Demon Forged

hands into his pants pockets and leaned a shoulder against the broken door frame. Two more novices—Becca and Randall—peeked around him.
    Irena looked at Pim. “Why did you not heal it before she did?”
    “Healing takes concentration. And I couldn’t.” She swallowed and darted a nervous look at Drusilla.
    Afraid, Alejandro thought, that Dru would be disappointed.
    “Because it hurt,” Irena said flatly.
    “Yes.”
    “ Could you have healed it?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    Dru stood. “She’s studying anatomy now. Practical application will come later.”
    “Practical application? What is that?” Irena snorted. “She needs practice.”
    “We don’t see so many injuries that she can practice, Irena. It’s not like practicing with a weapon, when you can just pick up a sword. We have to wait until someone needs us.”
    “Then we’ll practice now.” Irena spread her fingers. “Cut off one, Pim. Then heal it.”
    Gasping, Pim looked up at Dru, who shrugged. A dagger appeared in Irena’s grip and she extended the handle toward the novice. Pim took it with shaking fingers.
    She stared at Irena’s hand, then swallowed. “I can’t.”
    “You just attacked me with your sword in there.” Irena jerked her head back toward the gymnasium.
    “That was different. I knew I wouldn’t hurt you.”
    “You could have.”
    “But not on purpose.” Pim looked at Irena’s fingers again. “Not like this.”
    Alejandro read the frustration on Irena’s face. She didn’t understand that. Practice among Guardians hurt. They almost always drew blood, caused injury—and none of it was by accident. To prepare to fight demons, novices had to go for blood. They only held back from a death blow.
    “And this is how you will become a healer? By watching and never doing?”
    “She is a healer,” Dru said. “It does her credit that she can’t cold-bloodedly chop off your fingers.”
    He didn’t think anyone else would’ve recognized the hurt on Irena’s face. Cold-blooded was the very last thing she was. To her, this wasn’t about causing pain, but eventually being able to stay alive through it.
    He stepped forward, but Irena looked at Pim again and said, “She is right; it does you credit. I would cut my own finger off if your Gift could heal self-inflicted wounds. I would ask Hugh if you could heal what a human does to me. I would ask Dru, but I know she will not.”
    And Alejandro could not. Did Irena know that, or did she simply not consider asking him?
    He started toward them. “Let her heal mine. Irena can cut off my—”
    “No, Olek. Je ne peux pas .”
    She couldn’t. Alejandro stopped, holding on tightly to his shock. What could that mean? She’d inflicted damage easily enough during his training, and they had only grown apart—and antagonistic—since then. Good Christ, the one thing that had never occurred to him in four hundred years was that she might not be able to deliberately do him harm—even knowing that he would be quickly healed.
    Even knowing that good would come of it.
    Hope started in his chest, and he ruthlessly squashed that fragile flicker. He had lived two hundred years with that hope. If he believed Irena could be his future, then he was doomed never to move forward. For a moment, he hated her for giving him even a spark of hope with those words . . . and he hated himself for latching onto it so easily.
    Irena didn’t look at him, but watched Pim’s face. “There aren’t enough of us. We are outnumbered by demons, nosferatu, and nephilim. One day, you’ll need to heal Drusilla or one of your friends, and you’ll need to heal more than their fingers. You must practice, and you might as well begin with me, who you care nothing about.”
    Pim looked at Irena’s hands again, her fingers tightening around the dagger handle. After a tense moment, she shook her head. “I can’t. Not like this.”
    Irena sighed. She had lost, Alejandro thought. She would not stop fighting, but in this battle, she had been overpowered.
    “I will.” Becca stepped forward, then hesitated and looked back at Hugh. “If it’s okay.”
    Castleford nodded, and when she turned her back to him his lips compressed, as if he were trying not to smile.
    Becca’s nervousness crawled over Alejandro’s psyche like fire ants. She knelt, took the dagger, and placed the blade below the first knuckle of Irena’s index finger. Slowly, she began to draw the blade back and forth, wincing as the blood