Chapter Eleven
Everything was ready. She had gone over it all multiple times, checking and rechecking to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. She had even sewn two surgical masks and made a mountain of bandages from strips of fine cotton that she had cut, boiled, and sterilized.
Then, with Robin shadowing her that evening, she went over everything again and explained it to him. She didn’t trust Oberon’s volatile temper—for some reason, the puck set him off—so she coaxed Robin into spending the night in her rooms by sketching out the various ways the surgery might go. Ostensibly the sketches were for him, but she found it was useful for her, too, to plot out various courses of action in her head.
By the time she had finished the impromptu lecture, it was past midnight, and Robin looked more than a little spooked and wilder than ever.
“You’ve got to hold it together,” she said. “I need you functional, Robin.”
He braided his too-long fingers together and muttered, “If only I had returned a day later.”
“You’re going to be fine,” she told him with a conviction she didn’t feel. “If you find the sight of the surgery disturbing, you don’t have to watch. If you want, you can sit on the ground and wait. You’re going to have one job—your only job. After I put Oberon to sleep, you can’t let him wake up. No matter what happens. If the spells I set in the agate slab fail, you must keep him unconscious. If he wakes up in the middle of surgery and tries to do something to stop it, it could be fatal to all of us. Do you understand?”
His finger braiding grew tighter, and his feral gaze slid away. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”
“I know you’re stressed.” She squeezed his tense shoulders. “But it is really very simple. I spent hours casting the spells into the operating stone. They should hold him, but if they don’t, you’ll need to cast the spell on him again, just like I taught it to you… And keep casting it until I tell you to stop. I’ll give you plenty of warning and tell you what to do and when you need to do it. Okay?”
“I think I might throw up,” he told her plaintively. Then he proceeded to do so.
She managed to grab a vase that she had been using as a wastebasket and shoved his head down over it before he hurled. When he had finished, they regarded each other gravely.
She waited for him to say something, but when he didn’t, she handed the vase to him. “Go wash that out and keep it close in case you need it again.”
She half expected him to bolt and disappear, but instead he did as he was told. If this had been about anybody but Oberon, he might have fled. But just as the puck seemed to set off the worst in Oberon, Oberon seemed to bring out the best in Robin. Hopefully that would continue until the surgery was over.
At last she took the bed, and Robin stretched out on a chaise in one corner. Despite his earlier distress, he fell asleep almost immediately. Kathryn knew, because she spent most of the night staring at the ceiling and listening to him snore.
It was unlike her. Normally she could sleep anywhere, through almost anything, but not that night. Scenarios for what might go wrong kept running through her mind until it was a relief to finally get out of bed, wash, and get ready for the day.
Finding Oberon ready and waiting was even more of a relief. They headed down to the crystal cave. On the way down, her senses tightened until so much energy thrummed in her body she had to keep from racing down the stairs ahead of the other two.
Outside the doors, she stopped them both. “Oberon, I want you to go directly to the slab, take off your shirt, and lie down. Robin, you stay with me—and don’t touch anything.”
Robin’s eyes were huge in his pinched face. “Yes, Doctor.”
Oberon didn’t wait for her to repeat herself, and he didn’t need encouragement. Instead, he prowled into the cave, went directly to the slab, and lay down on it.
As soon as he was fully reclined, she walked over to him and laid one hand on his forearm. “Last chance to back out.”
He gave her another fierce grin. “Not on your life.”
Leaning over, she smiled at him. “Even though I don’t agree with it, I respect your decision,” she told him. “In your shoes, I might have done the same.”
His cracked-ice gaze lingered on her mouth. His voice deepened as he said, “Come down here and give me a good-night kiss.”
She jerked back and repeated his own words back to him. “Not on your life!”
“Coward,” he said softly. The grin still played around the edges of his sensual lips.
He was devastating now. How much more devastating would he be if he regained all his emotions?
She refused to let herself be intimidated by the idea and snapped, “Principled.”
