Arrowan

My office and the exam room off it were easily the cleanest, most organized rooms in the whole building.

They were also the only rooms that remotely deserved either descriptor.

Luin was a cleaning fiend around the hospital. He seemed to be everywhere. I'd go downstairs for lunch and inevitably run into him in the hall or pass a room where he was tirelessly unpacking boxes and keeping careful ledgers of our supplies. When we first introduced ourselves here, everyone was visibly impressed with me because of my healing affinity. It only took a couple of days for them to realize the person they should actually be grateful for was Luin, since there was no way this place could be ready in time without him.

He had started with my office and exam room, which was why they were so put-together. Now he was working his way methodically through each room, cleaning and sorting as he went. They gave him an assistant, Uraia, who had the muscle power Luin lacked and who didn't seem to mind being part of Luin's frenzy. A few other people were a part of the effort, though they were nowhere near as efficient as my bond mate was. The rest of us were in meetings for a lot of the day.

I had to sit through hour after hour of the planning committee's sessions, since I had landed the position of head healer by default. It didn't matter whether I had a mind for strategy; I was the person with the highest healing affinity, so I would be in charge of the hospital. It made a kind of sense, unfortunately; otherwise, I would have argued my way out of it. As patients came in, they would be sent to one of the lesser healers or medics if it was obvious they would suffice. Anytime our office workers weren't sure who to send a patient to, I would make the call since I could quickly evaluate the severity of their wounds. All patients would be checked in through my office for this reason – and because that was the only way to ensure the critically injured reached me as quickly as possible.

So yes, I understood why they had me running the hospital. Especially since Luin could whiz through the organizational side of things. He was exactly the right person to track our supply usage and our staffing levels to make sure we were adequately prepared. What I did not understand was why that meant I had to sit in on the higher-up meetings.

I tapped my pen against my thigh while Elaina and Helin, who were the Seelie and Unseelie battle leaders, debated which camp to attack first. They both seemed to have gone into this believing we should target the Unseelie first, but were debating the pros and cons anyway. It was boring.

I caught the eye of the Unseelie to my left. He was another healer, and he would be in charge of the hospital whenever I was away. He had an eerily blank stare, and the effect of it with his extreme pallor and almost white eyes was enough to send a shiver down my spine, even though I had grown up surrounded by Unseelie fae. There was no denying some of us looked plain creepy. His name was Jaron, which was the same as my father – another admittedly unfair strike against him.

"- Arrowan?" someone said.

Shoot. I hadn't been paying attention at all. "Um... what?"

Elaine raised a brow slightly and said, "I asked how many people you think we should allocate for transporting the injured to you."

Oh, so they did need something from me at this meeting. It would have been a relief to know this wasn't a complete waste of my time if I hadn't been caught zoning out so hard. I had absolutely no answer ready, so I looked to Jaron.

"That will vary depending on how many people will be fighting and how risky the venture is," he said. "A stealth mission would require fewer than a head-on attack."

Elaine pursed her lips and looked to Helin. They seemed to communicate wordlessly, then she nodded. "Give me a ratio, then. For a head-on attack, how many transporters per hundred fae?"

She looked to me again, and my mind scrambled. What did I know of war? I was too far out of my depth here. "Your forces are mostly Seelie, right?" I asked. Since the population of Faerie was overwhelmingly Seelie, it seemed a safe assumption.

"Yes, about ten to one."

"Well, most Seelie can teleport. There will likely be a lot of cases where the injured party will be able to take themselves to the hospital. It would help us keep our transport numbers down."

Helin frowned. "Yes, that's true. So, taking that into account, how many do you think we need?"

I just wasn't getting out of this. I looked again to Jaron for salvation. He didn't seem to need to think about this at all. "Five per hundred fighters should suffice. It's probably an overestimation, but part of their job will be to monitor the battlefield to make sure everyone on our side who needs help is getting it, and it's bound to be chaotic out there."

Elaine nodded and her assistant wrote down the figure.

The spotlight moved away from me and the hospital and I sighed a relieved breath, then caught Jaron's eye again and nodded my thanks. His lips twitched upward in a smile before he refocused on the meeting. At least it looked like working with him wouldn't be so bad.

I caught up with Elaina after the meeting when she was almost out the door. It was the first time I had seen her alone, and it was maybe the only opportunity I would have to get some answers to questions that had been haunting me.

"Do you have a minute?" I asked, slightly out of breath from running after her. The woman walked fast.

"Sure, what do you need?"

"I was just wondering... How do you see this going? We're vastly outnumbered and fighting on two fronts. I want change as much as the next person, but I don't see how it's possible."

Elaine's dark grey eyes filled with understanding and she smiled kindly. "You seem to forget how much more powerful fae are when Unseelie and Seelie work together. It's true we can't match either Alterran army for numbers, but we're well equipped to strike out at both sides to devastating effect."

"But... what's to stop them from coming after us here in Faerie in retaliation?"

"They can't get through our wards. Our portals are only open to people who are connected to both the Seelie and Unseelie."

She seemed awfully confident in the wards. I'd have to take some time to study them, to see if they were really as strong as Elaina seemed to believe. I didn't think I could ever rely on them so completely, though. Every ward, no matter how strong, could be broken by someone with enough skill and time. Maybe we would have people whose sole job was to maintain them throughout the war?

Elaina stepped away from me and said, "Take care, Arrowan." I nodded in response and she was gone before I could decide whether she had really answered my questions or not.

--

The first battle our people joined was two weeks later. Luin and I shut ourselves in my exam room, since Uraia and an Unseelie named Ishtar were waiting for the first casualties in my office. We were both nervous, but Luin was especially tense. As it usually was when he was stressed, his back had been ramrod straight all morning – as though perfect posture were some strange coping mechanism. His shirt was crisp and white, as though he was daring the universe to send someone bloody our way to soil it, and his eyes betrayed his nerves by darting around.

