FOREVER KNIGHTS: #15 Insatiable Beasts
Healing Magic

The next eve, there was a knock on Nora’s chamber door.

She cracked it and met Deragan’s blue eye. Framed by a slashing black brow and a curling lock of raven hair.

“Care to try something more substantial?” He held out his hand. Revealing a small mouse he’d found in the woods. It appeared no predator had preyed upon it.

Diseased meat.

But it’d begun to decay.

Several days dead.

Nora cringed away from it. “How?”

“I can tell you.”

They exchanged a long look.

She opened her door and let him in.

He kicked it closed. Still balancing the tiny corpse in his hand.

“Sit.” He gestured to the bed. “Relax.”

She obediently sat.

He crouched before her. “You have to imagine lending it a piece of your life.”

Closing her eyes she let the dizzying sensation wash over her.

He watched as her lovely white wings whispered from the dress, he’d made for her. Outstretching behind her.

Following her instinct, she leaned forward, eyes closed, and cupped his hands. Blowing the lightest breath across the animal.

As she has in past lives.

It inflated. Air hissing into it. Miniature bones breaking as they realigned. Eventually its tiny nose twitched. Whiskers lengthening and going from deadened to white as they spasmed to life.

Eventually it chittered then rolled onto all fours before lurching up on hind legs.

Opening her eyes, Nora saw it and gasped. “I’ve done it. How can this be?”

She caressed a hand down the small creature’s back.

But as he leaned to hop off Deragan’s hand his eyes sunk in. Hollowing and his body crunched sideways before he collapsed again. His body compressing as it had been.

Withering away.

“Oh, no!” She cried. “What’d I do? Because I touched it?”

“No!” He shook his head adamantly. “You just needed to offer it a bit more life before stopping, so it could embed more deeply in it. We’ll try again.”

“But I don’t want to watch something die again!”

“I know.” He dropped the mouse to catch her hands, palm together before her.

You could never stand the sight of things dying.

It’s why I so feared having children. If we lost one it’d destroy you.

Look what it’s done to Bast.

“We’ll try again.”

“I don’t want to!” She wailed despondently.

And he realized there wouldn’t be another chance. Quickly collecting the small body from the floor he lifted it again. “Try it now. Do it now.”

“But I can’t!”

“Yes. You can.” He reassured in his calming tone. “I know you can.”

Spurred by his conviction. She reached out a trembling hand and blew on the tiny creature, cupping its back to scoot it closer as she breathed energy from Ardae into the small being. Watching its body surge and swell again.

“It’s not my life. ’Tis the life of Ardae I give into. Energy collected from out there.” She gestured. “I can feel it now.”

“Give it to the mouse.”

And she did. Sighing. And not stopping until she sensed the animal had absorbed every bit necessary for it to be sustained.

And this time it leapt from his hand and scurried away.

Continued in BOOK SIXTEEN.

FOREVER KNIGHTS: To Keep Her

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