Then his voice entered her head as he switched to telepathy. I’m going to wake up, and you will have removed Morgan’s infernal spell, he told her. Then I will no longer be your patient, Kathryn. So stick a pin in this conversation. We’ll be finishing it later.
Stop talking to me! She glared at him. She felt as ruffled as if he had rubbed all her feathers the wrong way.
He laughed softly and ran his fingers down her arm, igniting a trail of invisible fire.
I’m activating the spell now. In three, two, one…
Touching the slab, she activated the spell that lay dormant inside the stone. It flared, and Oberon’s eyelids closed. The fierce sensuality in his features relaxed.
“Oberon?” she asked. “Can you hear me?”
No response. She grabbed a scalpel from the nearby tray, and with the point she tested the pads of his fingers. There was no reflex response. He was deeply unconscious. Thank the gods. Setting the scalpel back on the tray, she braced her palms on the agate slab beside his torso and let herself sag.
“Is everything all right?” Robin’s question sounded shrill with fear.
She lifted her head. “Yes,” she told him with a reassuring smile. “He’s just… very difficult to deal with sometimes, and I need to focus all my attention on the surgery now.”
The puck paced around the cave, his arms wrapped around his torso. “How long is this going to take? I really don’t like being underground. I hate feeling confined.”
She sagged again and had to force herself to sound calm as she replied, “This surgery might very well take twenty hours or more. That’s why I’m counting on you to back me up in case the spell in the agate fails. Can you do it? Because if you can’t, you need to get the hell out—and stay out. I have to focus on his problems, not yours.”
His face twisted. He whispered, “I’ll do it.”
She studied him. She had rarely seen such an agonized expression on anyone, and she hadn’t even started yet. “Get out,” she told him. “It will be safer if I manage this on my own.”
His eyes filled with tears. Suddenly he looked breakable and very old. “I can’t fail again.”
“You can’t fail in here period,” she snapped. He flinched as if she had physically struck him, and she caught herself. Then an idea occurred to her. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Go wait at the head of the stairs. There’s plenty of light and fresh air up there. You stay there until the surgery is over. If I need you, I’ll shout. You’ll be able to hear me from up there, so if I call, you get your ass down here as fast as you can. Got it?”
He wiped his face, already looking steadier. “Got it.”
Having him gone would be a relief. Despite his willingness to help, he was too unpredictable. She smiled at him. “Go on now.”
He started to leave, then paused to give his lord one last, lingering look. “He likes you,” Robin said unexpectedly. “Even with the sorcerer’s spell warping his soul, he still likes you.”
Immensely surprised, she barked out a laugh. “You are sadly mistaken. He detests me, and I can’t stand him. We’ve done nothing but fight since he’s woken up.”
Robin stared at her. In that moment, his gaze had never seemed so strange. “And yet,” the puck whispered, “he is willing to let you crack open his chest and dig into the deepest part of his body. And he has trusted you enough to ask you to let him die.”
Her amusement faded. He shouldn’t have read Oberon’s advance directive without permission, but maybe it was just as well that he had.
Turning brisk, she fitted one of the surgical masks over her lower face, strode to the water fountain, threw in the stone that carried the disinfecting spell, and began to scrub up. Even with all her precautions, the cave wasn’t going to be nearly as sterile as an operating theater in New York would be—but with Oberon’s hardy Wyr constitution, that shouldn’t matter.
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” she said over her shoulder. “Close the door on your way out.”
By the time she had finished and turned around, Robin was gone.
She had arranged her array of sterilized surgical tools on trays set on a table she and Robin had dragged down yesterday, as well as the stacks of bandages. Earlier, when she had found that Oberon had finished the healing spells and left his office, she had brought down the spelled stones as well. She had put his fifty spelled stones in a bigger bowl, and her eight in a smaller one, set closer to hand.
Now she whisked away the sterilized cloth covering the tools. This next bit was going to suck so badly.
