Lionheart

by Thea Harrison

  He heard himself ask, “How many Wyr have you been involved in putting down?”

  She sighed and looked disappointed. “Five.”

  Disappointed in him? His grip tightened on the brandy bottle. Fuck that. He pushed for more. “How many Wyr have you personally euthanized?”

  “Three.” Her steady gaze never wavered.

  He drank more brandy. “And how did it make you feel, Doctor?”

  Something dark overshadowed her fine features. “I felt heartsick,” she whispered. “And sick to my stomach. I wasn’t able to eat for days. There’s nothing worse than knowing you can’t do anything to help someone—that you’ve tried everything, but nothing has worked. If that happens, it’s a mercy when their bodies give out. But if their bodies are strong and their minds are terrible… Cages for the long-lived Wyr are crueler than anything. But it is the hardest thing I have ever done, to help make a strong heart stop beating. I wasn’t alone when I did it. In the New York demesne, several medical professionals are required to act together when putting down a feral Wyr. The law is designed to help us cope afterward, but each time I felt like I had done it by myself.”

  She hadn’t flinched away from any of his questions, he would give her that. But her eyes shone with an extra glitter as if she held back tears.

  There were only a few swallows of brandy left. He upended the bottle and drank the amber liquid down. “We’re wasting time,” he said. “And I have more healing spells to cast.”

  Robin cocked his head. “Healing spells?”

  He told the puck, “I have awakened, but the assassin’s spell is still trapped in my body. Kathryn will perform surgery tomorrow morning to take it out. After you’ve eaten and rested, I want you to do whatever she needs to get ready. Is that clear?”

  Dismay filled the puck’s expression, and his narrow shoulders bowed. He whispered, “Yes, my lord.”

  Oberon threw the bottle into the fireplace where it shattered. “Get out,” he said. “I don’t want to see either of you until tomorrow morning.”

  Neither one of them argued. As they slipped out, Kathryn shut the door.

  Oberon stood looking around. The empty room was full of ghosts from happier memories of a different man. He hated it in here.

  After brooding, he got back to work.

  Time passed, and the room darkened as the sun set outside. He lit witchlights and continued throwing spell after spell. After a while, he grew irritable about fighting so hard to save his own life when others might soon judge it needed to be taken away.

  A knock sounded at the door, and the all-too-easy rage flared to life again. He roared, “What did I say earlier about leaving me alone?”

  The door opened, and Kathryn walked in carrying a tray full of food. Not speaking or looking at him, she set the tray down on the desk and walked out again.

  He looked at the contents. Grilled fish and potatoes, a tankard of beer, and a piece of paper lay folded underneath a knife and fork. Shaking off the utensils, he unfolded the paper. It contained a list of things to cover in an advance directive.

  Gods damn it. Fine. Rapidly he wrote out the advance directive and signed it, and then he worked on a terse letter to Annwyn, labeled at the top with: In the Event of My Death, and it was all so fucking tedious when he would much rather get drunk out of his mind.

  What do you say to someone who had been more loyal than you had any right to expect, and you just didn’t care?

  In the end, he let the ghost of the man he had once been speak for him.

  Annwyn,

  This damn spell has turned me into a monster, so I have decided to take what actions I can while I can still take them. I insisted Dr. Shaw perform the surgery. By the time you get here we will know if it worked or not.

  Kathryn tried to talk me out of this course of action. She would much prefer to do the surgery in New York, but I wanted her to do it here in Lyonesse. The responsibility for what happens next is all mine.

  If you’re reading this, the surgery didn’t work and I’m dead. I wanted it this way. I wanted to die at home.

  You should know, I remember the many years of service and devotion you have given me. And I remember the love and very high esteem I have always held you in. You will make a splendid queen for the Daoine Sidhe.

  Kill Isabeau for me. I wanted to do it myself, but you would be my next choice.

  My best felicitations for a bright future.

  Yours,

  Oberon

  After the ink had dried, he folded the letter, dripped melted wax over it, then fixed the wax with his seal and set it to one side with the advance directive. Then he ate every scrap of food and got back to work. He finished casting the final healing spell just before dawn.

  Leaving the office, he went to wash and shave. After he had dressed in a clean linen shirt and black pants, he walked to the Garden Hall and stood in front of the windows, watching the sunrise. It was spectacular. Every conceivable dawn color streaked the sky in a rainbow kaleidoscope that spanned hundreds of miles.

  He didn’t have to open a window to know that the temperature was already above freezing outside. The day was going to be warm and brilliant, as if nature herself wanted to demonstrate all the damn pleasures he would be missing if he didn’t wake up again.

  One corner of his mouth notched up in a grim smile. “Yeah,” he whispered, “fuck you too.”

  The atmosphere in the hall shifted, a subtle but unmistakable change. Even though Kathryn made no noise, a gentle current of air brought her fresh scent to him.

  Turning his head, he met her gaze. She wore a hunter’s colors, browns and blacks, and her shining hair was pulled back in a tight braid. She had found a quilted, sleeveless jacket from somewhere, and it fit her slim frame well. He looked down at her hands, lax at her sides. They were steady as a rock.

  She walked over to stand beside him and looked out the window.

  “I left your advance directive on my desk,” he told her.

  “I saw it.” She sighed. “You can always change your mind. You know Robin would carry us to the crossover passageway. In very little time we could be on our way to New York.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind.” He captured one of her hands and toyed with her fingers, and she let him. “I’m putting my life in your hands. If you can’t save me, don’t bother waking me up.”

  She whispered, “Don’t put that on me.”

  “You don’t like it, tough,” he growled, tightening his hold on her hand. “I would trade places with you in a heartbeat. If you can’t save me, don’t wake me up.”

  “Goddamn you, Oberon!”

  That was when he realized she was holding on to him as tightly as he was holding on to her. “Where’s Robin?”

  Even as he spoke footsteps sounded in the hallway, and the puck answered, “Here, sire.”

  “Good.” Releasing Kathryn, Oberon turned away from the dawn. He was tired of talking. “Let’s get this done.”

  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 late
r.”

  “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.