14

Advanced Healing wasn't going to be a lot of classroom work or even textbook anything given the nature of it and the fact it was a new class. But mostly, it was magic that couldn't just be replicated like talismans or growing magic. It had to be used on someone live.

So it wasn't really at the designated time but more emergency services?

I fully understood and agreed, but it was a nightmare to coordinate and sort of became the magical version of House . I figured that out with the first case.

Except with a lot more people.

Like… A lot more people.

Many, many more people.

Fuck, it was sort of comical, but I also understood that too because fairies wanted to learn what they'd missed and how far witches and warlocks had come. Especially since some had unlocked our magic. So a lot of it was people trying to spy and check out information.

Except the people who did that weren't the people who would donate their time to educate the future Queen of Faerie. Like… Duh.

I mean, the commanders weren't wrong that assholes lived for instances to get near me and would be underhanded to try and pull shit on me. True. For sure, but this also involved their council, one of their councilmen my teacher.

Whatever, it wasn't logical, but I couldn't argue that bad guys didn't follow logic, and since that was what I preached all the time, I didn't fight this.

The first assignment involved a supe police officer injured in the line of duty, so I saw Captain Reddy, the attractive wolf shifter I had history with. Not the naughty kind since he had kids older than me, but the rumors would say otherwise.

Still, he was attractive and I'd made comments saying as much.

Which was why a jealous Julian and Darby showed me exactly why I should focus on them instead of paying attention to the wolf. Over the whole weekend after my period.

I was convinced.

Oh, and we were able to help the shifter. It would take him about a month to fully heal and repair his relationship with his animal, but he'd be just fine.

There were a few "easy" cases that were just for teaching examples and there was no risk to the patient. The only inconvenience was them having to wait to be healed until everyone could get there, but they agreed so they could be under the care of the royal healers after.

And we had alerted supes across the board so they knew this was happening. All the different species leaders were notified, and it was on their news that it was my class but sort of like a task force to push healing. Also, to make this a class for people who showed potential in healing.

A few weeks into the semester, we were called in at like nine at night for a girl who was only ten and the right side of her body had been crushed. That was all I knew.

Luckily, it had been that side, and help had gotten there fast enough because her ribs would have pierced her heart not long after if it had been the other side.

When I arrived, they had already healed most of the life-threatening wounds. They weren't delaying to wait for me or the team, simply if they did it too fast it could shock her system and kill her.

I jumped in to help and give the healers energy while I learned and did what they did. They thanked me for the power boost but then stepped away to discuss the next steps… While I leaned in closer when something caught my eye.

Namely scars.

From cigarettes.

Specific scars I knew well because I used to have them on my body before my magic came out and I started getting my injuries healed. Some of them only after my wings came out.

"How did this happen?" I demanded.

"She ran behind a car and was hit," a man said from off to the side, answering the wrong question. It made sense that he would think that was what I was asking.

Except what he said made no sense.

I glanced up and met the gaze of a self-important man who dared me to question him, begged me to challenge him. I knew the look well. It was one of someone who was ready to smack me down because he thought he had all of the power in the situation.

Fool.

I had all the power in any situation now.

"Why was a girl this young outside at night unsupervised to be running behind vehicles?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You'd have to ask her parents, but they're called ‘accidents' for a reason, Princess," he replied with a haughty tone.

"Yes, but if they'd backed over her, they'd have to be going pretty fast to get from the bumper hitting her to then crushing her under the wheel," I said I as moved between her and the man. "Normally, getting hit by a back bumper knocks someone out of the way, especially if they were running. It's a physics thing."

I had absolutely no idea if that was actually true, but I wanted to push this man's buttons.

Apparently, I didn't have to push them hard.

"You were brought in to heal the girl, nothing more, so I suggest—"

"I suggest you not speak to the future Queen of Faerie like that," one of the captains working on this project interjected. He was a skilled healer and one of his grandparents had been a royal healer. When he asked to be part of this rapid response group, I was all for it.

Ignoring the five male objections since he was hot.

Seriously, all fairies were hot. My guys needed to get over that.

I hadn't even learned the man's name yet since there were always so many to remember.

"I apologize," the man said to the captain, even dipping his head to him . "But we're all concerned about the girl's life. That's what matters, not the details to—"

"Most competent people can handle both," I chuckled darkly. "I'm sorry if you cannot." I met the captain's curious gaze. "Take the parents into custody for questioning. Any of her siblings take into protective custody and make sure they're checked out and cared for."

