Bare Your Teeth, Wicked Ones

32. Wanted and Needed

William

William dreamed of a black sea and eternal pain. Sea foam filled his lungs. Further and further away he slipped. Memories of laughter, what he remembered to be his family's voices whispered against his ears. He thought what they said was kind but could not process their words. Was this it, Elysium? Had the Broken Soul deemed him unworthy and dragged him beneath the waters to suffer?

Then the sea burst into deep blue, and he sat up in a hospital bed coughing erratically.

"Nicholas?" Shouldn't have been the first name uttered from his chapped lips, but William wanted nothing more than to see him, to feel a pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips, but the fae was not there. No one was.

"Nurse," the word fell silent when he caught sight of his right arm, or what should have been his right arm.

William urged the appendage to move, and the metal monstrosity obeyed. The smooth metal curled as fingers should, but it was cold to the touch. He ripped his hospital gown from his body, revealing the metal had fused with his shoulder. Strings of silver spread like unsettling cobwebs through his skin, then faded.

Memories flooded in of Fearworn, screaming, blood, smoke, fire, and pain. His arm lay in the mud, broken and ruined. His leg, too, lost. He threw aside the sheets to find his right leg glistening silver up to his midthigh. These were not prosthetics. They were fae magic and he did not know what to think of them. Grateful to move the limbs as freely as before, others were not so lucky, but he was more angry. Infuriated that no one asked if he wanted these contraptions. Frustrated that he awoke to some thing connected to him, replacing what had been lost that he strangely wanted to mourn. And worried that Nicholas was not here to explain.

Erratic breaths tore through his chest. Confusion rattled his mind. His eyes strayed about the room. Familiar supplies stacked atop shelves along the pale blue walls. The paint had chipped and the wooden floor held countless scrape marks. William was utterly alone, until the door opened.

"You're finally awake, Mr Vandervult, how wonderful," the nurse said with a careful approach. Her eyes lingered on the silver appendages. He quickly covered himself with the blankets.

"What happened?" he asked, voice grumbled and rough. He needed a drink, but he needed answers more. "To Fearworn, to everyone, where am I?"

"Fearworn is dead."

William laughed causing a cough to rattle his chest. The nurse shuffled towards the sink. A glass sat on the edge that she filled and offered him. He chugged the cool water, then whispered, "Say that again?"

"Fearworn is dead, sir."

"How?"

"Well, I know little more than what I have heard. Rumors say a shade obliterated Fearworn. Every time I hear a story, it is a little different than the last, but they always say it was a battle of shades that no one could contend with, and we won, thanks not only to that effort, but yours and the other soldiers as well."

We won. William never thought he would live to hear those words. They were beautiful.

"You are in Millbury Hospital. Our town is the closest to the Deadlands," she continued.

"How long have I been asleep?"

To have traveled out of the Deadlands would have taken time. The generals would have been careful with the wounded, so it would have been a slow march. More importantly, his wounds were great, the pain even more so. He should have died.

William's fingertips danced over his chin, sensing neither wound nor scar. This healing was not mortal magic. Wounds such as his were a death sentence, and he swore his heart had stopped, that Death finally got her claws in him and swept him away. To have survived, a fae, a powerful one at that, spared him and connected these peculiar appendages. That couldn't have been Nicholas, could it?