Chapter 0731

I’m honestly not aware of much as we fly to…wherever the hell we’re going. I mostly just concentrate on my mom’s warm presence at my side, and the soft murmuring things she says to me, even if I don’t know what they mean. Still, something about them dulls the gnawing ache in my heart.

An ache which seems to get bigger and bigger as the moments pass, like a cliff, or a quarry, with unsteady edges – my whole world threatening to just tilt in and smash to pieces at the bottom.

But my mom holds me together. I feel her healing magic sweep through me as she strokes my hair, feel her healing all the little cuts and bruises from the battlefield, the tiny scrapes and bumps. I only lift my head to stop her once, when the magic brushes against the cuts on my palms.

The ones Gibson left with that slash of his knife in the moments before he opened Tony’s throat.

“No, please,” I croak, shaking my head. “I need them – they’re all I have left -”

“Oh sugar,” mom whispers, stroking my cheek. “We all have to heal sometime.”