To heal a Rogue

BONNIE

The door opened, and I turned to find Lysander staring at me.

Panic seized me first.

I was standing there in his dead mother’s dress, my hair carefully styled by Delta’s hands, and I braced myself for something ugly to flicker across his face.

Instead, warmth slipped through the bond, steady and immediate.

My shoulders loosened before I could stop them.

”You look very beautiful.” His eyes never left mine, even as he said it.

Heat climbed my neck. ”Thank you.”

”How’s the rogue situation?” I asked, mostly because I needed somewhere else to put my nervous energy.

”We’ve got it handled.” He replied.

But the bond told me otherwise. His words were smooth, almost too smooth, with a tightness underneath them that made the lie obvious. I let it go for now.

Then I noticed the woman standing just behind him.

Something about her caught my attention so completely that I nearly forgot the conversation altogether.

I recognized her instantly. It was the woman from the great hall. The one who had smiled at me while everyone else in that room had looked at me as though my fate had already been decided.

That same strange stillness clung to her now. If I was to describe it, it would be something settled and quiet that didn’t feel entirely human.

The glow I noticed in the hall stiill surrounded her.

She gave a small, deliberate cough and that seemed to do the intended work that she wanted it to do.

Lysander blinked, then cleared his throat, looking faintly embarrassed.

He had completely forgotten she was there.

”Bonnie, meet Fia. Fia, meet Bonnie.”

Fia stepped forward and extended her hand. ”Hello, Bonnie. I’m Fia. A healer, like you.”

I slipped my hand into hers. ”I know. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Her mouth curved. ”Good things, I hope.”

”I’ll leave you two to talk,” Lysander announced, already glancing toward Delta.

Delta caught the signal without needing an explanation and followed him out.

The door clicked shut behind them and that left just Fia and me in the room.

I turned back to Fia. I was still nervous. This was osmeone I had heard so much about. So I settled for a compliment. ”You’re really pretty.”

The words escaped before I could think of anything better to say, but they were true.

A soft laugh escaped her. ”Don’t flatter me.”

She looked me over, her smile widening.

”You look pretty good yourself.”

I smiled faintly.

Then she cleared her throat, and the warmth in her expression gave way to something more focused. Her shoulders straightened, her attention sharpening as though we’d crossed an invisible line from pleasantries into something that mattered.

”Lysander tells me you’ve been having dreams that bleed into reality.”

I nodded. ”He also told me you’ve never had that happen.”

”That’s true.” Her fingers brushed absently over her wrist. ”But I never say never. I’m still figuring things out myself, even after everything I’ve lived through.”

She glanced down at her hands, then back at me.

”Sometimes I think this whole blessing works like a lottery. You never quite know what you’ll get once the day passes.” A small shrug lifted one shoulder. ”My mate calls it my lucky gacha.”

I couldn’t help but scoff at a single word she uttered. The reaction was so instinctive that I barely noticed it happening. It slipped out before I could catch it. ”Blessing.”

Her brows rose. ”You don’t feel that way?”

I looked away.

The word sat badly in my chest, too polished for something that had turned my life inside out. ”This feels more like a curse if I am being honest.”

My fingers curled into the skirt of the dress.

”Didn’t you ever feel that way? Having to hide what you are all your life?”

I met her eyes again.

”I might be out in the open now because I never really had a choice. But you...” My voice softened. ”You get it.”

”Oh... I didn’t grow up knowing I was born this way.” Fia’s thumb brushed absently over the back of my hand. ”There was no warning, no strange signs I could point to afterward and say, There it was. It started surfacing properly when I was already an adult, and it didn’t fully manifest until after an accident.”

”I could do this since when I was a child.”

She gave a pained look hearing me say that and then reached out to hold my hand. I let her.

I glanced down at our joined hands. ”Maybe if it had come later, I would’ve seen it differently. I might’ve called it a gift.”

Fia’s fingers closed more firmly around mine.

”I understand why it feels like a burden.” Her voice softened. ”Even now, I can’t always look at what I am and feel proud of it. There’s always that little question in the back of your mind, wondering when it’ll turn on you.”

Her gaze dropped to our hands.

”And after what happened to healers like us in the past...” She paused. ”That’s not something either of us can afford to forget. Especially when people understand what we’re capable of.”

That I agreed with.

”When I stitched Lysander up in that hall, I saw the way some of them looked at me afterward.” The memory made my stomach tighten. ”Not like I’d done something remarkable. Like I’d become something they could claim.”

I swallowed.

”If I hadn’t had royal protection, I think a war would’ve broken out over who got to keep me as a trophy.”

”But that didn’t happen.” Fia’s gaze held mine. ”Why live inside a version of the world that isn’t even your reality?”

”You never know when it might become my reality. I know it sounds strange. But I would have killed to have it as easy as you. An easy life.”

She squeezed my hand gently.

”Believe me, you don’t want my life.” A crooked smile touched her mouth. ”My history has enough bumps in it to keep me humble.”

She released a quiet breath before her expression turned more serious.

”And let’s skip the oppression Olympics.”

Despite myself, I smiled.

”Your life is in danger right now, Bonnie. I need to understand what’s happening to you if I’m going to have any chance of helping.”

I nodded and told her everything.

The first attack. The moment I’d healed Lysander and collapsed. Waking up choking on water, with my mother’s face hovering over me, wrong somehow, shifting and changing until I could barely recognize it.

Then the second attack.

The creature in the meadow, which was furious as it kept telling me I deserved to die because I kept reaching for it, even though it was never meant for me. At least, not in the strange dream world it had made its own.

Fia listened without interrupting, her expression growing more troubled with every detail.

”So he’s trying to call out to someone.” Her brows drew together. ”Why would he do that?”

”Because he was cursed. I think.”

”What makes you think that?”

”I do not know if it even makes any sense. I can’t fully explain it.” I rubbed my thumb against my palm. ”He had the chance to kill me. He could have done it, but at the last second, he stopped.”

I looked at her.

”Somehow, I think I got pulled into his head. I saw a memory. He’s a man, I think, and someone cursed him. Maybe he’s trying to reach whoever did it.”

”I don’t have an answer for that, unfortunately.” Fia shook her head. ”I’ve never dream-walked myself.”

”What are your gifts, then?”

A faint blue light gathered in her palm.

”The usual, for us. Healing...” She tilted her hand, watching the glow move across her skin. ”And then, there is the gift of small miracles.”

I frowned. ”What’s that?”