Page 7 of Interion

I rushed in through the hospital's side entrance—the double doors for employees. Soon the smell of cleaning products, the bright lights, and the stark white walls made me forget any remnant of the nightmare. When I put on my lab coat, the beeper in my pocket vibrated—a patient was waiting.

The first patient was a follow-up. As a resident, I handled post-ops, minor injuries, and chronic conditions. The work was exhausting, but my healing power had proven promising over the five years I'd spent learning to master it, and the hospital—with its bright walls and large globes of archemic lights—had become a second home. Here I could be myself. Despite my genetics being considered impure, when I put on the cap, mask, and lab coat, people saw me only as a doctor, and that alone was a blessing. Plus, I earned half a salary and didn't have to face the suffocating silence of my house.

I climbed the last flight of stairs and reached room 608 on the sixth floor. When I walked in and found the bed empty, I realized I was late enough that another resident had already medicated and discharged the patient. I left and headed for my next patient. But before I reached the stairs, I noticed an open door at the end of the corridor. On the bed in that small room lay the worst case of lacerations the hospital had ever seen.

I entered the room carefully and approached the fae patient. His torso had been sliced open, as if giant claws had been driven into his flesh. His shaved head revealed the scar from a cranial opening for neural surgery, and where his left leg should have been, only a bandaged stump remained. I squinted to examine a scar just below his collarbone and noticed a strange symbol: something like two wings forming a circle.

I'd never seen anything like it.

“I've been asking myself the same thing: how is he still alive?”

I jumped back with a start when I heard Dr. Ambrose's deep voice.

“Mercy, you're going to give me a heart attack one day.”

“Killing isn't my specialty, Kyller. But if you want my thoughts on death, I'd say this man must have come face to face with it yesterday.”

Ambrose was one of the three most powerful elemental physicians in the hospital, the only neurosurgeon in the city. His eyes were sky blue, his thin nose hooked like a parrot's beak, and his mind was the brightest and kindest in all of Interion. Despite all the xenophobic blah-blah-blah in Interion, the elmedic saw me as an equal. He was one of the few who treated me with dignity, and for everything he'd done for me, he'd become my definition of family. He was the one who'd saved me when I arrived and taken care of me that first year. He was also my mentor, since I'd chosen to specialize in neurosurgery.

“Looks like it. Was he attacked by lamias?” I asked, composing myself.

Ambrose approached the patient with a small flashlight to check his pupils.

“It wasn't lamias—there are no bite marks—but we still don't know what caused this much damage. He came in last night, found unconscious outside the outer walls, and he's still in a deep coma.” He jotted notes on the clipboard attached to the bed. “Heart rate is stable. Blood pressure's low from the blood loss, but he'll survive.”

“What's his elemental power?” Every fae, as well as some gorgons, carried a special gift, and powers followed patterns in each nation.

“Tests showed a high healing level—around 700. I think that's why his body managed to survive. But the gift is collapsing from constant use, and his elemental reservoir is almost depleted. The elmedics on duty this morning poured a good amount of their energy into him, but it seems his body has a high tolerance for power.”

Ambrose fell silent, as if turning the information over in his mind. His furrowed brow betrayed how puzzled he was. Then he added:

“Like you, he absorbs our energy quickly, and his wounds aren't healing as fast as they should.”

“Did they find any cancer?”

“We haven't found anything that could cause the tolerance. We'll need to run some studies. Until then, it's all theoretical.”

Resistance to healing power is pretty unusual—we've only ever seen it in the oncology ward. Every single time, the patient turns out to be an elemental healer who doesn't know they have the disease. Normally, the body tries to heal itself for years, and the more the disease fights back, the more energy the patient channels into regeneration. This wears down the gift and drains the individual elemental reservoir, leaving the person weakened by the energy demands and less responsive to other elmédicos' abilities. Once we finally operate on the cancer, the reserves return to normal. But the faerie stays resistant to healing from others, and their own power comes back exponentially stronger. I learned a lot about this because I'm one of those resistance cases. That's why my elemental reservoir is larger and more complex than most.

“How was he found?”

Ambrose seemed unsure whether to tell me, then looked away and ran his hands through his hair—a clear sign he was uncomfortable with the subject.

“The general found him and brought him to the hospital yesterday.”

I frowned and stared at him, confused.

“The general?” My hands clenched into fists as an icy feeling spread through my stomach and down my spine. “There's only one general of Interion.”

Ambrose sighed, as if steeling himself for battle.

“Yes, Kyller, I'm talking about Zion Voluz. He found the body on his way back from the war. He spent the night at the hospital but left at dawn.”

A thin, continuous buzzing filled my ears—like the sound of a mind suddenly going blank. I could hear my own heartbeat, as if a second heart had sprouted in the middle of my brain. It took me longer than usual to force myself to speak.

“But no one told us he was coming back.” Trembling, I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I mean, we haven't heard anything in years. He would have let us know if he was returning.”

I wanted to laugh at myself for saying something so absurd. Zion hadn't so much as reached out in five years, so why would he care enough to give me a heads-up? Even though he'd saved me and bankrolled my life in the new city for the past five years, I didn't know him. The bitterness of that realization made me avoid thinking about it. And our marriage…