Page 38 of Fly to Fury (War of the Alliance #3)

There was nothing Fieran could do to force Dacha to leave. Except for hurrying up and dying already.

But Fieran had fought so hard, and he wasn’t about to just give up and die now.

Dacha needed even more magic. They needed to fill the air with so much magic that even a vapor couldn’t survive.

Fieran gathered his strength, lifted his hand out of the mud, and clasped his fingers around Dacha’s arm.

He had no strength to fight. Not enough willpower to keep his magic controlled.

Instead, he unleashed his magic as he had as a child, trusting in Dacha’s far greater power to keep his contained.

As Fieran’s bolts climbed over Dacha’s arm, Dacha’s power wrapped around it with a sense of vastness, directing and shaping it into controlled paths.

The two magics sparked against each other even as Dacha’s crafted Fieran’s into shape, coating the sky with a near solid layer of magic and filling the air with the taste of a lightning storm.

Fieran’s eyes closed as he let his magic pour from him, unrestricted, uncontrolled except where it was held in place by Dacha’s greater power. He might have let himself drift farther into the ocean of magic and waves of pain if his dacha’s grip on his shoulder hadn’t grounded him.

With supreme effort, Fieran dragged his eyes open again, just as a wave of green elven magic swept across the sky, shoving the yellow-green smoke ahead of it.

Then more people were there. Uncle Weylind shouted orders as green magic lit his hands and his black hair flowed over the leaves of his armor. Elves poured forward to form ranks around them. Somewhere, distantly, Aunt Vriska’s voice also yelled commands.

More elves fell to their knees on the other side of Fieran. One sliced open Fieran’s shirt but paused short of pressing a hand to Fieran’s chest. Instead, the healer glanced at Dacha. “Laesornysh, his magic…”

“Fieran, sason.” Dacha’s grip flexed on Fieran’s shoulder as Dacha turned to him. “It is time to withdraw your magic so the healer can work. Pull it back within yourself.”

Could he? Fieran’s control felt so tenuous, his magic so fully unleashed, that he didn’t know if he had the strength—physical and mental—to wrest it back under his control.

Instead of trying to stuff down what was already unleashed, Fieran let it go, trusting Dacha to prevent that magic from hurting anyone. That left only the magic coursing within him, and he pulled that back into his chest the best he could.

As his magic left, the full force of agony crashed into him again, a strange exhaustion filling him. He couldn’t hold his eyes open. Couldn’t fight the darkness dragging at him .

A hand pressed to his chest, and a jolt of healing magic—more pain than the usual warmth—flared through him as if taking hold of his bones and blood in a fist.

Fieran gasped in a breath. He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped breathing until precious air filled his lungs again. His magic sparked within him again, and he struggled to hold it back.

He had a sense of elven plant magic, and something wrapped around his body. Then he was lifted and placed on a stretcher, some kind of wooden splints keeping his bones from shifting.

He tried to hold on to that thread of consciousness. But as the stretcher swayed, shouts and orders swirled around him, and his dacha’s voice echoed somewhere above him, the darkness carried him away.

“Fieran, sason.”

The order in that tone dragged him from blissful darkness into staggering pain. Fieran gasped as he opened his eyes with monumental effort.

He lay on a table, bright lights set in a wooden ceiling above him. People in white coats with red spatters—elves and humans, both men and women—bustled about him. Yet all of them stayed back, a few halting what they were doing as if they didn’t dare move.

His dacha stood at his side, his hand over Fieran’s where it lay on the table. Magic laced over Fieran’s fingers, his and also Dacha’s stopping him from lashing out.

“You need to control your magic, sason.” Dacha’s voice rang with a gentle sternness, even as the look in his eyes was far less controlled and more wild than his tone. “The healers need to be able to help you.”

Fieran struggled to withdraw even that tiny tendril of magic. Despite what he’d expended, his magic still coiled in his chest as if agitated by the pain filling him.

The healers approached again, and several set their hands on Fieran’s wounds again. Healing magic flooded inside him, digging deep into his body. His own magic flared again at the intrusion, as if the healing magic was a threat to be destroyed.

