To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

For the first time since she’d entered the room, Willow looked genuinely surprised.

”You don’t hold back.”

”They tried to kill her.” I looked at Bonnie. ”I see no reason for restraint.”

Willow studied me for another moment before giving a small nod. ”Noted.”

She closed her eyes again. Then she began to chant.

The words were low at first, barely more than a murmur, but there was something unsettling about the language. I didn’t recognize a single syllable. It sounded older than anything I’d encountered in my uncle’s libraries, older even than some of the oldest spells I’d heard discussed by the witches I myself had encountered.

The air changed.

I felt it before I could identify what was happening.

Pressure gathered against my ears. If I could describe it as anything, I would liken it to the strange heaviness that came before a storm broke.

The orange heat inside the lamps along the walls flickered simultaneously, dimming and brightening in an uneven rhythm despite the complete absence of bad weather.

Willow’s voice changed. It layered over itself. One voice became two, both speaking through the same mouth at slightly different speeds, creating an echo that didn’t quite sound like an echo.

”Like I suspected. It was a dream attack,” she murmured, and her brow tightened. ”They must be a talented dreamwalker. That’s not an easy discipline to master.”

The pressure in the room increased.

”This feels like an old bloodline.”

She drew a slow breath.

”Practiced.”

Then she went quiet.

Her head tilted slightly, as though she were listening to something very far away.

”I don’t want to jump to conclusions.” Another pause followed before she broke the terse silence again. ”But this has Blossom family written all over it.”

The healer and I exchanged a glance.

I couldn’t explain the reaction that went through me at the name.

I only knew that something cold had settled low in my stomach.

Blossom? I had heard the name before. Of course I had. But hearing it spoken in that room, with Bonnie lying unconscious beside us and the remnants of the attack still clinging to her, made it feel different.

More immediate. More dangerous. Why would the Blossoms be involved in this again? I thought the fixation on healers of legends from their end ended with Valentine. Was someone else other than the dead supreme also obsessed with healers too? Or was this just assumptions? From the way she was speaking, it was clear there was some beef between both families. But never say never. I filed that somewhere.

”I have their signature now,” Willow whispered as her fingers twitched in response. ”I will now be locking in.”

A small satisfied smile appeared on her face as she said it, and for one brief moment, the tension in the room eased.

I let myself breathe up until Willow spoke again.

”It’s a man.”

I stepped closer.

”Who?”

”Well... I am still acclimating. But he seemed to be bathing.” Her brow furrowed. ”I am not entirely sure, but it feels and looks like he is in a jacuzzi.”

She sounded almost confused. ”It’s dark too, and everything feels warm.”

”Who is he?” I demanded as I moved another step toward her. ”Are they actually Blossom?”

”I’m trying to keep my presence minimal.”

The confidence had disappeared from her voice. Strain had replaced it. Her words came thinner now, stretched by effort.

”I hope it works.”

The second those words left her lips, her body immediately trembled.

At first, I assumed it was the exertion, then the trembling intensified.

Willow’s shoulders jerked violently, and her spine arched.

”What...” I was already moving toward her when her head snapped backward.

Her eyes flew open, and they were completely white. There were no irises, no pupils either.

Literally nothing human remained in them.

Every instinct in me screamed that something had gone horribly wrong.

Then she spoke. The voice that came from her mouth was deep and unmistakably male. Nothing like the woman who had walked into the room minutes earlier.

”This is your fault.”She cackled in that manly voice.

Every hair along my arms rose in response.

”Who are you?” I demanded, my voice came out rougher than I’d intended.

The thing wearing Willow’s face now and voice too smiled.

It was too wide and sickeningly still.

”I am the fall of this house.”

Then she screamed, as if taking power over what she lost in seconds. Her will. The sound ripped through the infirmary wing.

Doors slammed open somewhere beyond the room. Footsteps thundered down the corridor as people rushed toward the noise, but I barely registered any of it.

Willow collapsed.

Her body hit the floor hard, and she immediately began convulsing.

Her heels hammered against the tile.

”What the fuck?”

I dropped to my knees beside her.

”Your Majesty, Don’t touch her!” The healer seized my arm and yanked me backward with surprising strength.

I resisted instinctively. ”Then what the fuck do I do?”

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Every instinct I possessed was screaming at me to act, to stop whatever was happening, to do something other than kneel there and watch.

The healer looked terrified.

”She knew the risks.” Her voice had gone thin even as she said those cruel words. ”This is part of the job. Astral work always carries a cost if the trail leads somewhere strong enough to fight back.”

I stared at Willow.

Her convulsions began to slow.

One jerk at first. Then another. Before it slowly settled into nothing.

Her body went completely still.

For a moment, no one moved.

The silence that followed was somehow worse than the screaming.

I stared at the woman lying motionless on the floor, unable to tell whether she was unconscious, dead, or somewhere else entirely.

