Uncle Weylind sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, stacks of paperwork arranged neatly on top of the blanket over Dacha’s legs. A lap desk rested on Uncle Weylind’s knees, and he scrawled his signature on a piece of paper with a pen before headded the paper to one of the stacks. He glanced up long enough to indicate the empty chair beside the head of the bed.
Fieran slid into it. His memories after his crash were hazy, but this moment was all too familiar. Only a few weeks ago, that had been him on the bed with Dacha in this chair, waiting for him to wake. Uncle Weylind had been in that chair at the foot of the bed both times.
“What’s wrong with him?” Fieran crossed his arms, then uncrossed them to rest his hands at his sides. But that didn’t feel natural either.
Uncle Weylind sighed, set down his pen, and met Fieran’s gaze. “Beyond the magical backlash, he was nearly drained of his magic.”
Dacha was…what? That wasn’t possible. Dacha had the highest levels of magic of any living person. He couldn’t bedrained.
But there he lay on the bed, even paler than usual, still sleeping even with Uncle Weylind and Fieran talking right next to him.
And Fieran had the evidence of his own depleted magic. One machine had drained enough for him to actually feel the loss—even if he still had plenty left. How many of those machines had Dacha faced? From the sky, there was no sign of the Wall as far as Fieran could see along the Mongavarian-Escarlish border.
“But other elves use their magic close to their limits, and they don’t end up…like this…” Fieran gestured toward Dacha. He’d seen Merrik and Uncle Iyrinder get tired a time or two when they used too much of their magic. But never Dacha.
“Your dacha has never gotten this close to the limit of his magic before.” Uncle Weylind’s gaze rested on Dacha, his eyes filled with a weight as if remembering other battles, others times Dacha had used great quantities of his magic. “I suspect the sudden draining was more of a shock to his system than it wouldhave been to another elf since his body is used to an abundance of magic.”
Fieran lifted a hand, letting just a hint of his magic twine around his fingers. “Is there something I can do? I have his magic.”
“No, nirshon.” Uncle Weylind shook his head, the grooves around his mouth and in his forehead deepening. “You have the same type of magic, but it is still your magic. It cannot be transfused into him like blood. If he needs more magic, your macha will sense it. She will see to it that the magic stored in their elishina is returned to him.”
Right. That made sense. Dacha always kept a great deal of magic in the heart bond he and Mama shared, and he wouldn’t have touched it during the battle—not even when trying to overwhelm those machines. Mama would look after Dacha.
Still, Fieran didn’t like sitting there, helpless to do anything.
“He will be fine with rest, nirshon.” Uncle Weylind picked up his pen again, although he didn’t start on his paperwork right away. “His magic will replenish. He merely needs sleep.”
The reassurance only helped so much while Dacha lay there, too still, too pale. The memories of him lying limp in the mud of the battlefield still played in Fieran’s head.
Dacha stirred, his breaths hitching. He didn’t make noise or lurch awake. Instead, he tilted his head, his eyelids cracking open as if even that much was a great effort.
“Dacha.” Fieran still wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. He settled for resting a hand on Dacha’s shoulder, giving a squeeze much as Dacha had done for him when he’d been the one on that bed.
Dacha’s gaze swung from Uncle Weylind up to Fieran. “F…Fieran…” The name was a slurred whisper.
“I’m here, Dacha.” Fieran glanced around. Should he offer him water? Fetch food? Just sit there? He didn’t know.
“Heard…fought well…” Dacha’s hand twitched. Perhaps he meant to indicate the swords leaning against the wall.
That answered one question. Dacha must have been awake at least once to have been told what Fieran had done.
Fieran swallowed and nodded. “You taught me well.”
Dacha shifted a fraction, grimacing. When he spoke, his voice had strengthened somewhat. “I have…one last lesson to teach. But I had not…learned it myself yet. Do not…drain your magic. It is…uncomfortable.”
“You mean inadvisable and something you will not do again.” Uncle Weylind shot Dacha a stern look over his paperwork.
Dacha didn’t do anything as immature as stick out his tongue at his older brother, but the look he gave Uncle Weylind in return was almost the same thing. “I cannot promise.”
Uncle Weylind huffed and scratched a line through something on the page with more vigor than the action warranted. Once done, he added that paper to a different stack than he had the signed one.
“Are you using me as a desk?” Dacha’s nose wrinkled slightly as he peered down at the papers arranged on the blanket.
“Yes.” Uncle Weylind wrote something on another paper and added it to a third stack. “Do not move, otherwise you will mess up my organization.”
Fieran further relaxed against the back of his chair at his dacha’s and uncle’s banter. Surely if Dacha was awake enough to joke, then he was going to be all right.
Dacha tilted his head toward Fieran again. “Call your macha. Tell her…” Dacha’s hand twitched again as his eyes fell closed. “She knows.”
