To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

They carried the Delicate down to the infirmary on a stretcher, her ruined eyes already wrapped in a strip of clean cloth. Red seeped faintly through the fabric with every jolt of her body against the frame. Bradley walked alongside her the entire way, one hand braced against the rail, his jaw set in a hard line that told me exactly how badly this had rattled him, even if he refused to show it.

We handed her over to a pair of waiting healers at the infirmary doors and watched them wheel her inside. A room was already being prepared, curtains drawn quickly around the bed as low, urgent voices discussed which salves and bindings might slow whatever damage had already been done.

Then the doors swung shut.

Bradley and I were left standing in the corridor, the sharp smell of antiseptic and old blood still clinging to both of us from the room we’d just left.

"You should ask the healer to help her," Bradley began once the doors had settled. "Bonnie, I mean."

"No."

He turned toward me, one eyebrow lifting.

"I want the same outcome you do," I continued. "I do. I want her eyes fixed, I want this entire mess resolved, and I want it resolved quickly. But I won’t have Bonnie become the tool this house, or the Kingdom at large, reaches for every time something breaks. A wound, a curse, a mystery nobody else can solve. Someone gets hurt, and suddenly the answer is simply fetch the healer, as though she’s a kettle you put on whenever you’re thirsty."

Bradley remained silent, allowing me to finish.

"What she showed that entire hall last night already terrifies half this estate and fascinates the other half in equal measure. She chose to reveal what she is in the middle of all that. She chose me, despite everything, instead of keeping herself safely hidden the way she’d spent years learning to do. I refuse to repay that trust by turning her into a resource. Something summoned. Something used."

I exhaled slowly.

"If I didn’t have her at all, this would still be a situation I’d be responsible for handling. I intend to find a way through it without leaning on her simply because she’s the easiest path forward."

Bradley studied me for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes that I couldn’t quite name.

Respect, perhaps.

Or simple surprise that I’d thought this far ahead while everything around us was still burning.

"Understood, Your Majesty."

"The witch," I said. "Willow. Could she manage this instead?"

Bradley shook his head. "The Shelter House doesn’t produce many witches skilled in healing craft. Their talents run more toward divination and protective wards. If there is any witch bloodline capable of this sort of work, what the Delicate needs is a Blossom witch. That bloodline has individuals who specialize in exactly this kind of restoration."

"Who? Do we have one on retainer somewhere?"

"Valentine Blossom’s daughter. Madeline." His expression tightened as he searched his memory. "She was remarkably gifted, from what I remember of her reputation years ago. But she’s estranged from her coven now. Practically off the grid, according to the last reports I had on her whereabouts."

He hesitated before adding, "And witch magic of that nature works against a clock, Your Majesty. Once too much time passes, whatever damage has already set in becomes permanent. No witch, however skilled, will be able to undo it after that window closes."

"Then find her. Or someone with similar talents. Whatever it costs, whatever favors need calling in. We owe the Delicate that much. She still has more to look into for us, and I intend to make sure she still has eyes to see it with when this is over."

Bradley nodded, already turning away, his mind clearly moving ahead to whatever message he intended to send in pursuit of a woman who apparently didn’t want to be found by anyone, least of all the werewolf Crown.

I watched him disappear around the corner, then looked back toward the infirmary doors one last time.

Something had been nagging at me since before the moment the Delicate’s eyes caught fire.

It had nothing to do with her.

Or at least, not directly.

"I have to go," I murmured, mostly to myself.

I made my way toward my uncle’s old study. The halls were quieter now, the earliest part of morning finally settling over the estate as most of the household eased out of whatever uneasy rest they’d managed to find after everything that had happened over the past two days.

My footsteps sounded too loud against the stone, each one echoing back from walls lined with portraits of ancestors who had never once been forced to deal with anything remotely like this. I hoped.

I reached the study and locked the door behind me.

Then I crossed to the bare stretch of wall where the hidden vault waited beneath its illusion of ordinary wallpaper.

A small blade I’d taken with me from earlier was still in my possession. I drew it now and pressed its edge into my palm, cutting a shallow line through the skin. I winced at the sting, then placed my bleeding hand flat against the wall.

The magic peeled back layer by layer, the wallpaper dissolving until the reinforced steel door beneath it emerged. I turned the wheel the way I remembered Bradley doing, listening as the mechanism groaned awake, and then the door swung inward on its heavy hinges.

I stepped inside.

The tube stood exactly as it had been left hours earlier, sickly green liquid churning faintly around the suspended, hairless figure within. Wires threaded in and out of pale skin, disappearing beneath flesh as though they had grown there rather than been attached. The machinery hummed softly around him, filling the cramped vault with a sound that was almost soothing if I didn’t think too hard about what was inside the glass.

I approached the tube.

"So," I murmured, my voice echoing off the metal walls and sounding smaller than I wanted it to. "Are you awake right now? Is there somehow you are doing all of this, or is it something else entirely?"

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