She used the last of her small vial of disinfectant to swab down Oberon’s chest. Afterward, she took the first of her eight stones, set it in the hollow of his throat and triggered the spell.
For humans, brain damage begins within thirty seconds to two minutes after the heart is stopped. For the Wyr, brain damage begins a hundred and ten seconds to four minutes after the heart is stopped. For that reason, medical freeze spells were constructed to be of short duration.
The two spells in the agate slab produced unconsciousness and blocked pain. She had eight freeze spells at her disposal, each carefully calibrated to be a hundred seconds long. And she was going to need every single second.
As soon as the first spell activated, she cut him open and clamped the layers of flesh back until the hard bone of his sternum was exposed. Then she took a small chisel and mallet, leaped on top of the slab to straddle Oberon’s waist, and broke through the edges of the long, flat bone.
While she worked, she kept her magical awareness buried deep inside him to monitor Morgan’s magic needle. So far, it remained acquiescent, just as Morgan had promised it would, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
His spell didn’t care if its host was being operated on—incisions would be like any other injury and only aid in its efforts to kill him. No, the spell would only react if it was disturbed… and that would be coming soon enough.
When the first freeze spell wore off, she quickly checked everywhere to make sure she had the bleed points clamped well enough. After she had given his brain a couple of minutes to recover, she took another freeze spell and activated it.
That set the pattern for her way in.
Activate, cut, clamp. Pack with sterilized cloth, check for bleeding, clamp again.
Then again: Activate, cut, clamp. Pack with sterilized cloth, check for bleeding, clamp again.
Every time she froze him, she moved as fast as she could. And every time afterward, she gave him as long to recover as she dared.
She was sweating by the time she had reached the last sinewy layer of tissue that lay between his heart and the open air. With the back of one forearm, she mopped her brow. Morgan’s needle lay just on the other side of that layer.
It was not the best time to let memory sneak into her thoughts.
“To be honest, I’m surprised he has survived for as long as he has,” Morgan had remarked when she had met with him. “Surgery techniques were not nearly as advanced when I created that spell. So I thought the greater likelihood was that someone would try to use magic to remove it. The spell is meant to adapt to anything its host tries to dislodge or remove it, so if you use a direct magical attack, it will pulse out a detonation in response—and that detonation should kill him.”
“So the last thing I want to do is attack it,” she said.
“Exactly. You want to find a way to ease it away. Use finesse. The greater the force used, the more it should react.” He paused, then added helpfully, “Think of it like an action movie. The clock is running out, and you’ve got fifteen seconds blinking at the audience in bright red LED numbers… but the heroine doesn’t dare jostle the bomb. Instead, she’s got to defuse it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks, that’s so helpful.”
“You’re welcome.” He patted her shoulder. “You’re going to do great.”
Yeah well, Morgan, she thought as she stared down at Oberon’s opened chest cavity. At the moment, I don’t feel so great.
Pausing as she remembered that conversation had been a very bad idea. It gave her too much time to think. Stress tried to take control and make her hands shake. Gritting her teeth, she forced them to steady again.
Finesse the needle, huh? Just wiggle it out, like a really bad splinter.
If she cut through that last layer, it might activate the needle. But what if she tried using telekinesis instead to bring it out? After all, that was how she had managed to make it move back two millimeters.
The spell wasn’t a live creature, but she had grown to think of it like one. Could she “surprise” it by wiggling it through the thin layer of flesh that now separated it from the outside? The problem was, with Oberon cut open, she couldn’t take as long as she had before to edge the needle back.
One of the instruments she always carried in her portable physician’s bag was a steel pair of tweezers. Grasping them now, she slowed her breathing, focused on the needle, and applied firm, steady telekinetic pressure on it.
The spell activated and applied firm, steady pressure in resistance.
“Remember, it’s not just one spell,” Morgan had told her. Her imagination constructed a ghost of the sorcerer standing behind her, whispering instructions into her ear. “It’s many layered spells sewn together, and one of them is a mirror incantation. The mirror will do what you do, only in opposite. That’s why you need to finesse it.”