Fieran gritted his teeth and breathed through the agony as he held his magic back. He couldn’t lash out at the healers. They were just trying to help.

A female elf healer stepped closer to Dacha, speaking to him in a low tone Fieran couldn’t make out. But after a moment, Dacha nodded, a grim set to his jaw and a bleakness in his eyes.

When he turned back to Fieran, his head bowed slightly. Something in his tone seemed extra weighted, as if he blamed himself. “Fieran, because you are my son and inherited my magic, you will need to remain awake. Understand, sason? For the safety of the healers, you will need to stay conscious.”

Fieran squeezed his eyes shut as the healing magic inside him prodded at something painful and shattered. For a long moment, it was all he could do to breathe and clutch his magic with a death grip.

When the crashing pain eased somewhat, he met Dacha’s gaze and gathered enough breath to speak. “I understand.”

Normally the healers would send a patient to sleep before such extensive and painful healing. But not Fieran. He had to remain awake—remain conscious of every shattering, shredding moment of pain—so that his magic didn’t lash out and hurt those trying to help him.

As if taking that understanding as permission to continue, more of the healers and nurses clustered around Fieran. Even more healing magic poured into him. It wrapped around something deep inside his chest and wrenched.

Fieran cried out, and he would have arched against the table if Dacha hadn’t placed a hand on his shoulder, pinning him down. And yet that steady, firm pressure was as comforting as it was unyielding.

“Dacha…Dacha…it hurts…” Fieran gasped the words as tears trickled unbidden from his eyes.

“I know, sason. I know.” Dacha held Fieran down. The white scars around his wrist, visible where his sleeve had ridden up, proved exactly how much he knew about such pain.

More healing magic. Something else crunched into place inside of Fieran, stabbing pain into his chest as surely as if he’d been shot. He couldn’t stop the cry of pain, the tears that still flowed from his eyes.

“He is in pain.” Dacha glared at the healers, as if he might just fight them if they didn’t stop hurting Fieran.

“His whole body is still…infused with his magic.” The elven healer spoke through gritted teeth, as if she were in just as much pain as Fieran. “It is clashing with our magic. All the shrapnel in his body is particularly laced with his magic.”

Healing magic gripped his bones and yanked. Fieran couldn’t help his scream.

So much pain. He lived it. Breathed it. Drowned in it.

“Do something,” Dacha snapped, a sensation of his magic brushing Fieran’s hand .

The voice that spoke this time had Escarlish accents instead of elven ones, saying something about morphine. And ether.

Fieran was already in too much pain to feel the shot he assumed he was given. A cloth smelling of something faintly sweet pressed over his nose, and a voice told him to breathe in deeply.

Within a few breaths, Fieran’s body felt like his aeroplane did right before takeoff. Slightly light, not quite on the ground but not yet in the sky either.

When Fieran got his eyes open again, Dacha was braced against the table, one hand on Fieran’s, the other on Fieran’s shoulder, both holding him down. There was just something so shattered in Dacha’s eyes that Fieran shifted his hand to get Dacha’s attention.

“Dacha.” Fieran blinked upward, trying to focus as Dacha turned to him. “I could never regret having your magic. Or being your son.”

That seemed rather important to say. Even if the cloth over his nose kept getting in the way, and he had an odd taste in his mouth. Kind of sweet. Kind of metallic.

Dacha opened his mouth, then closed it, as if he wasn’t sure what to say to that. He finally just made a shushing sound, as if he thought talking should be too much effort.

That was fine. Fieran could stop talking for a few moments. Maybe.

He tilted his head, trying to see what was happening better.

He hadn’t noticed before, but one of Dacha’s sleeves was rolled up past his elbow.

A needle was held in the crook of his elbow with a bandage while a tube filled with red liquid flowed down to a glass canister set beside Fieran on the table.

Another tube connected from the glass jug to a needle in Fieran’s arm .

Fieran squinted first at the needle in his arm, then at the one in Dacha’s. There was something familiar about the contraption, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen it before. He peered up at Dacha again. “You hate needles.”

