Chapter Text
Damhian’s head swirled. Hot and feverish. His heart pulsed rapidly as the poisons within his veins burned throughout his body, warring for dominance. One poison felt sharp, angry, and green as it coursed through his center, while the other burned ice cold, maroon-colored down his throat, unnaturally chipping away at the first poison, scoring his innards. Damhian wanted to tear into his flesh, puke his guts out, dive head first into a cold icy bath, anything to drown out the fires within him.
He writhed against the strong arms that held him down on the bed. A spike of pain shot through him from his leg, adding to the mind-numbing agony. Visions of the crash came back to him as he jostled the tiny shards of metal embedded in his flesh. Damhian was being pursued. Someone had set a trap for him. How he had pulled himself out of the wreckage, he didn’t know. Only he had gotten away.
"Hold him still," an angry, rasping voice snapped as Damhian tried to turn away.
“His fever is not going down," a voice to his right said. The voice was low and familiar. Jayden. That’s right, Jayden had come to his rescue. But how? There was no way he could have heard his mental panic from so far. Damhian felt a weight push into him, forcing him flat on his back as a pair of hands pulled on his leg, moving it back to where it had been resting.
“It’s probably all the metal in his skin. His wounds healed over too well. Heavy metals are dangerous to the fair folk,” this voice was higher. A woman’s voice this time as the hands moved along the length of his calf, squeezing gently at the worst spots. “We are going to have to cut into his skin to get the shrapnel out.”
That didn’t sound good. Damhian groaned, blinking his eyes open woozily. An unfamiliar ceiling met his gaze. Turning his head, he saw Jayden was holding him down. A Woman with long black hair that looked stringy and wet examined his leg. He couldn't tell what she was—a Selkie or water witch, perhaps? They weren't looking at his face.
“Will Lord Damhian be able to walk again?”
“Not sure. That depends on whether we can get all the metal out,” the woman grimaced as she turned to her tools.
Feeling more coherent, Damhian lifted his head to get a better look at his leg. They had cut away his pants, exposing the cuts from the larger pieces of metal he had pulled out of his skin. The cuts had healed, but nasty bruises spread across his caff. The center of the bruises was black, with red, yellowish, angry outlines. It screamed of infection.
Damhian fell back down as a surge of nausea overcame him. He groaned again and turned his head away. Drawing Jayden’s attention.
“Hey, Boss. Bet you feel like shit.” a cheeky smile crossed his face.
“Yeah, You should try it sometime.” Damhian rasped out. Jayden chuckled, patting his chest.
“Don't worry, we'll get you fixed up in no time, right doc?”
“Feed him this,” the healer said, ignoring Jayden’s question, shoving a bowl filled with something pungent into Jayden's free hand. It was so awful-smelling that even Jayden recoiled backward with disgust.
“Get me something to chase it down with,” Damhian requested. If this were anything like the other healer's concoctions he had taken in the past, he would be stuck with the taste for days if he didn't have something to drink with it. Jayden nodded, pulling away.
Damhian missed his touch already. With Jayden gone, there was nothing to distract him from his nausea or the feeling of the healer placing wet cloths over his leg, soaking the skin to prepare it for reopening. He tried not to think of the pain he was about to experience.
An achingly long time later, Jayden returned with a bottle of whisky and two glass cups.
“Bottoms up,” he cheered Damhain as he helped him down the heal’s medicine. The concoction tasted as bad as it smelled. The sting of alcohol quickly washed it away. It took two more shots of whisky before Damhian felt pleasantly numb enough for the healer to start. Then, all hell broke loose as soon as the healer's tools cut into his skin.
The first cuts weren’t so bad, but the more she worked, the deeper she had to dig to get the embedded metals from his leg. With little to distract him, Damhian lost track of time with each new cut into his skin the healer made. He slipped into a state of delirium. Lost somewhere between pain, sleep, and wakefulness.
There was Merrmuring he couldn’t make out— then something soft was placed in his mouth.
More cuts. More pain, The sound of metal being placed on metal. His vision shifted in and out. He let out a muffled scream as one of the tools pulled a piece near the bone.
A hand wiped the sweat from his brow. Jayden’s hand felt cool against Damhian’s feverish skin.
The only constants were Jayden's voice in his mind, his hand on Damhian chest, and a knife biting into his skin. By the time the healer was done, he couldn’t feel anything but numbing pain radiating through his body. Some more of the fowl-smelling concoction was placed to his lips. It made him feel better and lighter.
“Rest, my friend. You've been through enough,” there was a gentle push of Jayden’s voice in his mind. Damhian didn't resist letting darkness overtake him.