Now, as she eased back on the pressure, she gritted her teeth and muttered, “Morgan, you’re diabolical.”
She could almost imagine his bright smile in response.
How could she finesse this bloody fucking spell?
All it “wanted”—its sole purpose—was to drive through Oberon’s heart and kill him. How could she fool it into thinking it had completed its directive?
Or could she fool it into thinking his heart was somewhere else?
Surgery technique wasn’t the only thing to advance in the medical profession since Morgan had cast his spell. Magical technique had advanced too.
Kathryn knew how to use her own two hands as focal points combined with a shock spell to create a defibrillator. She also knew how to telekinetically massage a heart back into rhythm without ever having to make a single incision.
And in the previous year, a bright doctor in the Kentucky witches demesne had patented a spell based on sympathetic magic. The spell was cast into a small figurine that would simulate critical bodily processes for a short amount of time.
The spelled figurines cost a fortune, and they only had a single-use application. They also had an extremely limited shelf life of roughly thirteen months before the spell decayed. She had recently read in a medical journal that the doctor was looking for ways to broaden its uses and lengthen its shelf life, but for now the figurines were only useful in extreme emergencies.
With a drop of the patient’s blood and the right whispered incantation, the figurine could take over the work of a collapsed lung, an area of a brain impaired by an embolism, or a heart that had stopped beating—but only for ten or fifteen minutes at most.
In an operating room, ten or fifteen minutes gave a surgical team time to implement other lifesaving procedures, but in many other circumstances that wasn’t enough time for someone to get help for a victim.
Kathryn owned a figurine, but she hadn’t even pulled it out of her physician’s bag. She had thought it wouldn’t be of any use in this situation.
But what if there was a use for it?
What if it could take over the functions of Oberon’s heart for a few critical minutes? Sympathetic magic simulated a person’s own body functions. Would the figurine’s magic fool Morgan’s spell long enough for Kathryn to trap the needle and get it out?
She would have to fool both Morgan’s spell and the spell in the figurine for this to work.
Moving quickly now, she stripped off her bloody gloves and dug around in her bag that sat open on the floor near the utensil table. After a moment of searching, she found the small box filled with the precious contents.
She opened the container. The interior was lined with magic-sensitive silver, and the tiny figurine was made of the same material.
Pulling it out, she ran to the washbasin and washed it with disinfected water. Then she donned another pair of disposable gloves and ran back to Oberon’s still figure. Taking one of her freeze spells, she placed it directly on Oberon’s heart.
Then she activated the figurine by touching it with his blood and whispering the incantation that would bring it to life. Cutting a small incision in that final layer of tissue, she tucked the figurine gently into his chest cavity, as far away from his real heart as she could get. It was only a few inches away, but in this situation a few inches was as good as a mile.
“One spell, two spell, three spell, four,” she whispered to the cadence of an old nursery rhyme.
The needle still lay much too close to its end goal. Meanwhile, Oberon’s real heart lay inert, and the spell mimicking his heart functions kicked in. His blood began pumping through his body.
Now, here came the fourth spell. Grasping the needle telekinetically, she yanked it hard away from where the tiny figurine lay.
The needle yanked hard in the opposite direction—toward the figurine.
Holy gods. Her magical house of cards was holding.
She kept yanking on the needle as hard as she could. With a surge of magic, it fought back. Yanking like a fish at the end of a line, it wriggled toward the figurine. Bending over as she teased the needle into working harder than ever, she used her scalpel where the figurine was tucked to hold the small incision open and gripped her tweezers tight.
Goddammit, the hole she had cut was so tight. She needed somebody to blot that small upwelling of blood so she could see better….
But then she saw the tiniest of silver flashes in the healthy pink flesh.
There you are, you bastard.
