence before Gideon speaks, his voice low and tight. “What does that mean?”

Sasha’s gaze shifts to him slowly, as if weighing the answer. “He’ll need structure. Safety. Patience. A constant presence to remind him what’s real and what isn’t. He’ll need someone to believe in him when he forgets how.”

Winnie’s face crumples, and she turns away slightly, blinking hard.

“But I can see that what remains is inherently bright,” Sasha finishes, more gently now. “It will come back. Given the right care.”

“Care? Like…all the time?” Winnie whispers, deflating like a balloon.

Grayson has only known her for a few hours, but he can already see how the recently-unemployed young woman is trying to figure out how she’s going to give this soul-sick child the twenty-four/seven care he needs to recover.

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll work it out. I’ll make sure he gets better.”

Grayson meets Jay’s eyes. His alpha’s jaw is clenched tight, but his mental wheels are turning. There’s no way Jay will let these two fall through the cracks.