Page 41 of Lies That Blemish
Valor’s lip quivered. “But I think I can heal it,” she said again.
‘Something is happening out here,’Liana said, and my eyes widened.
I tore open the door and ran back out to the living room. Everyone stood in awe as they stared at the back glass patio door. Zara was standing there, but there were arcs of gold light splashing off of her. Ariyel was outside with Liana, watching from a ways off.
I spun, peering at Tetra.
Elaine was very quiet, Victory and Virtue speechless beside her.
“Valor thinks she can heal your foot,” I blurted out to my bestie.
Tetra’s mouth popped open. “It’s not possible. I was told that as a child.”
Valor stepped into the room, staring at her hands. There were the same golden arcs of light coming off of her palms.
I gasped.
“Let Zara inside now!” Valor snapped at me.
Something was happening. And even though I was empress, and she was my little sister, I did as she commanded. Because if there was even a small chance that my best friend could be freed of years of crippling pain, I was taking it.
I yanked the back door open and started shoving chairs out of the way to make room for the small dragon to come inside.
Tetra swallowed hard, staring at Valor in shock.
“It might do nothing. It might just take your pain away. Or she might be misreading the power,” I told Tetra as both Zara and Valor approached her.
Valor shook her head as if to argue with me. “No,” was all she said.
No. Just that.
“But—”
“Shhh,” Elaine scolded me, and I fell silent.
Stars, let Valor be right. Let Tetra be healed.
Chapter 14
Valor
For days,I’d been feeling foot pain around Tetra. It took me a while to put two and two together, and now I knew. Her pain was calling to me. I’d been around a couple of other injured people at Sky Reach. Just passing by them in the hall, their pain called to me, too, so I ran quickly to get away. But Tetra… I couldn’t ignore the pleas of her body any longer. The muscles, tendons, nerves, and bones were all crying out to be healed. That was the other creepy thing. I knew what tendons felt like, what they looked like without skin. All in my head. I could see it. I’d been seeing Tetra’s twisted foot in my mind’s eye for days, begging me to resculpt it like an artist with clay. It terrified me, so I’d ignored it. I ignored Zara’s inquiries about it, too. But I couldn’t ignore them any longer. Now, I was one hundred percent certain I could heal her foot. I just didn’t know the cost. Would it take from me? The energy had to come from somewhere. I knew that, too, instinctively.
Aisling didn’t believe it. She was watching Zara and me skeptically as we approached Tetra. Golden arcs of color lit up the living room walls as I walked toward her.
‘Is this healing magic?’I asked Zara about the gold.
‘I suspect so. It is not a magic I had before bonding you,’she told me.
It seemed whatever I was about to do, I needed Zara with me, because she had more of the golden stuff coming off of her than I did.
“Lie down,” I told Tetra, moving the tendons and bones in my mind’s eye from her mangled foot. It was as if someone had taken an x-ray of her deformity and then placed it into my head. But instead of a black-and-white x-ray, this had blood vessels and tendons, each one moving out of the way, twisting and turning into the right order as I worked through it like a math problem.
Tetra plopped onto the ground, wincing as she pulled her slightly swollen, red foot out before me. A sharp pang of pain hit my right foot, and I grimaced at the same time Tetra did.
“Don’t try this if it will hurt you,” Tetra told me as the pain in my right foot got worse, throbbing like a heartbeat, each time with more agony.
“It already hurts,” I told her. “How have you lived like this for so long?” I asked, and tears filled her eyes.