"On what grounds do you think you have to decide that?" the man demanded, taking a step towards me. He stopped when the captain put his hand on the man's chest. "You will destroy this program if people hear how you—"

"What? Make sure everything is above board and people are protected?" I pushed, stepping towards him to make it clear that I wasn't afraid of him.

He wasn't deterred though. "How you want to make everyone grow up without a father figure like you did and clearly needed."

People were aghast that he dared speak to me that way, but I was more than ready for it.

I smirked at him as I leaned in. "You mean her abuser , right? Meaning you know exactly what is going on here and her situation. So you only called because there was no chance of her surviving this like his other abuse for you to hide and you had to. You didn't report it like you should."

"Don't put words in my mouth and—"

"The princess doesn't need to when I'm wearing telepathy runes and you were preparing what to attack her with when she saw whatever proof of abuse you were worried about," the captain said firmly. "Which is why I called a team in." He leaned into the guy. "And I was raised by two parents and all my grandparents, so enough with your bullshit."

Wow, that was impressive. He gave the guy over to the team that arrived and relayed my orders, nodding that he'd handle it.

We just had to worry about the girl who was still in a bad state and knocked out.

I joined the healers and thanked Calarel when she arrived. They went back and forth with how to move forward and the priority. Then they agreed on that, and the problem was we could only heal her to a certain point.

"This is the point I don't understand," I cut in. "Yes, you cannot see exactly how the bones should be given her age and size—everyone is different. But you know how a bone should be and have the pieces inside of her."

"Some were basically ground to nothing from what we're seeing, Your Highness," someone explained.

"Right, but those will repair. Bones still grow—she's still growing," I pushed. "They will have time to fill in. It's not like a tooth where it's grown out or am I misunderstanding this?" I glanced between them.

"You're not but more missing a piece," Calarel sighed as she glanced at the girl. "She is so young that she has—matching everything with her growth plates is the problem. We can't—nothing will line up how it should. There's no magic that can fool the body that the trauma never happened to her."

"Why not?" I pushed back, holding up a hand when people immediately went to jump on me. "Hear me out because the point of this is to push further and hopefully even develop new ways to heal." I gave them a moment to remember that.

I realized I didn't know how to explain where my head was, and I glanced around for a moment before finding just a cotton swab. I grabbed it and set it on the rolling table near us.

"Say that's her bone. What it was. It's organic, but it's not a tree. You can't turn a tree into sawdust and then return it to a living tree. I get that. That's turning back time. However , you can refresh things. Fabric. Wood. We did it with the furniture in my house—filled dents and missing pieces by refreshing it back to what it was."

"In theory , you're not wrong," one of the warlocks in the group agreed with me. "But this isn't something we can just test like on a dresser or desk, Your Highness. I'm not talking down to you when I say this is a little girl and we could do more damage than good."

"Fair. More than fair, and I'm not judging anyone here." I gestured around the group. "This is how humans progress and invent. They brainstorm and think tank things. That's what I'm trying to do. It's what we do in Faerie." Again, I held him off. "And we can do something less invasive than messing around with her bones."

"Get you a cadaver," someone whispered, sounding a bit shocked and also horrified.

I frowned. "I was kinda thinking like a chicken bone to start or something." I felt better when several of the fairies snickered like that was of course where my mind had been at.

The woman dipped her head to me. "I apologize, Your Highness. You mentioned humans and their studies—my mind went right to medical school. I think it's a smart idea, but then I realized what we might have to do to make it happen and my mind spun out a bit. Plus, I have a newborn and I'm a bit sleep-deprived."

I nodded, accepting that, grateful she even made it clear that it wasn't a slight against me. "I think we should get—I know it's crude, but let's get some damn turkeys in here and smash them to rebuild. I've never even seen this process. I understand dead turkeys won't regenerate like live turkeys but…" I looked at Calarel for help.

"It's the right way to approach the situation and start coming up with more ideas," she agreed. "It's living tissue around the bones but not live, so we're not causing pain. There might be some way to start and stop the process like when we restore things like you mentioned your furniture. You put in the power to do the whole item, but I could do just a section."

Even better. Plus, there was healing the girl needed before we could even get to her shattered bones. She was going to be unconscious for days to handle everything that had happened to her.

One of the Guardians approached me on the side. "Your Highness, the stepfather ran. He didn't even come in with the girl's mother or coven leader. They're not talking, and the police are involved—they're saying they will not cooperate with them and are making things difficult. I thought you would want to be updated even if you're busy."

"Thank you. Bring me to them." We were waiting on supplies and more anyways.