I sat in the chair next to his and pulled him against me. It wasn't our most comfortable position, but he melted into my side anyway and I pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

"We're going to be okay," I said. It was the most I could promise him. I didn't know what the outcome of all this would be, but I knew we were safe enough here. Even if Alterran forces somehow made it into Faerie, Luin could get us home in seconds. I wouldn't be ashamed to abandon our posts here, not if it meant our safety.

"I know," Luin said snappishly. "It's everyone else I'm worried about."

I grimaced. I didn't have a rebuttal for that. Luin chewed on his lip, and I waited him out. It was obvious he had something more weighing on him. "What if my family is part of this?" he eventually whispered. "My sister or her bond mate? I know my mother wouldn't join in..."

My heart ached for him. I hadn't left anyone important back in Alterra. All of my friends had been superficial ones, and my family and I had been walking separate paths for years. It really wasn't fair that he'd been the one to leave his family at such a young age. My extra years in our home realm had been completely wasted on me.

My hand slid down his arm until it reached his palm, and our fingers intertwined. Luin relaxed by degrees, but his heart was still heavy with worry. I scrambled for some way to make this better for him, and sagged with relief when I found something. "Didn't you tell me your sister was expecting a child a few months ago? No way would she get involved in fighting right now unless she had no choice."

Luin's eyes widened. "You're right! I can't believe I forgot." And then an old sadness filled those bright, mercury eyes. "She's still a teenager in my head. It's weird to think of her as a mother."

There was a real chance this war would change things for us. At the end of it, if Elaina's plans worked out, Luin would be allowed to see his family again. I didn't point this out, though. Better for Luin not to be counting on what seemed to me like a remote possibility.

The conversation fizzled out before I found anything satisfying to say at all. Luin was quickly distracted, anyway, as commotion erupted in the office.

"Arrowan!" someone was calling, and the voice was so distorted by panic that I didn't realize it was Uraia until I had opened the adjoining door between my exam room and the office.

Once the door was open, my instinct was to throw it shut again. My stomach turned and rolled, sending a spurt of acid up my throat that I quickly swallowed down. I couldn't be vomiting at the sight of my first patient. If I was going to be so weak-minded, I might as well go home.

Luin heaved and retched into a trash can behind me and I almost lost my breakfast all over again.

Without waiting for my orders – it was all too obvious I would be the one to handle this case – Uraia and a Seelie I didn't recognize were carrying in someone whose lower half spurted blood in all directions. Another fae walked behind them and almost slipped on the macabre red trail, but thankfully managed to catch herself after a couple of wobbles. In this fae's arms was a severed leg, the one that should have been attached to my patient.

My stomach rolled again and I pressed a tight fist to it. There was no time for this. It was a wonder my patient hadn't bled out yet, though I couldn't blame the transporter for not taking the time to make a tourniquet. After all, teleportation was instant and getting to a healer was far more important.

The patient was laid out on my exam table and didn't move. His face was ashier than mine from the blood loss even though a Seelie like him would usually have glowed a rich tan like Luin did. There was no time to waste.

I shut down the emotional center of my mind and focused only on the task in front of me. With that ironclad grip on my disgust and horror, I took the leg from its carrier and laid it out on the table so it was lined up with the violently spurting stump it had left behind on the Seelie. I had no idea if limb reattachment was possible, or if I would have the skill to do it. Trying and failing instead of healing the wound – which included a severed femoral artery – might mean the difference between life and death for this man. I didn't have time to debate my options and I didn't know how long it had taken him to reach my table. The smart choice would have been to write off the leg as a complete loss, but in my absolute panic, I made a different choice.

Frankly, if someone hands you a leg, you feel like you should do something with it.

I held the man's upper thigh and the rest of his leg together and threw my magic into them. It felt odd, and sort of wrong, to be trying to focus my healing away from sealing the wound directly, but I saw and felt the flesh starting to stitch back together. Using my magic to guide me, I adjusted the angle of the severed leg so it lined up better and kept channeling magic into it like a battering ram, more than I could remember ever expelling at once. I quickly started feeling dizzy and weak from the abrupt magic drainage.

"Luin," I gasped. I wasn't even sure if he could hear me over the commotion and the sound of his own retching, but only seconds later I felt him channeling magic into my body. It wasn't coming in as quickly as I was spending it, though, and I began to worry I would fail to save this man because of a magic shortage, not because he was past saving.

"Get Jaron," I said, and my voice came out in a wheeze. Footsteps dashed out of the room. Jaron was on standby today, since we were treating this battle as all-hands-on-deck while we all got a feel for what kind of staffing we actually needed during a battle. Thank goodness.

I started feeling shaky and ill, and my head throbbed even though I wasn't nearly done with my work yet. I sank to my knees, which helped with the dizziness, and rested my head on the table in front of me. Luin redoubled his efforts, and the stream of magic he channeled into me grew. It was still not replenishing my stores as quickly as I depleted them, but it was enough to buy me enough time until Jaron sprinted into the room.

At this point, I was so horribly dizzy I would have sworn I could see things spinning even with my eyes shut. I felt Jaron's hands press down on mine and his own magic joined my own. It was the first time I had ever worked with someone else like this before, but he seemed to know how to direct his magic so it was working with my own rather than against it. Together, we moved through the leg and recreated the millions of small attachments that would make it work with the rest of the body again. By the end, I was reasonably sure it would work again, though I couldn't be certain.

I sank down onto the floor – not even my knees could support me anymore. Luin continued to funnel magic into me, and since he could do this more or less forever, it was only a matter of time before I recovered. Hopefully that happened before the next patient was brought in.