move, little man. You’re hurt pretty badly.” His leg was obviously broken, but I didn’t know what else. His spine? I panicked at that thought.
“It’s just my leg,” he said calmly. “Nothing else hurts.”
Tristan peeled Dorian’s eyelids back and peered into his pupils. He moved his hands along Dorian’s body, using his medical background to check for any other injuries.
“It’s only his leg,” he confirmed.
I stared at the grotesque bend of it.
Can you heal it? I asked Tristan silently, not wanting Dorian to hear me. Any kind of power, including Tristan’s ability to heal other people, we had to keep hidden from Dorian.
“There’s no open wound, so only by giving him my blood.”
I grimaced. Not only was the thought nauseating, but the idea nearly impossible. Unless we could do some kind of transfusion, the only way for Dorian to receive Tristan’s blood would be to drink it. How would we get a six-year-old to drink blood? It turned out to be a non-issue. Dorian sat up, and as Tristan and I watched, he twisted his leg into a normal position, then he shook it, as if waking it up from the numbness of a lack of blood flow. We stared at him in shock.
After a few long moments, Dorian stood up and said happily, “I feel better. Wanna see what I did?”
Tristan and I both still sat there staring, amazed Dorian could heal himself. Already. And from such a bad injury. Before the Ang’dora, I couldn’t heal a deep cut on my own, let alone a broken bone.
“NO!” we finally shouted together in a delayed reaction.
It was too late. Dorian bent his knees and sprang upward, landing lithely on a tree branch about fifteen feet above the ground.
“I almost fell last time, so I went too fast and landed really hard,” he said from the branch. Then he stepped off.
“Dorian, NO!” I shrieked, my heart leaping into my throat. Tristan blurred to where Dorian would land, this time poised to catch him.
But Dorian came down too slowly, completely breaking the law of gravity. He kept his body straight and stiff, his arms held slightly out from his sides as he seemed to float toward us. His light blond hair ruffled in the breeze, and the gold in his eyes sparkled with excitement. He circled Tristan and then landed softly right next to me.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, beaming. “I’ve done it lots of times.”
It took a conscious effort to close my gaping mouth.
He’d never shown any powers before. He’d learned to walk when most babies learned to scoot or crawl, ran faster than kids twice his age, and consistently tested at least three grade levels above his in all academics. But actual powers? No. I didn’t think so, anyway. And he was way too young. Having powers this strong already was . . .
Tristan, this is so not good. If he’s getting his powers already . . .
According to history, the sons converted to the Daemoni shortly after they began receiving their powers. Usually this didn’t happen until they started puberty. Unlike Amadis daughters, who received their powers with the Ang’dora, sons changed as they grew from boys into men, receiving their powers gradually, and then they stopped aging in their early twenties. Dorian was a long way off from puberty.
“I know, my love. But it might just be the power of the island. Maybe he’ll lose some when we leave.”
I clung to that hope. Though the worry that Dorian, like Tristan and me, would be more powerful than usual at an early age was part of the fear constantly gnawing at me, I’d been banking on having a few more years, counting on it more than I realized. We needed that time to come up with a plan to protect him, to keep him with us.
“What are we going to do?” I asked Tristan that night as we lay in bed.
“I have plenty of ideas of what we can do,” Tristan said, nuzzling his face against my neck.
I sighed. “You know what I mean. Dorian.”
He leaned up on his elbow and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You worry too much, my love.”
“I can’t help it. He’s my son.” I searched his eyes, wondering why they weren’t filled with the same fear I felt. “Do you not care?”
“Of course I care!”
“Then how can you be so calm? My stomach rolls every time I think about it.”
“I never stop thinking about it, trying to figure out a