Chapter 2

  Today marks the four anniversary of the attempted fairy coup by Queen Hespa’s sister, Jesamin, whose subsequent tragic banishment by the queen has been the subject of speculation and gossip across Anderia and much of the world. The disappearance of Anderia’s own Princess Eirwen a year later has only fueled the fires of conjecture, while human-fae tensions, which have been building since Queen Hespa’s coronation, continue unresolved. Now, those tensions are increasing again as dissatisfaction with magical giftings is also on the rise.

  Meanwhile, the Healers’ Guild’s refusal to treat gifting-related illness has come under outrage from citizens, and criticism from the Crown itself. It’s to be hoped that negotiations will begin soon to update their policies, before the Crown is forced to step in.

  —This morning’s brief from Anderia in Review.

  The world crashed back in around Will suddenly as he tumbled across a hard, flat surface. Nauseated and utterly disoriented, he rolled to a stop and lay still, his face pressed against rough wooden boards, his ears ringing. It took him a moment to comprehend that he wasn’t about to be dashed to pieces at the base of the sea cliff. But he was still in terrible danger, right? His internal alarm bells were blaring at him, urging him up. Not for the first time, he cursed his lack of defensive magic as he pushed himself up on his hands and looked around.

  He was in a good-sized circular room, empty but for some broken beer bottles and a set of broken wooden stairs attached to the wall, which his gaze followed up, and then up some more, until suddenly it clicked. He must be inside the lighthouse. The old one, out on the little island off the tip of the cape. No longer in use since they’d built the new one at the top of the cliff, this place was home only to seagulls, or the occasional party of teens who could get their hands on a boat and come out here to get drunk.

  Behind him, someone laughed. “I gotta say, for a healer, you’ve got steel.”

  Will scrambled up and turned to face the speaker, a young man around his own age, with dark, slicked-back hair, wearing a skin-tight black T-shirt and fashionably ripped skinny jeans. He also wore the big, blingy, fairy-gold ring. Will was instantly offended. If he was about to get offed by a serial killer, the man could at least have the decency to wear flannel and carry an ax or something.

  “Just so you know, I can’t heal bad haircuts, ripped clothes, or stupidity. Also, mental illness is a bit tricky. Possible, but tricky. You might spend the rest of your life braying like a jackass. Now that that’s out of the way, what do you want?”

  The Huntsman laughed, shaking a bony finger in Will’s direction. “I like you. You’re different. And who knows—you might actually be the one we’re looking for.”

  “Uh—looking for?” said Will, his gaze darting around the room. There was still nothing remarkable here. Though now that he was facing the other direction he could see the single piece of furniture in the room—a small antique table with a mirror sitting on top of it. The mirror was one of those heavy old ones with a thick wooden frame and the stand that would allow it to flip around and face either direction.

  The Huntsman gestured to the mirror. “I need you to help my patroness.”

  “Patroness?” said Will. Curiosity got the better of him and he strolled toward the mirror, keeping an eye on the other man. “No healing objects, remember? It doesn’t work.”

  The other man remained silent and let Will examine the mirror.

  Will ran a finger over the top, collecting a fine layer of dust. It felt like ordinary wood. The glass looked normal, with his own face staring back at him with a quirked eyebrow. His eyes had a bit of a natural squint at the outer corners as though perpetually scrunched in a smile. But his mouth looked grim.

  “Is your patroness upset that you let her collect dust? Cause that’s the only thing I can find wrong here.” He withdrew his hand as he spoke. No sooner had his fingers left the wood than blue fire erupted across the entire surface of the mirror’s frame and base. Will jumped back with a startled “Erk!” but the flames snuffed out after only an instant, leaving a fine haze of smoke curling around the mirror.

  “I take care of my own dust,” spoke a voice from the mirror.

  Will took another step back as a face materialized in the glass like a three-dimensional television picture, or a trapped hologram. She had the haughtiest eyebrows he’d ever seen. That was the first thing he noticed. Her features were sharp, her ears pointed, her eyes purple, and her skin an unusual shade of sunburn pink. But the fact that he was looking at a fairy seemed somehow less shocking than the pure aloof arrogance in her expression.

  “Ah. So it is him. At last,” the fairy woman said, apparently to herself.

  “Uh… pardon?” Will cocked his head and resisted the urge to back away farther.

  “I wish to be free,” the fairy woman said, her hard expression unchanging. “Place your hand on the glass, healer.”

  “Mm nooo…” His mind spinning, Will shuffled backward again and bumped into the Huntsman, who suddenly stood directly behind him, without seeming to have moved. “You must be Jesamin, right? Queen Hespa’s sister? Was this your banishment? That she trapped you in a mirror? Look, I have no idea how to get you out of there, and if I did, Queen Hespa would probably kill me. So no.”

  “If you don’t, my Hunter will kill you.”

