Dark Heart of Magic (28 page)

K
atia might be dead, but she was still going to take me down with her.

I was holding on to her so tightly that I fell on top of her, and it took me a few seconds to loosen my grip. I managed to roll off her, every motion making more and more pain shoot through my stomach. On the floor, I could see my blood mixing with Katia's, which was bubbling away like acid. I wondered if that's what stolen magic did to you—ate away at your insides like acid because it didn't truly belong to you. That would be some twisted poetic justice.

I pressed my hand over the wound in my side, but blood kept pouring out from between my fingers.

“Lila!” Deah rushed over to me. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” I rasped through the pain. “You need to get out of here . . . go get . . . some help—”

Outside, footsteps pounded, coming closer and closer. Deah got to her feet, stepped in front of me, and whipped up her sword, ready to face whatever new danger this might be.

The door burst open, and Devon and Felix raced inside, both of them holding swords.

The three of them stared at each other for a second before Deah let out a tense breath and lowered her weapon.

“You guys need to help Lila. She's hurt.”

Devon dropped to a knee beside me, his eyes going wide with shock at all the blood on me. “Lila—” he said in a strangled voice.

“Here,” Felix said, crouching down beside me as well. “Let me try to heal her, or at least stop the bleeding until Dad and the others get here.”

Felix put his hands on top of my wound, making me gasp with more pain. But he ignored my choked sobs and let loose his power. His magic seeped into my body, trying to stop the bleeding, pull the ragged edges of the wound together, and undo all the damage that Katia had done.

And, for a moment, I almost thought it was going to work.

But Felix only had a minor Talent for healing, and my wound was definitely major all the way around. He was able to stop the bleeding for a few seconds, but then his magic burned out of my system, and blood started seeping out from between my fingers again. Felix had stitched up the wound as best he could, but it wasn't nearly enough.

Felix cursed. “It's no use. Her wound is too severe, and I don't have enough magic to heal her myself. If I had a bottle of stitch-sting. . . .” His voice trailed off because we all knew that he didn't and that there wasn't time to go get one from the fairgrounds before I bled out.

So Felix leaned forward and tried again, letting loose another burst of magic. I could feel his power inside me and my own transference wanting to kick in, even though it wouldn't do me any good. My transference power made me stronger, but right now, I needed magic to heal me, not give me enough muscle to swing a sword. If only Felix was as strong in his magic as Devon was, he could have easily healed my wound. But Devon's compulsion didn't have any sort of healing element to it, and he could only give people simple commands, like telling me to hold on when we'd been on the rope ladder or to run the night we'd been fighting Grant. Devon's magic had mixed with my own then, giving me the strength to run far enough to save us both from Grant and his goons.

I looked at Felix and Devon both huddled over me, and a crazy idea popped into my head. Felix might be the only one here with healing power, but he wasn't the only one with magic—and maybe raw magic was all I really needed.

I reached up and clutched Felix's hand in mine, then reached for Devon's hand, so that I was holding on to both of them at the same time.

“Felix,” I rasped, blood bubbling up into my mouth. “Try to heal me again. Use . . . as much . . . magic as you can at once. Devon . . . at the same time . . . you tell me to
heal
. Put as much force behind it as you can.”

Devon's eyes widened as he realized what I wanted, and he shook his head. “No. It's too dangerous. I've never used my magic like that before. I don't know how or even if it will work. It could kill you outright.”

He didn't say anything, but I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he thought about it, trying to figure things out, the way he always did.

“If we don't try, I'm dead anyway,” I rasped. “Do it . . . give me a chance . . . please. . . .”

My voice trailed off, and black and white stars began to flash in front of my eyes. I didn't have long, maybe another minute or two before I'd pass out. A couple minutes after that, I'd bleed out and die right here in the boathouse.

“We have to,” Felix said. “I don't know if it will work either, but it's her only shot.”

Devon nodded and stared back at his friend. “On three then. One . . . two . . . three!”

Felix tightened his grip on my hand and let loose another burst of magic, this one stronger than ever before, as though he was scraping up every bit of power he had left and funneling it into my body. Even as he blasted me with his healing magic, Devon leaned down so that he was staring straight into my eyes. He only said one word.

“
Heal.
”

The sharp crack of magic in his voice sounded as loud as a clap of thunder booming in my head. From one second to the next, his power took hold of me, and my insides started squeezing and squeezing together, trying to mash everything back where it was supposed to be. I screamed and arched back, my body growing colder and colder as Devon kept repeating his
heal
command to me over and over again, and Felix kept pouring more and more of his magic into me at the same time.

But then my own magic, my own transference power, kicked in, and all I felt was the cold burst of energy pulsing through my body, more intense than any I'd ever experienced before. Devon's command still tugged at my body, so I focused on obeying that order as much as I could, trying to add Felix's healing magic to the mix to get things done. It was weird, but I could almost picture my insides in my mind, all those torn muscles and severed blood vessels pulling themselves back together. And I realized that I could only feel the cold burn of magic in and around my stab wound—nowhere else in my body.

I wasn't sure if Devon's power and his command had faded away, or if I just figured out how to use my transference magic in this new way, but I slowly started to get better.

I slowly started to heal.

I screamed and then screamed again as the blood loss slowed down and then trickled to a stop. My muscles pulled themselves back together, with my skin sealing itself shut over everything. It was worse than any stitch-sting I'd ever used, worse than any pain I'd ever felt, even when Katia had stabbed me in the first place. Every second was utter, miserable, white-hot agony. But I screamed through it, and I focused on using the surge of magic to repair as much of the damage as fast as I could.

