Rise of Cassian Vale: The Forbidden Healer

Chapter 2

The man in the doorway was still smiling when Cassian reached him.

Cassian didn't say anything. He grabbed the front of the man's shirt with one hand and hit him once, hard, in the jaw.

The sound was ugly, it was a crack, like something breaking inside the man's face. His head snapped back. His whole body went loose for a second, and then he dropped, first onto his knees, then flat onto the floor. Blood ran from his mouth and pooled slowly against the wood.

He tried to get up. His arms shook under him, barely holding his weight.

Cassian stepped closer and put his boot against the man's side, pressing down slowly at first, then harder. The man made a sound that wasn't quite a scream yet, more like the air being forced out of him. His shoulders under Cassian's boot shifted wrong. The man's arm buckled and he went back down.

He didn't get up again after that.

The other three had backed toward the far wall. For a second none of them moved.

Then one of them, the biggest of the group, grabbed a length of pipe from beside the door and came forward, yelling something that didn't have real words in it.

The other two followed with whatever they could find. One picked up a knife from the kitchen counter, the other took a chair leg someone had broken off earlier in the struggle.

Cassian let the one with the pipe get close before he moved.

He caught the pipe in one hand, just above where the man was gripping it, and pulled it out of his fingers like it weighed nothing. Then he turned it around and brought it down, once, on the side of the man's knee. The man's leg folded sideways in a way legs aren't supposed to fold. He went down screaming, both hands wrapped around his own knee like he could somehow hold it together.

The one with the knife swung wide and sloppy, panic more than skill behind it. Cassian stepped inside the swing, caught the man's wrist, and twisted it slowly until the fingers opened on their own and the knife fell.

The man's elbow bent the wrong way with a soft, wet pop, and he sank to the floor, cradling his arm against his chest, breathing in short, high gasps.

The last one dropped the chair leg and ran for the door but he didn't make it.

Cassian caught the back of his collar before he'd gone three steps and pulled him backward, off balance, into the old bookshelf against the wall. The shelf cracked under the weight and came down with him, books and broken wood scattering across the floor. He lay there for a moment, stunned, and then went still.

The apartment went quiet.

Four men were down. Some of them were still breathing hard, curled around whatever part of them had been broken. One of them wasn't moving at all. Blood had soaked into the carpet in dark, uneven patches, and the smell of it hung heavy in the small room.

Cassian stood in the middle of it, his breathing steady, his hands loose at his sides. He looked at what he'd done the way a man looks at a job that still needs finishing.

"This is nothing," he thought, watching one of them try and fail to crawl toward the door. "This isn't even a warm-up for what's coming."

"Get out," he said quietly. "Tell whoever sent you that the message was received. Tell them I'll be delivering my own reply soon."

They dragged themselves out, one by one, leaving smears of blood across the floorboards. Nobody argued.

Then the apartment went silent, and Cassian was alone with the two people he'd spent seven years failing.

His mother was already crying before he reached her, both hands pressed over her mouth like she was afraid of what sound might come out if she let go.

"Cassian." Her voice broke on his name. "You're really — you're really here."

He knelt in front of her, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all. Up close, the damage the years had done to her was worse than he'd let himself imagine from across the visitation table.

The lines on her face were deeper, her shoulders were thinner and there was a tremor in her hands that was not there before.

'I did this. Every gray hair, every year she spent alone, I did this by trusting the wrong people.' He blamed himself.

"I'm sorry," he said, and his voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "I'm sorry it took seven years. I'm sorry I couldn't protect either of you before now."

She reached up and touched his face like she was checking he was solid, checking he wasn't something she'd conjured out of grief. "You're home. That's all I prayed for. Every single night, that's all I asked for."

Cassian let himself have exactly that much. He just wanted to take that one breath, and revel in that one moment of being someone's son again instead of feeling like a weapon walking into a war.

Then he turned toward his sister.

Maya hadn't moved from where she sat. Her wheelchair was angled toward the wall, arms crossed tight over her chest like armor. She wasn't looking at the mess on the floor. She wasn't looking at their mother.

She was looking at him, and there was nothing in her expression that looked like relief.

"Maya." His voice softened. "I'm here now. I'm going to fix this. All of it okay, starting with your legs."

She let out a short, humorless laugh.

"Fix it." She shook her head slowly. "That's rich, coming from you."

"Maya—"

"Don't." The word came out sharp enough to cut. "Don't you dare stand there dripping rainwater on our floor acting like you just rode in to save the day. You want to know where you can start 'fixing things', Cassian?"

Her eyes were dry now. Colder than dry, it was burning with something that had clearly had seven years to harden into shape.

"You can start by telling me where you were every single time men like that came through our door. Because this wasn't the first time."

Cassian's stomach dropped.

"What are you talking about?"