To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

The static in my ears sounded like water rushing over stones. I sat in the hard oak chair reserved for the Regent, my spine rigid, my hands resting on my thighs, and I could not focus on a single word passing between the twelve elders arranged in their semicircle before me. My knuckles still ached from Johann’s jaw. I could still feel the phantom resistance of his cartilage giving way beneath my fist.

Everything seemed to be nothing but noise crashing against the guilt lodged in my chest.

I had broken my promise. Two men had died because I hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t been ruthless enough with Johann when it mattered, and then I’d overcorrected into something so ugly I still had blood dried under my fingernails from beating my own cousin nearly to death in front of plenty of the court.

I could not breathe properly. My ribs felt too tight, my lungs unable to draw a full breath, and every time I blinked I saw her face streaked with tears and war paint of blood, her bare feet leaving prints on the platform wood, her hand raised to execute the man who had shattered my promise to her.

I deserved neither sympathy nor patience right now. I knew that.

Bradley’s hand landed on my shoulder, jarring me back into the room.

I flinched hard enough that my chair scraped against the marble floor, the sound cutting through the static.

He tilted his head toward the center of the circle where an Elder sat with his hands steepled beneath his chin.

I lifted my head to find Queen Edelina positioned in the far corner, dabbing at dry eyes with a handkerchief that had never once touched actual tears, performing grief for an audience that seemed entirely willing to believe her.

”My apologies,” I managed, my voice rough as gravel. ”I did not quite hear the question.”

The elder sighed, the sound carrying the weight of his patience wearing thin. ”Her Majesty Queen Edelina has given us an account of this morning’s events.”

My hands curled into fists against my thighs. ”She was not even there.”

”She was informed by reliable witnesses,” The presiding elder replied, his tone sharpening. ”As were we. This conflict began when two retainers were beheaded for their systemic failure to protect the late Alpha King. Prince Johann acted within his rights as the Crown Prince. The law is explicit on this matter. The retainers failed. They died. That is justice.”

I felt the familiar rage uncoiling in my stomach, hot and restless. I forced it down.

”Only for your breeder healer to interfere,” The elder continued, his lip curling slightly around the word breeder. ”Only for her to assault Prince Johann with abilities that have no place in civilized society.”

A murmur rippled through the chamber. I turned my head to follow the sound. The lesser nobles and court functionaries along the walls whispered, their eyes wide and their faces pale. I caught fragments of their hissed conversations.

”Telekinesis, I heard...”

”A healer capable of such things?”

”That is something I have never heard of before, and healers have always been a special interest of mine. She is dangerous.”

”Now, he currently breathes through a tube.” His eyes flicked toward me, something wary settling into them. ”The subjects who witnessed it are, understandably, quite disturbed by her abilities. A healer capable of telekinesis. That’s new information to this council.”

I swallowed hard as my stomach dropped. I had not realized. I had been so consumed with Bonnie, with her collapse, with the blood on my hands and hers, that I had not considered what the witnesses had seen. The bubbles forming around her fingers. Johann lifted into the air, clawing at his throat, suspended by nothing but her will and her fury. The healers had kept their secrets close for generations. Their abilities went far beyond mending flesh and knitting bone, but those deeper powers were shared only in whispers, passed from those who knew to others deemed deserving in shadowed rooms. I had assumed the elders knew. Since someone like my father had some intimate knowledge about the healers from the age of legend. I had assumed the knowledge persisted in some archives, or at least in the oral histories, and the memories of those long-lived enough to remember the age before the extinction of the healers.

But looking at their faces now, the elders and the nobles alike, I saw only ignorance and fear. They had forgotten. The healers had hidden a little too well, and now Bonnie had ripped the veil away in front of half the court.

I coughed against the dryness in my throat. The lie formed, fully formed, a complete architecture of deception that I would have to build brick by brick.

”When Bonnie healed me,” I said, ”something changed between us. A connection formed. Irrevocable. So when the accident occurred, when Johann acted against a direct order I’d given specifically to prevent senseless deaths—” ℯ

”Senseless?” Edelina’s voice cracked across the room like a whip. ”Senseless? Bullshit. Those men are the reason my husband is dead. Johann broke no law getting justice for that.”

”Can I finish?” I demanded.

Several elders murmured toward her, urging quiet, and she folded her arms with a low, furious grumble but said nothing further.

”I attacked Johann first,” I continued. ”My rage consumed me completely. I eventually regained some clarity, understanding what it would mean for this family to be seen behaving like barbarians. But the connection I share with Bonnie carried the remaining rage forward. It passed to her. She attacked him for my sake.”

Edelina laughed, sharp and disbelieving. ”In what world would any of us believe that? A healer, that infiltrator who infiltrated this place, a healer whose origins we do not even know, attacking this Kingdom’s prince and my son, because she absorbed your rage through some mystical connection? This is not one of those fairy tales you perpetuated as a child, Lysander. This is reality. She tried to murder my son because she is a violent, uncontrolled animal who belongs in a cage or on a pyre, not in the royal infirmary receiving treatment for her exhaustion.”

Bradley stepped forward, his boots clicking against the marble. ”There is truth to what the Regent says.”

Edelina whirled on him, her eyes flashing. ”You would support this fantasy, High Beta?”

”In the time of old,” Bradley replied, his voice steady and authoritative, ”in the age of legends, an Alpha connected to his healer shared a bond similar to the mate bond.”