A Dark and Deadly Beauty

The Healer and the Hero

Suffering.

No matter how long Jacinde had been a healer, she had never grown a skin thick enough to be affected by it.

It was wholly cruel, she thought, that for folk whose sole purpose was to mend, soothe, and cure were often the ones who had to bear witness daily to some of the most unfathomable suffering a body could endure. True, the beauty of the healing gift was always there at the moment of remedy, the look of sheer relief that gripped a person when pain ebbed away and they could greet the world in a sound body once more.

But where there is healing, there must first be pain. For every child who has a broken arm mended, there would be a tearful wail of pain. For every old man relieved of gout-inflamed feet, there must first be slow, halting steps of agony. For every feverish mother who finally found the time to seek help, there must be a sweat-soaked night wracked with aches and chills.

Jacinde had seen a lot of suffering.

And it all seemed a drop in a bucket compared to the endless years Colm had suffered. Decades spent writhing on a cot in a dark room, always in pain, always smothered under the weight of a cruelly blistering curse. She still remembered the look on Colm’s face the instant Emilia’s flood of healing light burned the curse from his body, the way his eyes widened in disbelief and his tight mouth softened from a grimace to a relaxed pout.

Six months. He had lived without pain for only six months. Then it all ended in a flash of flame.

He could have moved away, dodged the flickering tongues of the inferno and tried to scramble to safety. No one would have batted an eye, no one would have judged a man from a moment of self-preservation in a moment of blinding panic.

Yet he had jumped in front of Jacinde. Shielded her. Protected her. Until his flesh was a pulpy, charred landscape of ichor and his renewed body was a mass of pain and wounds once again.

Now, he lay stomach-down and snoring on a cot in the Sanctuary, sedated by a sweet brew of herbs and pain relievers Jacinde had coaxed him to drink. The light of the cloudy, late afternoon fell across the pus-stained bandages that wrapped his torso, the cool grey light spotlighting the sacrifice he had made to keep Jacinde safe.

Perhaps it was the sleepless nights of memories and regrets, or perhaps it was the trauma from being attacked inside the palace walls, but she couldn’t shake loose those thoughts that plagued her exhausted brain. Colm should have run. He should have taken his miracle of a body and escaped the flames.

A woman in a pretty dress, that is all she had been last night. When the elemental fire roared to life she stood, staring blankly like a mindless doll. A silly little doll in a gown of pink and lace. Useless and empty and lovely.

He had spared her from pain, but she knew didn't deserve the selflessness and valor he had shown. She hadn’t even tried to save herself. He should have let her burn.

At least she had helped him, her own timid voice echoed through the dark thoughts that swirled in a miasma of bitterness. At least he didn’t die, cold and prone on the chilled ground of the courtyard. At least there was that.

That truth soothed her mind, albeit a little.

She had emptied her power to the dregs, whispering incantations and breathing out smoky, silvery restorative breath that coated wounded skin and forced it to heal. Jacinde had inherited her father’s tremendous power three fold, yet the terror or the night and the marathon healing of Colm had left her empty, not even a thimble of energy or magic to pull from.

She had helped Colm from the wagon to a cot in a private room of the sanctuary. Cups of chicken soup, thick with cream and herbs, were brought to the room by a harried looking male volunteer. All hands were needed to staunch the tide of injured fay pouring in, so the man simply grunted his goodbyes and left. They sipped their soup in silence. Once her stomach was full, Jacinde was ready to slide to the floor and sleep. But, there was still work to be done.

Through sheer force, she willed her burning eyes open as she tenderly rubbed a blend of walnut and sage oil over his back, tracing gently over the newly-made scars, pink and puckered beneath her finger tips.

She wanted to say so much… but the words dried in her throat. Instead, Jacinde let her hands speak the thanks her words could not express. Every touch was a murmur of appreciation, every prod and palpation a prayer of gratitude.

She dressed his wound in a daze, nearly missing the way his breath caught when her hands danced over the plane of his chest and the pounding of his heart when she tied the linen strips at his waist.

Intimacy is a necessity in medicine, but this felt different. He was her friend. He was her savior. She was alive because of the breaking of his body. A bond had been forged between them in those moments, though neither had the sense to understand it.

The moment passed, and as if on cue, Electra came limping in.

Rumpled and sore, she slumped on the foot of the cot and put her brother’s feet in her lap.

“He doesn’t seem to be in any pain,” Electra softly said. “Thank you, Jacinde, for all of your care. It was much easier to focus on the meeting I needed to attend knowing you were with him.”

“It was the very least I could do…” Jacinde’s usual tinkling voice was heavy and clouded, a haunted and earnest reminder that the attack last night not only injured bodies but minds.

“I’m going to catch that bastard, Jacinde. I will make him pay dearly for this.” Electra stared at the bandages on her brother. Her wonderful brother who baked bread and got her a pistachio tree.

By the ticking muscle in her jaw, and the rigid set of her spine, Jacinde knew Electra would indeed keep her promise… or die trying.

“If you’re settled with him, I’d like to go have a wash and see if I can borrow a fresh linen gown from the Sanctuary store room.”

“I’m fine. Go on ahead.”

