Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

Cassie scrubbed at her face. Her shoulders curled again, but this time, she managed to keep herself from dissolving. “It’s nothing.”

“Right. Because you always give off a blinding glow.”

She shook her head, and I dropped the subject. One thing at a time.

She sniffled and swiped her sleeve across her nose. Eyeing all three of them, I asked, “Were you avoiding me?”

Cassie chewed the inside of her cheek. “I just… I was worried you’d hate me too.”

“Nobody hates you, Cassie. But no more of this.”

She nodded, even though her bottom lip still quivered.

As I said the words, I realised what “this” was. A punishment. All three of them had come away from the incident shouldering pain that was never meant to be their burden to bear. Love was a twisted thing that could destroy us. But when I looked into their faces, I realised that it could make us stronger too.

“How do you guys feel about coming over tonight?” I found myself asking. “It’s a bit weird to be back and not eating with a whole bunch of people in the dining hall.”

“Gran?” Cassie asked.

Jacqueline leaned against the wall. “Tell you what,” she said. “If you start going back to classes again, you can sleep anywhere you want.”

Luther had absolutely no trouble convincing his parents to let him stay over. When he made the mirror call, they used the words, “Maybe someone can knock some sense into you. Or knock you out.”

After the kids left, I floated the idea of working in the infirmary to Jacqueline. She tugged on her earlobe. “Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t hesitate. But right now, I’m not sure how comfortable the population are going to be with you helping to make potions for them.” She too scrubbed at her face as though frustration was now a familiar feeling. “On the other hand, people are starting to be desperate enough that they’ll do anything. If Doctor Thorne doesn’t see any issue with it, then it’s fine with me.”

When I arrived to the chaos that was the infirmary, Doctor Thorne didn’t even hesitate. “Never mind potions for now,” he said, shoving a piece of paper in my face. “I need you to help Sandra with patient rounds.

I balked. “Are you sure?” I said. “Most people don’t really like me right now.”

“They’ll like you better than a hole in the head.”

I only understood what he was talking about when Sandra dragged me around the patient beds. My chest ached at the sight of the para-humans with their skin torn in big scrapes that were weeping green blood. They did their best to grit their sharpened teeth as Sandra taught me to clean their wounds. Some of them flinched or scowled when they saw it was me, but Sandra browbeat them into submission. “You either let Sophie help you or you sit here for another few hours until someone else can get around to it.”

Pain really was a universal language. One of the girls wasn’t much older than me. She was a draki, one of the smaller dragonian species with scaly, membranous wings that didn’t disappear like those of the Nephilim. You could tell it was a burden in battle because a huge section of her left wing had been ripped off by something sharp. She bit down on her own arm as Sandra and I set about removing the black spines from her shoulder juncture. Halfway through, she fainted. I staggered when I caught her, surprised by how heavy she was.

As we passed down the line of beds, it hit me that this was no longer just an Academy infirmary. We’d become a field medical unit for the less-critical patients. “Where are they all coming from?” I asked Sandra.

Her auburn hair had been shaved off too. The determination in her eyes said that she was comfortable giving up appearances for the sake of practicality. Still, it must have rankled. The dwarves took great pride in the length of their hair. It signified something akin to battle honour. “Most of these are just from scrapes with the malachim. They’re chewing through our resources like twigs.” She brushed her hand over her beaded brow, and it left a thick green sludge. “Without Raphael, our ability to heal as quickly has been dampened.” She handed me a cloth soaked in the iridescent glow of Fae blood. Looking down at it, my vision swam. This is all your fault, Sophie, the voice in my head said. You know how to fix it.

I blinked. “Sophie?” Sandra shook my shoulder.

“Huh?” I pinched myself and realised my mind was playing tricks on me.

“You zoned out for a second there. Is this too much?”

Steeling my spine, I took a long breath. “No, I’m fine.”

She glanced over my shoulder at Noah. “More than I can say for your shadow.” She rounded on him. “If you’re going to just lurk, you can at least make yourself useful.”

“My role is to guard Sophie.”

The way her jaw locked said that she wasn’t impressed by the answer. By the time late afternoon arrived, I was covered in all manner of blood that wasn’t mine as well. And imprinted in my head was the stoic grunt of every supernatural species as they took to being knitted together without any sort of painkiller. More than once I was on the verge of fainting. The only way I managed to hold on to consciousness was to remind myself that they were hurt because of me.

Sandra finally pushed me out the door when evening arrived. “But you’re not done.”

She gave me an arched look. “We will never be done. But you’re not going to be any use to anyone if you drop dead.”

As Noah took me back to the Reserve, her words bounced around in my head. Right now, I was no good to anybody. For so long, I’d painted myself as a fugitive and a blood witch. Somehow, in all this mess, I had allowed myself to forget