  “Is that what happened to the other healers?” Will looked between the mirror and Mister Skinny Jeans standing behind him, feeling the prickling cold of stalking death.

  “Some. Others were overcome by my magic. Humans are weak.” Jesamin’s expression still didn’t change to anything other than utter contempt, and that unnerved him far more than the situation itself.

  “So you keep stealing healers—and others too—and burning them out, or murdering them, but you’re still not free. You know what they say is the definition of madness...”

  “I’m not mad.” She went on, “Each human’s gift is unique. You should know this. When my kind gift your kind with magic, that gift takes on different forms depending on the intent of the fairy who gave it and the temperament of the human receiving it, as well as other factors. Therefore where one healer has failed, another might succeed.”

  Will shook his head, taking a step forward this time. “No, this still doesn’t add up. What makes you think this would work at all? Why keep trying? Why kill the people who don’t die from your magic? And why… why healers more than anyone else? What were the others? What’s the commonality?”

  “Connection, of course.” Jesamin sounded bored. “The gift of healing is unique among most others because of the connection that must be made between healer and patient. I can use that connection as a bridge back to the physical world. But not all healers have the correct type of connection.”

  “And you think that I’m… different? That I have the right kind of connection, and that your magic won’t kill me?” Curiosity had Will thinking about his healing gift, and the way it worked, and he had to wonder if Jesamin might be right, at least about the connection part. It was the biggest reason he hated his gift. Healing wasn’t so bad, but the vulnerability of staring into someone’s soul—and having them able to see yours in return, had taken a long time to accept. As far as surviving where others had not—that he wasn’t convinced of at all. Touching Jesamin’s essence would be like grabbing onto a magical lightning bolt.

  “I know you’re different,” said Jesamin. “I was there when you were gifted. I saw the way Hespa stared into your eyes, and heard the words she said. Whether you survive is inconsequential, as long as the connection is strong enough to draw my spirit from the mirror.”

  Staring at her, Will muttered a curse under his breath. “Queen Hespa?”

  “I am tired of this discussion. Hunter, bring him.”

  The Huntsman wrapped his freakishly strong arms around Will’s chest again. Will didn’t have a chance to struggle. He didn’t even hear the other man sneak up behind him. The world blinked out again, and when it blinked back, they were standing directly before the mirror.

  “Magic doesn’t perform without consent, you know,” Will said, wriggling in Hunter’s grasp as he attempted to grab Will’s hand and force it onto the glass. They scuffled together for a moment before Will inevitably felt the cool touch of the mirror’s surface against his fingers.

  “He needs to look at me as well,” Jesamin said.

  “I’m trying,” Hunter puffed, still hanging onto Will as he struggled to pull his hand away. He grunted when Will slammed an elbow into his gut, then stomped his foot. He hooked a foot around Will’s leg and jerked it out from under him, and they both crashed to the floor, their struggle turning into a full-scale brawl.

  And then suddenly Skinny-Jean-Hunter wasn’t there anymore. Or at least Will couldn’t see him. He could feel his hands on his throat, choking the air out of him, but the man had gone invisible. So he had invisibility and teleportation. Great. Will thrashed and kicked, but without being able to see his opponent, his wild flailing did little more than weaken his own efforts as his air cut off. He stilled.

  Just when his vision was blackening and shooting strange starbursts down his nerves to his brain, Hunter released his throat. Will gasped in a long, agonized, whooping breath. Then he started to cough. He didn’t even care when he felt himself dragged back to the mirror. His hand was placed upon it, and the mirror’s surface grew angry with heat. Hunter grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced him to face Jesamine.

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  “Look at me,” she ordered.

  Still coughing and gasping, Will looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. She stared as though she could drill holes through him. He was starting to hate those arrogant eyebrows. But still his magic didn’t spark.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “This is him. I know his healing is vision based. I know it.”

  Hunter released Will, who slumped into a pile on the floor.

  Jesamin studied him for several long moments. “He’s the one I need. We just need to figure out how to unlock his magic.” She turned her attention to Hunter. “Secure him somewhere, and go back to the mainland. Find out what method he uses to unlock his magic.”

  Hunter gave her a jaunty bow. “Yes, m’lady.”

  Will gathered himself for another round, determined not to go anywhere without a fight, but Hunter winked out of sight again. Next instant, something crashed into the back of Will’s head. For the third time that day, the world snuffed out.

  Will’s head pounded. His stomach rolled, threatening to empty itself, and his contacts felt like they’d traveled to the back of his eyeballs and stuck there. Unable to see anything, for a moment he panicked, till he realized the reason wasn’t his head injury, but because it was dark, and because his contacts still wanted a view of the back of his eye sockets. He was in a different building now, with only faint twilight coming in through a small window high in the wall. Hunter was just snapping a handcuff around Will’s wrist, while some animal that Will could only see as a lunging silhouette snarled at them from the other side of the room. This place must be the small stable where the lighthouse keeper had housed their goats decades ago.