I could handle this real fast.

The supe police officers were amused when we arrived, so clearly there had been some posturing or bullshit going on.

"We're already in their custody, so you don't get to just insert yourself and overreach your authority as you—" that same asshole said before I could even talk.

"Hey asshole, I could slit your throat and be covered by diplomatic immunity, so how about you stop annoying me with your barking of stupid," I said as I silenced him magically. "I gave the order for you to be brought into our custody and…" I shook my head. "Stupid bad guys are so much worse."

"Preaching to the choir, Your Highness," one of the cops chuckled.

"Answer me one thing—why is this asshole involved? She's a witch so—he's not like her grandfather or something, right?"

The officer nodded, understanding what I was getting at. "That's for the bigger families or you're used to high-class and rich ones given you came into our world through Artemis. Most normal, nobody families tend to group together. Every normal family can't deal with all the crap of being a coven leader and going to council this and that like Alphas do.

"So like Alphas, they tend to put one in charge. It's not as much of a thing when it's witches and warlocks, more like…" He glanced at his partner. "I think you would know it more as an HOA boss. Make sure no one's leaving the garbage out too long or posting things that make humans suspicious of them. This guy is this group's coven leader."

"Got it, thank you for explaining," I said, before looking at the Guardians. "He gets removed immediately . Also, let's add it to our overflowing lists that I want an interview with each of these coven leaders. Too many witches and warlocks were sold for their magic to be drained under the former council, and they clearly had help. I doubt we caught them all."

"Yes, Your Highness," they accepted.

And sounded a bit tired like I felt. Yeah, the list always grew and nothing was ever fully cleaned up. I felt it too, but such was life.

I asked to be taken to the mother and found someone so cliché white trash that I was shocked she didn't have a rotted or missing tooth. She was bitching that she wanted a cigarette so… Yeah. Cliché.

She smirked when she saw me. "You'll never catch him. He'll drive and drive so you can't teleport to him and stick your nose where it doesn't belong."

"Yes, please explain to me how teleporting works," I chuckled darkly. "I can still teleport to him if he's on the move." I nodded when she didn't seem to believe me. "I've done it many times. I do it all the time when people block me. Him driving doesn't matter. At. All."

"Fucking brats should have behaved and not pissed him off," she bitched. "They ruined everything and—"

My hand flew before I even realized I'd decided to hit her. I backhanded her hard enough that blood exploded from her nose. "The fact you picked a man over your own fucking children who isn't even their father is the problem here. Not them , you fucking pathetic excuse for a mother." I grabbed her face, ignoring her cries of pain. "Think of him."

She did, not understanding what I wanted until it was too late.

"You have any other children?" I checked as I let go of her.

"Yes, Your Highness," one of the Guardians answered me. "All four are being seen by the royal healers and have already confirmed scars and signs of abuse."

"How I discipline my brats is none of your business," the woman snapped.

"You don't remotely believe that or he wouldn't have fucking run," I drawled. I turned to the cops. "We'll get you everything you need to turn over to their council and for your report. We'll be taking both into our custody as I'd ordered and wanted you just looped in."

"Yes, Your Highness," they accepted.

I thanked them and focused back on the Guardians. "Make sure the children get whatever they need and then they can stay at one of the orphanages for grandchildren of fairies. We'll make the exception for them. We need to expand anyways."

"Yes, Your Highness," they accepted again.

Good. That was the only answer they should give.

I smirked at them. "I'll go grab the stepdad real quick."

"Shit," someone behind me hissed.

Probably from my detail.

Yeah, well, they were used to this from me.

It wasn't just that seeing his face in that woman's mind was enough to teleport to him. It was more than that like how my dad had shown me with the animals. Or I'd done before tracing magic.

It was intent. It was… My magic being awesome?

There was still some trace of him on that woman and the little girl. Some essence. Mostly dark that he left on that girl like fingerprints.

The metaphysical kind?

I didn't really know how to explain it.

I just really, really wanted to find the guy and my magic was on the same page with me.

I teleported about twenty feet above where he was, making sure I was cloaked. Smiling evilly when I saw that he was on some rural highway without even streetlights even, I let my wings out and got some good altitude.

"Shit," someone groaned from below me. They probably opened a portal to me and figured out that I was up to something.

Something awesome in my opinion.

I went up a bit more before folding in my wings and dropping fast with gravity like a missile. I adjusted how I needed and made sure my barrier was wrapped around me to keep me safe… As I landed on the hood of the guy's moving truck.

