Page 133 of Zenith Tower

Understanding came with a wave of nausea.

I opened my eyes. The infirmary returned in pieces: silver light on the ceiling, the administrator’s white knuckles, Delphine’s blood drying in the creases of my hand.

“Tell me,” Delphine said.

I kept my fingers at the edge of her Mark but let the reach beyond my bonds recede. “They damaged the channels that carry power through it. Some have scarred closed. The others are taking more than they can hold, and they are splitting under the strain.”

“Can you repair them?”

“I think so, but yours doesn’t recognize me. There is no bond to guide me through it.” I made myself give her the rest without softening it. “I could make the damage worse or stop the Mark entirely. I might change something I don’t mean to change.”

Her thumb moved once against my wrist. “My memory?”

“I found places where it was cut away from the Mark. Repairing the channels may loosen memories trapped around the damage. It cannot restore what is gone.”

She looked away. I wished I could have told her themissing memories were merely hidden, but I had already felt the places where they ended.

“And if you do nothing?” the administrator asked.

“The splitting will continue. Maybe slowly after this. Maybe not.” I looked at the black branch already crossing Delphine’s wrist. “If it reaches the central line, I don’t know what it will take with it.”

Delphine closed her eyes.

I waited. The bell had stopped, but the Tower had not gone silent. Beyond the door, boots crossed the corridor. Someone murmured to the healer. Water ran through the walls with its ceaseless silver hush.

“You stop if I ask,” Delphine said. “And you stop if it’s killing you. I am not trading your life for my hand.”

“All right.”

She studied my face before she continued. “Repair what they damaged. Don’t make me into something else.”

“I won’t.”

“Then try.”

The administrator tightened her hand around Delphine’s. “I heard her.”

I took Delphine’s hand between both of mine.

The instant I reached beyond the bonds again, all three lines rose with it.

All three tightened at once, their familiar pressure bracing me from ribs to shoulders. They steadied my pulse while I entered somewhere I had no right to belong except the right Delphine had just given me.

I went in.

The broken Mark closed around me.

I stopped searching for an opening and began working into the damaged channel itself.

I followed the first damaged channel to the point where it had scarred shut. Power hammered against the blockage, each pulse forcing more of itself into the neighboring lines. Itouched the scar with the part of me that had once healed Kieran without understanding how. It softened.

It softened faster than it should have.

The knowledge came with the act. I could open it, close every channel around it, thin the line until Delphine’s power barely passed through, or widen it until the Mark burned her alive from within. The structure yielded at once. Three completed bonds had left it no way to resist me.

Delphine had given me permission to repair the damage. Nothing else.

I opened only what had been forced shut.