She didn’t hesitate long enough to second-guess herself. With the lightning-fast reflexes that peregrine falcons were known for, she snapped her tweezers over that tiny silver protrusion and pulled it out.
Even as she lifted it high into the air, the assassination spell detonated soundlessly. The malicious magic numbed her fingers. If it had still been anywhere near Oberon’s heart, it would have killed him instantly.
Cursing, she flung the tweezers and needle aside and shook out her hands, then rubbed her fingers together. She still couldn’t feel them. Thankfully, she didn’t have to do any more cutting in tight spaces.
Now she worked backward to exit the surgery. First, she pulled out the figurine and released the freeze spell that had held Oberon’s heart still. Then she started using the pile of fifty healing spells as she unclamped areas and pinched the places she had cut together. Bit by careful bit, she worked to get his flesh sealed over.
One of the most critical places to get accurate was the repositioning of his broken sternum and ribs. She spent quite a bit of time picking out bone fragments and splinters, and then she made absolutely certain everything was well in alignment before she activated several healing spells to fuse the bones together.
She was shaking for real when she finally released the upper layers of his epidermis, smoothed the edges together over his sternum, and laid the last diamonds along the surface of his chest. With one final activation, the healing spells set to work and she was done.
“That’s it,” she whispered to him. “You’re finally free. What you do with the rest of your life is up to you.”
If he wasn’t damaged emotionally beyond repair. They would only discover that over time.
She tried to raise her voice, but it came out in a croak. “Robin.”
A body hurtled down the stairs. Moments later, Robin crashed through the doors. As she saw the crisis in his expression, she realized belatedly how terrible everything looked. She was covered in blood, and so was Oberon’s body, the slab of agate he lay on, and the multiple surgery tools. The cave floor was sticky underneath her boots.
“No, no,” she said quickly, waving her numb hands. “I’m done. It’s out. Careful, the needle is on the floor somewhere. It might carry some residual magic.”
“And he’s alive?”
Damn, she usually did much better at post-op meetings. “Yes, he’s alive, and he’s absorbed all the healing spells his body can take right now. If you are very careful, you can move him upstairs.” If she didn’t drink some water, she was going to fall down and die. She went over to the water fountain and sucked greedily at the fresh flow before she asked, “What time is it?”
“The sun set some time ago,” Robin told her. “You have been down here for at least eighteen hours.”
She almost wiped her face but then realized she was still wearing her second pair of bloody gloves. Stripping them off, she held her hands under the running water. She still couldn’t feel anything in her fingers, not even when her palms grew cold.
“I’m used up,” she told him. “I don’t have an ounce of magic left, and I can’t feel my hands. He’s going to be in pain if he wakes up too soon. If you don’t know how to help ease it, you’re going to have to tell him to suck it up. Tell him no physical exertion until I can examine him again to see how his body has responded to the healing spells. Understood?”
“Understood, Doctor.” The puck gathered Oberon’s lax body into his arms. It looked odd to see his thin, almost delicate-seeming frame holding Oberon’s long, powerful body with apparent ease. Robin met her gaze. “Thank you for everything.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “He’s welcome.”
She watched him gently carry his king away.
When she was alone, she wiped tears from her cheeks. Then she climbed onto the bloody agate slab, curled up on her side, and fell asleep.
* * *
“Gods, I’m starving,” Oberon heard himself say before he was fully awake.
“I have food and drink for you,” someone nearby assured him.
He forced heavy eyelids open. He was in bed and stripped to the skin. Clean linens and richly embroidered bedding covered him, and his head and shoulders rested on a mountain of soft pillows.
It wasn’t his room.
Oh yes, he had demolished his room when he had chased after an intruder bird. This was the room that had originally been intended for his queen, whenever he might find and marry her, which had never happened.
The nearby someone was Robin. The puck bent over him, his face wreathed with a bright smile. His hand hovered near Oberon’s head, as if he would stroke the hair back from his forehead, but he didn’t follow through with the gesture.