  “The only way out of here without me is through the door over there,” Hunter said when he noticed Will stirring. “And to get to the door, you’d have to get past my friend there. That’s if you’re good at getting out of cuffs. But don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.” With that he disappeared.

  Will sat back against the wall with a soft groan. With his free hand, he rubbed his throbbing head, letting the other hand dangle from the cuff attached to the wall. After a few steady, deep breaths his stomach began to settle, and his head cleared a bit. There was nothing he could do for his concussion without a mirror and more light. Hopefully it wasn’t bad. Just bad enough for Hunter to teleport him here and cuff him without him putting up a fight.

  After some gentle eye rubbing and creative levels of blinking, his contacts finally slid back into place and he took a better look around the room. Outside, the daylight had gone, but the moon was close to full, and shone silverly through the window. By its light Will finally got a look at the creature sharing the shed with him. It was a big cat of some kind—perhaps a panther or leopard—but there was something wrong with it. He could tell that even without his healer’s gift. It watched him with poison green eyes that glowed with a light of their own, while its muscles bulged oddly in places and it kept twitching its head like it had a tic. It was a prisoner, just like him, chained to the far wall with a dog chain and a thick leather collar. It stood at the farthest reach of the chain, which was still a couple feet short of where Will was cuffed, and drooled at him.

  Since the panther wasn’t going anywhere for the moment, Will turned his attention to his own handcuff, which was snapped around an iron ring set in the wall. Squinting and running his fingers around the ring, he found it was attached to the wall by a simple, rusty bolt.

  “Hunter, you’re an idiot,” he murmured, twisting to get his free hand into his pocket. He still had his wallet, the old glasses he’d used as part of his disguise, and his multi tool. He’d lost his contacts case somewhere.

  The multi tool was the kind that unfolded into a pair of pliers, with which he went to work on the bolt. Despite the years of rust, it only took him a couple minutes to work it out of the wall. The iron ring popped loose with it, and Will was free. Sort of. The handcuffs and ring dangled from his wrist, and the deformed panther still stood between him and the door. This part would be a bit more tricky.

  There was no getting around the beast, or past it, or over it. There was no way to get up to the window, either. On the other hand, if he healed the panther, there was a chance that it would be friendlier toward him. That wasn’t uncommon among animals, and with this creature’s obvious malformity, and the collar and chain, he wondered if it was more than a normal panther anyway—perhaps it was someone who’d run amok of Jesamin the fairy. If he returned it to health and sanity, would he find that he’d healed a morph super who might help him get off the island? On the other hand, in order to trigger his healing magic, he’d have to remove his contacts, which would leave him mostly blind. Or it could leave him open to Jesamin’s manipulation, if Hunter came back and caught him. Then again, if Hunter was going back to ask around and figure out Will’s secret, it wouldn’t take him long to learn that all they had to do was uncover his eyes. Well. He’d have to heal fast and pray—and hope that his concussion didn’t hinder his magic.

  He realized, after the first contact lens popped out, that there would be no getting these things back in before he got off the island. His hands were gritty and dirty, with no way to clean them or the lenses, and without his contacts’ case he’d have no way of knowing left from right without trying them. With a resigned sigh, he tucked them both into the crease in his wallet and stuck it back in his pocket. When he looked up, the room had become a silver blur, the panther an indistinct dark blob in front of him.

  Muttering under his breath, he inched across the floor, squinting to catch the green glow of the panther’s eyes. His head started to pound again.

  The panther lunged, hissing and gagging at the end of its chain. Will startled back. It was close enough for him to see now, sort of, but it kept twitching, scrabbling to reach him, and not holding still long enough for him to make eye contact. If he tried to grab it he’d probably lose a hand.

  “Hold still, kitty.” Will held up his hand, keeping it a few inches beyond the panther’s reach. The creature snarled and strained, snapping at his fingers which it couldn’t quite reach. He lowered his hand, bringing the creature’s attention down with it, till he could finally look into its eyes. It still wasn’t holding still, but with its energy focused on trying to grab his hand, at least it wasn’t jumping all over the place. Their eyes met. Will gasped at the intensity of the soul in front of him. This was definitely a man, not a panther. Trapped, frustrated, in pain. Will had the sense of the man crouched within the panther’s form, straining for release, but confused and clouded by whatever Hunter and Jesamin had done to him. Then his vision changed, so he was seeing, not just sensing. Instead of the dark barn, he could see the man-panther’s form in front of him like a heat signature, each organ, each nerve and flow of energy detailed in impossible clarity. The odd bulges of muscle and disjointed bone were the man’s efforts to shake off the panther. Fury and madness coursed through him along with magic, or poison, or perhaps both. To Will’s sight it looked like streams of neon green particles.