Jacinde set her weary bones in motion, walking gracelessly down the clean, white plaster hallways of the Sanctuary she had helped Emilia lovingly build.

A linen closet filled with towels and blankets and surplus clothes was at the top of the stairs where the wide staircase met the extensive corridor of dormitory rooms that housed the sick and recovering. Jacinde riffled through until she found a loose-fitting smock dress the color of sandstone- as plain and practical as clothing came-and stuffed it under her arm.

At the end of the long corridor was the women’s bath, a simple but functional room with a wall full of wash basin stands and clay pitchers filled with cool water. A perpetual flame burned in a brazier, inviting and cheerful despite being surrounded by stone and wood.

The sight of the brazier and the orange glow coming from inside gripped Jacinde’s heart like an icy vice of disquiet. They were one of Thierrus’ final achievements, before he plunged a cursed blade into his brother’s shoulder.

It had been a night, not so long ago, when she had been wrapped in the sheets of the Traitor Prince’s bed and watched him through sated eyes as he sat shirtless at his workbench and traced designs for the braziers. She could still hear the scraping of his pencil and the rustle of his paper, smell the ink in the air and the scent of his hair on the pillows. It had taken Thierrus weeks to get the arithmetic and formula finessed, leaving his bed cold after their lovemaking to worry over numbers and chemistry. But when he finally completed the design, he had slid back into the bed beside Jacinde with a satisfied smirk on his lying lips.

There were six bathtubs of sturdy cedar, round and deep enough that Jacinde could picture sinking down into a bath of hot, soapy water and simply exhausting there. But she had no energy to draw bath water and heat it for herself, and she surely wouldn’t call a servant away from their important work to pour her a bath.

So,she settled on sponging herself off with the winter-chilled water in the pitchers. She shrugged off her party dress, leaving it in a heap on the floor. It was covered in Colm’s blood and stunk of burned flesh. There was no saving it.

Once her body was as clean as it was going to get, she scrubbed her face until it was pink and raw, no trace of lip paint or coal eye-liner remained. She unbound her hair, using her fingers to comb through her tangle of ringlets. She slipped into the rough spun dress and sighed.

I certainly don’t look much like a noblewoman, she thought as she tied the leather laces at her collar. But she was comfortable, the clean weave of the fabric was as supple on her damp skin as the finest satin.

Refreshed, she made her way back to Colm’s bedside where she found Electra sleeping, her long neck bent painfully to the side and her mouth wide open.

With an easy pat on the shoulder, Jacinde woke Electra and tried not to act startled when the warrior woman bolted awake and reached for a knife at her hip that wasn’t there.

“Electra, go home and sleep. Have a bath. Get some bread and ale in you.”

“I don’t want to leave him alone.”

“I’m going to stay with him.”

“Are you sure? Aren’t you exhausted as well?”

“I can doze just as easily here as in my own home. But you… you’ve not had a moment's rest. Please, go and take care of yourself.”

“I’m not going to pretend I’m not tempted by the thought of a bath and long nap in my own bed…”

Colm’s sleepy whisper as he turned slightly on the cot settled Electra’s mind. “Go on, little sister. The good Lady Jacinde won’t let me die.”

He never even opened his eyes, and it seemed he had slipped back into sleep as easily as he had come out of it.

Electra scooted from the bed and rubbed the stiffness from her neck. She muttered thanks to Jacinde and a promise to bring games back for Colm and tottered away, off to succumb to the allure of her own pillow.

Colm wasn’t snoring anymore, just breathing deeply, evenly as he lay flat on his stomach with his head and chest padded by a glut of cushions. His face was peaceful, and his antenna dropped onto the woolen pillow below his head. The sharp features he shared with his sister and the deeply bronzed skin reminded Jacinde of an intricate copper etching, a work of art belonging in an exquisite gallery. But Colm was a man of flesh and bone, and his skin was warm beneath Jacinde’s fingers as she counted the pulse at his wrist.

His heartbeat was steady.

The quiet of the room and the soft whooshing of Colm’s breath tugged at her. She would stay and watch over Colm, but she couldn’t hold off rest any longer. She thought for a moment of slipping onto the cot beside Colm, into the cozy space between his body and the wall. But, though Colm surely wouldn’t mind, she may hurt his wounds further with the jab of an elbow or scrape of a fingernail.

So instead she slipped back into the hall and crept to the linen closet, grabbing a handful of blankets to use as a make-shift bedroll.

She layered the woolen blankets on the floor beside Colm’s bed, and rolled a spare towel she had grabbed into a sort of pillow. The blankets kept the cold of the stone floor from sinking into her bones, and as tired as she was, she felt herself starting to doze as soon as her body stopped moving.

The sleep took her so fast, and pulled her down so deeply, that she didn’t even stir when Colm’s deft hands lifted her head and slipped one of his pillows beneath her. Or when he unfolded the thick cotton towel and laid it over her curled body. And when he brushed his palm over the spray of her wheat-blonde hair, though she sighed, she did not wake.

And when Electra returned hours later, with a satchel of cards and dice, and a parcel of raisin scones in her arms, that was how she found them - both deeply sleeping, turned toward each other, and Colm’s scarred fingers tangled in Jacinde’s curls.