Page 99 of Liminal

I think.

“That’s an awful idea,” I say, sending the book back to whichever forgotten shelf it was dredged up from. “We may as well enrol her at the University while we’re at it.”

“Can we?” Eddy pleads with her twin, only to devolve back into another fit of heavy, chesty coughs.

Sighing, I reach for the magic of the Arcanaeum and murmur, “Riviel treame.”

“Is that, like, a healing spell?” Eddy asks her brother.

I answer for him, because he hasn’t even touched divination magic yet. “It allows me to see where your body is under duress.”

And right now, her spine and lungs are lit up with a bright glow. Her legs are illuminated too, but fainter.

Paralysed from her upper spine down, and her lungs aren’t working properly as a result. She’s lucky she has use of her arms. Someone has put effort into making sure her leg muscles haven’tatrophied, but they’re still not as strong as they should be, which is why they’re also glowing.

If I don’t heal her, she probably will die of pneumonia or some other lung condition sooner or later, just like she said.

“High spinal lesion,” I mutter. “Why is it never anything simple?”

I’m talking to myself as I try to recall how best to treat this. My mind is flicking through books, and as I think, they pile up on the desk beside me. I pore over the first, flicking through pages of anatomical diagrams and runeforms.

Perhaps that’s why I don’t see North coming as he leans forward, trying to read the titles. Too close for comfort. If I were solid, he would be brushing against my back as he looms over me.

But because I’m not, his chest passes straight through my shoulder.

Pure, undeniablefeelingerupts seconds later.

It’s a moment of inattention that costs me dearly. The kind of thing that only happens when two people are caught in a horrible accidental twist of fate. I watch North’s eyes widen the second he realises what he’s done, and he pulls back sharply, but he’s too late.

Pain prickles across my arm, and I flinch as a familiarcrackthat only I can hear ricochets through the Arcanaeum.

The spiritual flesh of my right arm rips, tearing all the way from my shoulder to my wrist. If I had a physical heart, it would’ve stuttered, and then sunk with dread, yet the Arcanaeum doesn’t react at all.

North shoves away so hard that he trips over a stack of books, landing on his ass as the temperature around us plummets.

“What the hell was that?” Eddy asks, the glow receding from her body as I lose all focus and look down at my now-matching arms. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” The hitch in my voice is barely there. “I’m fine.”

I want to flee to the Vault, to check the evidence I know will be there, but I restrain myself.

“I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.” To his credit, North looks actively contrite. “Shit. I just wanted to see?—”

Banishing him won’t work, but the flash of anger that runs through me urges me to do it, anyway. At least then I’d have a few short hours where I’m less at risk. I would distance myself, but I don’t want to. They need my help, these arcanists with the power to wreck me. I haven’t been needed—or been seen as more than just furniture—for so many years.

Yet here I am, healing people, tutoring Lambert and North, working to break Leo’s curse.

Deep down, I know I should’ve died a long, long time ago. My existence is unnatural, and selfishly, I want to spend what time remains being reminded of what it is to truly live. To pretend that I have…friends, people who know me by name and smile when they see me.

And the price for that appears to be the death I should’ve been granted a long time ago.

They’re staring at me—and rightly so, given that I’m floating in silence.

“Please, refrain from touching me in the future,” I reply, stiffly. “Sit down, Mr Ackland, and let me get on with healing your sister.”

Twenty-Eight

Kyrith