Robin said, “The surgery was a success, sire. The doctor removed the needle, and she expressly forbade you to move until she could examine you again. Are you in pain?”
Was he in pain? He didn’t know. Then he took a deep breath and winced. “Yes.”
Magic tingled along his nerve endings, and the pain smoothed away.
“Better?”
“Yes—thank you.” Robin’s joy was so intense Oberon could hardly look at it. He could scarcely take in the enormity of waking when he had been more than half-convinced he wouldn’t. It didn’t feel real. He needed to see the confirmation in Kathryn’s expression. “Where is she, dammit?”
“She said she was used up,” Robin told him. “No doubt she went to bed.”
The damned assassination spell that had dictated the course of his life for so many years was gone. It wasn’t right that she wasn’t here to tell him herself. She should be here to celebrate with him. To tell him how he was supposed to feel now.
“Well, go wake her up,” he ordered. “How long was I out?”
“She didn’t complete the operation until late last night.” Robin went to the nearest dresser to collect a full, covered tray that he placed on the bed near to hand. “It’s past dawn now.”
“I want her here,” he repeated.
“I’ll fetch her right away,” Robin promised.
As he turned to go, Oberon said, “Robin.”
“Yes?”
The puck still wore a wide grin, and Oberon smiled to see it. “Thank you for everything.”
“You provided a home for so many of us who’d never had one before, not until you said, ‘It doesn’t matter who or what race you are or if you are a mixture of many races. Come and pledge your loyalty to me. I will build a home for us and dedicate my life to protecting it.’” Ducking his head, Robin touched his arm quickly. “That happened many centuries ago, but I remember those words as if you had spoken them yesterday. It has always been my pleasure to serve you.”
As the puck left, Oberon lifted the cover off the plate of food to discover savory rabbit stew cooked with vegetables and pan-fried bread. Suddenly ravenous to the point of pain, he inhaled everything.
When he was finished, he closed his eyes and only opened them again when Robin walked in, carrying Kathryn, who lay lax in his arms.
Ignoring the warning twinges in his chest, he surged to a sitting position and barked, “What’s wrong with her?”
“I found her in the crystal cave,” Robin said softly. Without waiting for orders, he deposited her on one side of the bed alongside Oberon. “She had curled up on the agate stone. She appears to be uninjured, but she’s sleeping so soundly I can’t wake her.”
Carefully rolling onto his side, Oberon touched two fingers to the hollow underneath her slender jaw. When he felt her pulse beating strongly against his fingertips, he relaxed. Laying one hand on her slim chest, he scanned her.
Normally her magical Power was both subtle and bright, a steady flame held in control by a sure hand. Now he could barely feel a flicker of it.
He frowned. “She’s not just exhausted. She’s completely depleted.”
Robin cocked his head. “It appears that, like you, the only thing that will help her now is rest.”
Oberon’s frown deepened. She was still dressed in the clothes she wore the day before, and she was covered in dried blood. It looked lurid against her pale skin. “We can at least make her more comfortable. Bring warm water and a washcloth.”
“Yes, sire.” Robin returned shortly, carrying what Oberon had requested.
Together they worked to wash Kathryn’s face and hands, and to strip off her outer layers of clothing so at least she was no longer covered in Oberon’s blood. They left her long-sleeved silk undershirt and underwear alone.
By the time they had finished, Oberon’s hands were shaking, and he felt weak as a kitten.
Robin asked, “Shall I take her to her room?”
Oberon frowned. He didn’t want her that far away in case there really was something wrong with her.
“No,” he said. “She can stay here with me, on the bedcovers. Just bring more bedding to keep her warm, and then you may leave us alone. I can’t keep my head upright any longer.”
Robin covered Kathryn’s sleeping form with blankets. “Your long fight is over,” he whispered to Oberon. “Rest well.”
He didn’t have any choice. He set one hand on Kathryn’s forearm, and when he let his body relax, darkness surged up to swallow him whole.