“You needed blood,” Dacha stated as if that explained everything.

Right. A blood sharing thingy. There was a name for it, but he couldn’t remember it. A team of humans and elves had invented it, and afterward Dacha had dragged all of them off to get their blood tested.

Fieran craned his neck to look down at himself. He seemed to be lacking clothes, except for a cloth draped over his middle. There was a tall but thin piece of metal sticking out of his abdomen. Apparently he’d been impaled, and he hadn’t even realized it.

“I want that piece.” Fieran tried to lift his hand to gesture, but his dacha held it down. His other hand had a brace of wood on it, preventing it from lifting.

Dacha’s brow furrowed as he stared down at Fieran.

Fieran twisted his hand and pointed as best he could. “I need to give it to someone.”

He wasn’t sure he could explain more than that.

Dacha sighed and leaned over to speak to one of the healers. The healer sent him a raised eyebrow look but reached for the piece of metal. As soon as his fingers brushed it, the healer hissed and jerked his hand away.

Fieran jolted at a pain so sharp that, for a moment, it banished the hazy, floaty feeling. His magic leapt inside him, threatening to sizzle out of his control.

No, he couldn’t let it. Losing control was bad. He couldn’t quite remember why it was so bad. Just that he shouldn’t let it happen.

There was some discussion around him, and Dacha released Fieran’s shoulder long enough to press a hand to Fieran’s forehead. “Do not watch, sason. Look at me. Just breathe through it. Easy now.”

The pain flared again, then something yanked from him in an even stronger blaze of pain.

“Mustache, Fluffy, Munchkins, that hurts!” Fieran gritted his teeth over the words as he struggled to quash his magic.

“Are you using the cats’ names as alternatives to swear words?” Dacha’s tone rang somewhere between wry and bewildered.

“I can’t very well use actual swear words in front of you. You’re my dacha. You’d give me that disappointed look.” The pain was already receding into that numbing haziness, his muscles relaxing as he breathed through the cloth over his nose.

Dacha stared down at him, that furrow still there between his brows.

“And don’t blame Uncle Edmund. For once, I didn’t pick up this bad habit from him.

” Fieran struggled to keep his eyes open under the weight of everything dulling his senses.

Must stay awake. Must not lose control of his magic.

“I’ve been in the army for months. Learned a lot of words I didn’t know before. ”

Dacha’s mouth pressed into a flat line as he gave a small sigh. “A consequence of you joining the army that I did not foresee.”

“Probably because no one would dare use bad words around you. You’re a general. And a prince.” Fieran gasped as the healers shifted something inside one of his legs. “Sh—oot!”

And there was that flat, disapproving look, as if Dacha realized exactly what Fieran had almost said.

“You probably didn’t talk while being patched up. Took it all silent and stoic.” Fieran twitched his fingers again, trying to gesture at the scars visible around his dacha’s wrist.

Was that a sigh? Yet a twitch of a smile briefly broke through the grim set to Dacha’s mouth. “You are your macha’s son.”

The words punched into Fieran’s chest in a way his dacha likely hadn’t meant.

That was Fieran’s problem, wasn’t it? Too much his mother’s son.

Too talkative. Too human. Not enough of an elf to wear his hair long, take pain like a warrior, or truly wield the full might of the magic of the ancient kings.

Fieran adored his mama, and he’d never regret being her son any more than he’d regret being his dacha’s son. But it was his human half that could never measure up.

“That is not a bad thing, sason.” Dacha squeezed Fieran’s shoulder. Perhaps he had read something of Fieran’s turmoil in his eyes. “If you need to talk, then talk.”

And Fieran did. He couldn’t have said what he talked about or what he said. Time had narrowed to the haziness, the pain that sometimes flared, sometimes faded, and his dacha’s steady grip and even steadier voice holding him there.

Until finally, Dacha’s tone lowered, gentled. “The healers are done, sason. It is all right to sleep.”

Fieran let his eyes slide shut as he fell into a restful darkness at last.