She’d stopped glowing, for which he was grateful. In the ruins, her skin and eyes and hair had gleamed with an unnatural light, suffused with magic. He’d never seen anything like it. He wasn’t sure whether he’d been feeling admiration or terror as he’d looked upon her.
The obelisk had brought back her abilities. She was as powerful as he’d ever seen her. But for some reason, she didn’t look pleased.
“I can unbreak your arm now, if you like,” she said, businesslike.
He leaned back to lie on the grass, untying his makeshift sling from around his neck and wrist. “I would like that very much.”
She took his wrist in her hands, and he winced. Magic tingled over his skin. Her fingers gently prodded at him, feeling for the location of the break. “This will hurt, but only for a moment.”
“Yes. Do it—” Before he’d even finished speaking, she’d jerked his arm as if to smash the bones back into place by force, and then magic poured into him. He yelled in surprise, but the pain quickly dulled to a slow throb.
“Aevyr’s mercy, Kadaki,” he hissed through his teeth. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Better to get it over with quickly. It gets worse if you let the anticipation build,” she said, with complete seriousness. He had half expected a disdainful sneer. That was what the healer back at the fort in Ysura, who had never liked him, would have done. But this was Kadaki—always straightforward, always doing the task she was given as well as she possibly could. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to purposely make him cry out in order to make him look weak in front of the others, nor would she have taken sadistic joy in catching him off-guard.
“You,” Rhian snapped at Kadaki. “Step away from him. Now.”
Kadaki looked up, her dark eyes flashing, but she was wise enough to rise and take a step back. She crossed her arms over her chest.
Neiryn pressed his lips together as Rhian approached. He wanted to tell her to back off, but it wouldn’t do to question her in front of all these people. Rank had to be respected. “I am unharmed, Commander,” he said.
“You don’t look unharmed,” she said with a raised eyebrow. Her eyes scanned all of them. They were a worn-looking bunch, covered in blood and dust and bits of char. Rhian herself didn’t look like she’d fared much better. Neiryn could still see the stress carving lines in her face. “What happened?” she demanded.
“Well,” Neiryn said, “we fell in a hole.”
She raised both eyebrows.
“A large hole,” he clarified.
“I see your sense of humor has not suffered from your ordeal.”
“Never, Commander.”
People in the crowd shifted to see over each other’s shoulders. Neiryn looked away from them. He was not overly pleased to be a spectacle for everyone. Fortunately, Rhian had enough insight to guess his feelings. She turned to the group and dismissed them, and the crowd reluctantly dispersed.
He turned to thank Kadaki, but she was gone. He craned his neck until he found her already going back toward the house. Roshan put an arm around her as they walked. Neiryn forced himself not to stare after her.
Rhian offered him a hand. He let her pull him roughly to his feet, and his stomach flipped uneasily. Spell fever from Kadaki’s healing was finally coming on.
“What the hells happened?” she said to him and Eliyr, switching to the Ysuran tongue.
“I’m touched by your concern, Commander. Please, worry not. I’ll recover in good time.”
“Get to the point. What did you find down there? How did you get out?”
She didn’t let them leave to eat or rest until he’d gone over the events of the entire day.
“So it was Kadaki who rescued you all?” Rhian said when he reached the end of the story. “How embarrassing for you, being out-magicked by a human, Eliyr.”
Eliyr wiped at the blood on his face. His expression was closed-off and hard. Neiryn had seen what had happened when he’d tried to take power from the obelisk. He’d already felt humiliated, even before Rhian had made any biting comments about it.
Perfectionism seemed to be a common trait among the mages he knew.
He was young, only thirty, and just out of his apprenticeship. It was unfair to expect perfection from him. And as embarrassing as it was to be outdone by an Ardanian, it was unrealistic to think he could do better than someone like Kadaki.
“From what I understand, it takes unusually great strength to draw from an obelisk,” Neiryn said. “Especially when it’s attached to an axis this large. Even the most skilled mages would struggle to do it.”
“And yet a human hedgewitch could manage it,” Rhian said.
