she could not wrench free, but not painful.
Her heart was pounding, her shoes scrambling on the stone in an off rhythm to the troll prince’s steady, swift stride.
The door to Farrendel’s cell stood open, and Melantha was thrust inside before she had a chance to take a deep breath or steel herself for seeing her brother again after betraying him to this torture.
He lay on his back, pinned to the stone floor. A steady trickle of blood ran from him to a drain in the corner. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his body shuddering as he choked in wet gasps, a thin film of blood coating his lips.
A punctured lung. Melantha tore from Prince Rharreth’s loosened grasp and crashed to her knees beside Farrendel. Lying on his back as he was, he was suffocating. He would die within a few minutes if she did not do something.
She pressed a hand to his chest and reached for her magic, ignoring the faint throbbing at her temples caused by all the stone around them. Her magic surged in her chest, down her arm, into Farrendel.
Pain jolted her arm, and she snatched her hand back as if burned. Farrendel thrashed, a moan escaping between his ragged gasps for breath.
All the stone and troll magic inside him had reacted against her magic, causing him more pain instead of helping.
But, even in her brief flare of magic, she had sensed enough of what was happening inside him. It was not an image, exactly. More a detailed impression so that she knew the state of his bones, his blood, his internal organs. And knew how to craft her magic to fix the damage that had been done.
Glancing over her shoulder, she pointed to Farrendel’s right rib cage. “The stone needs to be removed. Now.”
King Charvod stood a few feet away, arms crossed, something almost like a smirk on his face as he watched Farrendel struggle to keep breathing. Prince Rharreth shifted, glancing at his brother.
Melantha gritted her teeth. Prince Rharreth had dragged her here. He was not allowed to just throw up his hands and ignore what needed to be done. “Unless you want him to die right here, right now, it needs to be removed.”
Prince Rharreth pushed from the wall and knelt next to her on the floor. He rested a hand on the stone next to Farrendel, and an icy white glow spread from his fingers into the floor.
Farrendel cried out again, and Melantha pressed her hand to his shoulder, though she was not entirely sure why. It was not as if she needed to hold him down. He was already thoroughly pinned. Nor would he wish comfort from her.
If only there was a way she could ease this pain for him. If her magic reacted that painfully to troll magic, his must be worse.
Could she help? If she could work her magic alongside the troll magic, as if using her magic as a shield between the troll magic and Farrendel...
It was worth a try. She called on her magic again, this time easing it into Farrendel far more cautiously than she had before.
Pain flared up her arm, behind her eyes, but she gritted her teeth and kept going. With her magic, she sensed the active troll magic and coated it with a layer of her own. Her whole body was throbbing now, but Farrendel’s thrashing had stilled, though he still struggled to breathe.
Prince Rharreth removed the stabbing stone from Farrendel’s body. When he drew out a few of the other daggers of stone piercing Farrendel, Melantha refrained from commenting. She had not asked him to do that, and she did not want to draw attention to it with King Charvod watching.
Instead, she drew on more of her magic and sent it into Farrendel’s lung. Troll magic still sizzled against hers, but she pushed the pain aside as best she could, shielding Farrendel from the war of the two magics.
She cleared his lung of blood, steering the blood back to the vessels where it belonged, then knit the tear the stone had caused.
Farrendel stilled, gulping in a deep, non-choking breath. He turned his face and spat, probably trying to clear the taste of his own blood from his mouth.
Melantha rocked back onto her heels and withdrew her hand. She was shaking, her head throbbing.
“Well done, Melantha.” King Charvod’s voice rumbled behind her, sounding far too smug for someone who had nearly killed his prisoner with his over-enthusiastic use of torture. “Your aid has