  The panther went still, watching, but even so, Will figured he was better off healing it without touching it, even if it was harder. First, he sent his magic sweeping through, burning away the bad magic and flushing out the poison. Then he sent another wave of magic which he directed to mend and rebuild nerve and muscle damage. Finally, he focused on the damaged brain cells and imbalanced chemistry. That was a bit more challenging, since he couldn’t technically replace a hormone or chemical that wasn’t there, just like he couldn’t replace lost blood. He could prompt his patient’s body to produce more very quickly, provided they had enough energy stores of their own. In an emergency, he could transfer some of his own energy and force the other person’s body to turn it into blood or whatever they needed, but that was a last resort in any case, since it would leave Will in as bad of shape as the person he was trying to heal.

  But the shifter, despite the poison that had kept him trapped in panther form, was otherwise in good shape, and needed only a little magical encouragement to begin balancing his own systems. He might be grumpy or have insomnia for a day or so, but he’d be fine without any extra intervention.

  Will sat back on his heels and blinked in annoyance as the world went back to its normal blurry state. He dug his glasses out of his pocket, only to find that one lens had popped out and broken during his scuffle with Hunter. Great. Just great.

  “Thank you,” said the shifter, making Will jump again. Apparently he’d turned back into a human while Will was inspecting his glasses. “I hope I didn’t try to eat you too seriously.”

  “You didn’t succeed. That’s the main thing.” Will put the glasses on and closed one eye so he could see the other man clearly. He drew back with a start. “...Uh. Your highness?”

  Unless Will’s vision had gone totally wonky, the morph super he’d just healed was none other than Tyrell Andersen—the crown prince of Anderia, as well as the young leader of the country’s superhero task force that kept super villains from running amok. Since superheroes were a relatively new development, starting just a bit before Will and Tye’s generation, Prince Tye was the only individual with both enough political clout as well as physical prowess to keep the nation’s unruly supers in line. Twice-gifted by the former fairy queen herself, he could shapeshift into any animal he chose, while also possessing unnatural strength and speed and heightened senses. Spy and Defender were the gifts named to him, and that was how they’d manifested. Will had always been envious of the supers who were part of Tye’s personal team of peacekeepers. Perhaps if he hadn’t been gifted some kind of offensive magic, something other than healing, he could have been one of them.

  “Aye, at your service,” said the prince. “And in your debt. I was an idiot and came sniffing around here, and that oily fellow caught me. He turns invisible.”

  “I noticed,” said Will, tucking his one-lens glasses back into his pocket. His concussion just couldn’t handle them at the moment. “He’s going to come back soon, if he isn’t already here spying on us. We should go, your Highness.”

  “Just Tye. Come on. Let’s see if we can find a boat.” The prince’s form flickered—Will couldn’t see well enough to tell what animal he turned into, but it was something small enough that allowed him to slip the leather collar over his head before he went back to being human.

  Outside, a chilly sea breeze teased Will’s shaggy hair and ran goosebumps up his arms. He followed Tye down a tangled path toward the sound of waves breaking against the rocky shore, holding onto the cuff and ring still attached to his wrist so they wouldn’t jangle. Dark blobs of boulders stood up on either side of the path, and sharp beach grass snagged around their legs. Will’s head pounded harder as he walked, and the silvery blur of the ocean swirled together with the darker jagged shore line. His stomach started rolling again and he swayed.

  “Hey, you okay?” Tye caught his shoulder.

  “Yeah. I’m good. Just a little concussed.”

  “Can you heal yourself? I know some healers can and some can’t.”

  “Not without a mirror.”

  “Stay here and keep out of sight then. I’ll find the boat and come back for you.” The prince’s form shimmered once again, then dropped to all fours and scampered off into the brush. What kind of animal he’d turned into Will still couldn’t make out.

  Will groped his way around a boulder at the water’s edge, and crouched beside it, then sat down. His hands pressed against damp sand and gravel, and the next wave that rolled in soaked his shoes, but he was more worried about the invisible, teleporting Huntsman, and what would happen if he found him and dragged him back to Jesamin’s mirror. He didn’t have contacts now to protect him. He was a sitting duck out here, and half blind to boot.

  He rubbed his head and focused on breathing until his stomach settled down again, closing his eyes and listening for any hint of approaching footsteps above the hush of the little waves. Absently, he tried to wiggle the iron cuff off is hand, but it was too tight. In order to get it off, he’d have to break some of the bones in his hand, and he didn’t want to do that until he had a mirror and was able to fix it right away.

  Presently, he felt something brush his arm. Assuming it to be beach grass, he rubbed away the tickle and ignored it. But then it touched his cheek. He jerked back, his eyes popping open, to see a single rose suspended in midair, about three inches from his nose.