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Karen bit her lip and knelt down by Daniel as Alaryia began glowing again. “Please be all right, Dan.”

“He’ll be okay,” Alaryia promised. “I’m keeping an eye on him while I work. If the antidote starts wearing off before I finish, I’ll wake him up to drink some more. I hope it doesn’t come to that though. It would be painful for him. Which is why I’m doing it this way.” She plunged one glowing hand into his back as if it were not solid. Karen had seen other healers do that in an emergency and shuddered because she knew the amount of damage it would be doing to her brother’s body. Still, they didn’t really have any other option.

“It’ll be alright, Kaz.” Sonia squeezed her shoulders. “Messy, yes, but the damage will be fixable.”

“I know, mum.” Karen gave her a weak smile. “It’s just because it’s Dan. How’s the rest of the battle going?”

Sonia’s eyes glazed over for a moment as she checked and then smiled. “Not too badly. The bombs took out many of her servants and the rest are gradually surrendering as they realise their mistress has been captured. It should be over soon.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” Matthias said. “Savira has some surprisingly strong followers. If we hadn’t caught her by surprise it could have been very hard to pull this off. As it is, we only have four bad injuries including Dan and Kiasan, and none of them should be fatal.”

“That’s good at least.” Karen smoothed Daniel’s hair back as he whimpered, even though he was unconscious. “Damn! He’s still hurting.”

“I’m nearly there,” Alaryia said soothingly. “He’s holding up well.” She plunged her hand in even further then gave a triumphant cry. “Got it.” She pulled her hand out and even though she left no wound behind, her hand was covered in blood as was the glistening shard she was clutching. She glared at the object for a moment before crushing it. “He’s still got a bit of antidote in his system so I’m going to heal him a little before I wake him up. He will need more antidote, though, so I’m not going to be able to do it completely.” She closed her eyes and began to glow again.

Karen watched her for a moment, then rose to her feet and headed for Savira just as the reminder of their troops arrived. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do but she knew she wanted to hurt the dragon for what she’d done to her brother. Sonia caught her by the arm and shook her head.

“Leave her, Kaz,” she said. “We need to question her before we decide what to do with her and we won’t be able to do that if she’d dead.”

“I wasn’t going to kill her,” Karen said. “Just hurt her a bit.”

“Not deliberately, maybe,” Sonia said. “But you’re so angry I don’t think you could restrain yourself once you started.” She looked over to where Alaryia was just waking Daniel up. “If we’re all clear, we should get back so we can question her in comfort.”

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