For one long, suspended moment, nothing moved.

The room seemed to hold its breath with us. The lamps had stopped flickering, the strange pressure that had gathered around Willow was gone, and even the healers in the corridor beyond the door had fallen silent after whatever had just happened.

Then Willow’s eyes opened again.

They were blue this time. Human-looking almost. But they looked nothing like they had when she’d first entered the room. The confidence was gone from them, along with the faint amusement she’d carried whenever she spoke about the Shelters or her abilities. What remained was a terrible, hollow exhaustion, the kind that seemed to have settled somewhere deeper than her body.

She pushed herself upright slowly, one trembling hand braced against the floor.

I moved toward her before the healer could stop me again.

”Are you all right?”

Willow didn’t answer.

Instead, she stared down at the hand supporting her weight.

She turned it over slowly, studying her palm as though it belonged to someone else. Her fingers curled inward, then opened again. She flexed them once, twice, waiting for something I couldn’t see.

Whatever she expected never came.

A faint crease appeared between her brows.

Then something changed in her expression.

Fear.

Not the startled kind that came from waking after a seizure, but something deeper and more immediate, the expression of someone who had reached for something familiar and discovered that it simply wasn’t there anymore.

”I can’t feel it,” she whispered.

I crouched beside her. ”Feel what?”

Her fingers trembled. She lifted her eyes to mine.

For a moment, she simply stared at me, and I could see her trying to decide whether she had misunderstood what was happening. The healer had already moved closer, watching Willow with the same concern that had settled across my own face.

”My magic,” Willow finally said. Her voice was so quiet that I almost missed it. ”It’s gone.”

The words didn’t make sense.

I stared at her.

”That isn’t possible.”

It came out before I could stop myself.

Willow looked down at her hand again.

”I can’t feel it.”

There was a strange helplessness in her voice now, one I hadn’t felt from her even when her body had been convulsing violently enough to shake the floor beneath her.

”I can’t reach for it. I can’t sense it. It’s just...” She swallowed. ”Nothing.”

The healer immediately knelt beside her.

”Willow, look at me.”

Willow did, but her attention seemed to be slipping away from us already. Her pupils shifted unfocused across the room, and her breathing changed, becoming slower and shallower.

”Stay with me,” the healer said.

Willow blinked. Once. Twice. Then her eyes rolled back.

Her body went completely limp.

I caught her before she could fall against the floor, lowering her carefully while the healer moved in beside me.

”Willow.”

There was no response.

The healer pressed two fingers against her throat, then leaned closer to listen to her breathing.

”She’s unconscious.”

I looked at her.

”Is she alive?”

”Yes.”

The answer came quickly, but there was no reassurance in it.

The healer checked Willow’s pulse again, her expression tightening as though she were searching for something that refused to reveal itself.

”Her vitals are stable.”

”What the fuck happened to her?”

”I don’t know.”

That answer bothered me more than anything else she’d said.

Healers were supposed to know.

Witches were supposed to know.

Someone in this room was supposed to understand what had just happened.

Instead, we were all staring at Willow as she, like many other things, became another mystery.

I looked toward Bonnie’s bed.

She remained unconscious, exactly as she’d been before Willow arrived. Her breathing was still shallow but steady, her face pale beneath the soft light of the infirmary.

Only minutes ago, I had thought the worst thing that could happen tonight was failing to identify whoever had attacked her.

Now I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

Willow had entered this room confident that she could follow the magical trail back to its source. She had called herself part of a prominent bloodline. She had spoken about Blossom witches as though they were the only people who might actually challenge her.

Then she’d found something.

Something had found her back.

And whatever had happened during that connection had stripped her of the very thing that made her powerful.

Her magic.

I looked at Willow again.

The words she’d spoken before collapsing returned to me with uncomfortable clarity.

This is your fault.

That voice had not belonged to her. The second thing they said was even worse. What they referred to themselves as.

The fall of this house.

A faint sound interrupted the thought.

I froze.

For a second, I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard it.

But then I heard it again, and it sounded suspiciously like a cough. It felt as though it was coming from Bonnie.

The mere idea of that caused my head to snap toward her.

Her body shifted beneath the blankets, her brow tightening as though waking itself hurt. She coughed again, weaker this time, and dragged in a shallow breath.

”Bonnie?”

Her eyelids fluttered.

I was already leaning over her before I realized I’d moved.

”Bonnie, look at me.”

Her eyes opened slowly.

They were unfocused at first, glassy with exhaustion, but they were open.

She was awake.

And for the first time since this hellish night had begun, I felt something inside my chest loosen.

”Bonnie.”

Her gaze shifted toward me.

Then she coughed again, and I tightened my hold on her hand.

”I’m here.”

Her eyes finally settled on mine.

And I forgot, for one precious moment, about everything else.