To say it was destroyed was an understatement. I fucking demolished the front, denting the ground under it for sure. The hood and engine section was a pancake, the windshield shattering as the rest of the truck tried to keep going with its momentum.

I smirked at the asshole as the truck split since I'd basically cut the front off. The momentum and force… I basically used myself as one coin to flip the other coin. That kind of physics for sure.

So I was laughing as he—and the rest of the truck—flipped over my head.

Even better?

He was an asshole who didn't wear his seatbelt… Not that I thought it would be much help in something like that.

He landed with the cab and went rolling out of it as the rest of the truck kept flipping along. Honestly, this might have been one of the crazy times that not wearing a seatbelt was better.

Damn.

"So your theory that I can't teleport to you while you're moving is stupid," I taunted as I walked over to him.

"You're fucking nuts, you stupid bitch," he groaned as he grabbed his bleeding side.

"Yeah, I am, and you know what sets me off most?" I jeered as I stood over him. "Child abusers." I made fae fire appear but not in a ball, just at the tips of my fingers. "How many times did you put your fucking cigarettes out on those kids? How many times did you torture your stepkids?"

"What? I don't—I need help! You almost fucking killed me and can't—"

"Actually, she can, cockroach," Morgan said as he moved up next to me. "Our leader can do whatever she wants. You did whatever you wanted to children because they couldn't fight back. Seems fitting to me."

"Doesn't it, though?" I chuckled darkly before moving one finger to the man's arm and burning him. I smiled as he screamed. "That's what it feels like to a child to be burned with a cigarette. That's how sensitive and easily their young skin hurts—the fear they feel when an adult does it to them. You think me a monster? Fine, but it was monsters like you that made me like this."

And then I kept burning him. I did it like twenty times, waking him when he passed out from the pain.

"Those won't ever heal," I purred.

"What? No, someone can—they have to," he sobbed as he reached for the ones I'd left on his face.

"No one can heal her magic," Morgan said with an evil grin as he squatted down next to the man. "Even the most powerful healers here and in Faerie cannot heal fae fire. Only our leader."

I blew on my fingers and let the fire go out like they were matches just to be a shit. I nodded for the other Guardians to take the guy away and get him medical attention before locking him up.

Or drop him down all the stairs they could find. I honestly didn't care.

"How many times did you suffer that pain, Tamsin?" Morgan asked me quietly when everyone else was busy with their tasks.

I swallowed loudly. "More times than I can count. One foster dad got off on watching me limp because he would do it on the bottom of my foot where it wouldn't be seen. It just looked like a messy blister like kids can get. It would be so much worse to walk on and never healed before he did it again. You know what killed me the most?"

"What?" he whispered.

I looked at him then, blinking back tears. "He didn't even fucking smoke. That's why my teachers didn't believe me when I asked for help. He wasn't a smoker and made a big deal if people smoked around him. A doctor who lectured about lung cancer and helped people. But he had such darkness in him from faking how good he was, and he took it out on his fake daughter."

"I'm sorry," he rasped.

"Me too." I sniffled and let out a long breath before standing and turning to see the damage I'd done.

And locking gazes with Neldor.

Fuck.

"How much did you hear?" I asked.

"Enough to know that human is dead," he seethed. "What is his name? Where is he?"

"Dead," I answered honestly, nodding when he didn't seem like he would believe me. I snorted when people around us went tense. "I didn't do it. A crazy patient did in the ER. He was working on a trauma situation and the guy stabbed him. He died a hero and no one ever learned he was a monster, but at least I was freed. His wife couldn't handle her real kids, his death, and me."

"You sound upset with her too," he hedged. "She knew?"

I thought about it for a few moments. "She knew he would take his foster daughter out to the garage alone and I would beg not to go. I would come back crying and she had to hear my screams. So I don't think she knew specifically what he was doing, but she knew about my abuse. She allowed it, and when he died, she never even said a word to me."

Neldor frowned. "What do you mean?"

"My caseworker picked me up from school with all my stuff and I was brought to a home. She told me what happened. He was killed and she like immediately kicked me to the curb. Never even said goodbye to me or let me say goodbye to my ‘siblings.'"

"She tied up loose ends and any witness to her husband's darkness," Morgan muttered, his tone disgusted.

I nodded. There wasn't really anything to say.

But the fucking crater I'd caused landing on the truck like a missile amused me. I thanked Morgan for fixing it and handling the truck. He said I could thank him by not doing it ever again and taking years off his life.

"Fuck, sorry, mate, but it was cathartic," I said, shrugging when he sighed. It was better not to lie.