Slowly, my breathing grew easier, and the black and white stars faded from my vision. My screams died down to choked sobs and then even those dissolved into a silent stream of tears trickling down my face. It took me a minute to realize that I actually felt . . . okay. Like I wasn't dying anymore.

I blinked and realized that I was flat on my back on the floor, with Devon and Felix still holding my hands and looming over me, and Deah standing behind them, all three of them staring at me with tense, tight expressions.

“Did it work?” Devon asked in a shaky voice.

“I don't know,” Felix said. “But she stopped screaming. That's usually a good sign.”

“Well, pull her shirt up and look at the wound, you idiots,” Deah said.

Devon and Felix kept gaping at me, so she dropped to her knees, shouldered Felix out of the way, and lifted up my T-shirt.

“Her skin—” Felix murmured, leaning forward and peering at my stomach. “It's whole again. There's not even a scar!”

“Well, then, I would say that it worked,” Deah sniped.

But her hands were surprisingly gentle as she smoothed down my T-shirt again.

“Devon! Felix! Lila!”

Somewhere outside the boathouse, voices started shouting our names. Felix got to his feet and hurried over to the open door, waving his hands.

“Over here!” he called out. “We're over here!”

Felix stepped outside to get more help, while Devon and Deah helped me sit up and slump back against the wall.

Deah looked at him, then me, her eyebrows arching up. “That was quite a show, for a girl who supposedly only has sight and strength Talents and a guy who supposedly doesn't have any magic at all. If I didn't know better, I'd say that almost looked like transference power, along with compulsion.”

Devon's face hardened. “And what if it was? You going to run and tell your dad? Because that's exactly what Blake would do.”

Deah flinched at the mention of Victor and Blake, but anger sparked in her eyes. “No matter what you think about me, Sinclair, I'm not a monster.”

“But you are a Draconi,” he said in a cold voice. “And information like this would be very important to Victor.”

“He'll try to kill us and take our magic,” I said. “You know he will.”

Deah stared at me. “Is it true? What you said to Katia. That your mom and mine were sisters? That we're cousins?”

Devon sucked in a breath at the revelation, but he didn't say anything. He knew this moment was between Deah and me.

“Look at my sword. Tell me what you think.”

Deah went over, grabbed my sword, and sank back down beside me. She laid my sword out on the floor next to hers.

They were almost identical.

My sword had a large, single star carved into the hilt, whereas hers had three stars that were equal size. But the star patterns running down the blades were exactly the same, and it was obvious the swords were from the same family—the Sterling Family.

Deah stared at the swords for several seconds, all sorts of emotions flashing in her eyes, but I was too tired to use my soulsight to try to see what she was feeling. Finally, she got to her feet, grabbed her sword, and slid it back into her scabbard.

“What are you going to tell people?” Devon asked. “About Katia and everything else that happened?”

He was really asking again if she was going to blab to Victor about our magic.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Deah's mouth twisted, but her voice was sad when she spoke again. “Don't worry. No one will ask me anything because no one will even realize that I was gone.”

She looked at me a second longer, then turned and left the boathouse.

 

The rest of the night passed by in a blur. Claudia, Mo, Angelo, Reginald, and Oscar came to the boathouse, along with several Sinclair guards. I told Claudia and my friends the truth about what had happened, but Claudia decided to leave Deah out of things completely, since it would be easier for her and us if there was no mention of Deah being here tonight.

And just as Deah had said, I doubted that Blake and Victor would wonder where she had been. I just hoped that she didn't get in trouble for telling everyone that I'd let her win the tournament, but there was nothing I could do about that now.

Devon carried me out of the boathouse, and an hour later, I was in the infirmary at the Sinclair mansion, with Angelo marveling over the fact that I'd used Devon's and Felix's magic to heal myself. He pronounced me fit enough to go back to my own room, where I took a long shower to wash off all the blood. Oscar fussed over me, zipping around and around my head and bringing up more food from the kitchen than I could ever possibly eat. But I did put a hurting on some BL Ts. Yeah, bacon really did make everything better. Even a night as horrible as this one had been.

But there was one more thing I needed to do, so I finished my dinner, went out onto the balcony, took hold of the drainpipe, and started climbing.

Just as I'd hoped, Devon was on the terrace, sitting in one of the lawn chairs and looking down into the valley at the magnificent view. But I only had eyes for him tonight, so I scuffed my sneakers to let him know I was here. Devon got to his feet. He took a step toward me, then hesitated. But that was okay because I went over to him, both of us standing next to the railing.

Devon looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on my stomach, as if he was remembering the horrible wound and all the blood that had covered me just a short while ago. That made two of us. But tonight wasn't about that, not anymore, and I forced away the gruesome images and phantom pain.

“You must be feeling better, since you used the drainpipe to get up here,” he teased.

I grinned. “Something like that.”

His face turned serious. “How are you—really? I wanted to come see you, after everything that happened with Katia. But I thought you might want to be by yourself for a while.”

I looked at him—
really
looked at him. The warm care and concern in his eyes took my breath away. Even now, after all the awkwardness between us and all the times I'd pushed him away over the past few days, his first instinct was still to make sure that I was okay. Katia had been wrong about a lot of things, but Devon wasn't one of them. He really was a good guy, and bad girl or not, I'd fallen for him.

And now, tonight, I was finally going to do something about it.

He frowned. “Lila, are you okay? You have this really weird look on your face—”

I stepped up, put my arms around his neck, and kissed him.

Kissed him the way I'd wanted to for weeks now. Kissed him the way I'd been dreaming about for so long. Kissed him with all the depth of these wonderful, dizzying, terrifying feelings I had for him.