Stillblood

The building that holds my clinic used to be something respectable.

You can tell by the bones of it—the concrete that doesn’t buckle beneath the weight of five levels, the steel handrails bolted deep into the stairwells, the overhead lights that hum and glow just bright enough to guide you through the corridors. Even the Undercut once built things with the expectation they would last.

Now everything lasts because we need it to.

There are materials to replace what’s broken—cleaner glass, stronger wiring—but in a place where every coin is spent before it’s earned, what still stands must endure. Repairs are made with what can be salvaged, what can be reinforced, what can be convinced to hold a little longer.

The building doesn’t endure because it’s cherished; it endures because it must. A broken place can still work for desperate people.

The storm last night left its signature behind: a fallen limb sprawls across the narrow pavement in front of the doorway, bark split raw where the wind tore it free. The branch drags part of an older world down with it—a broken yellow-and-white sign nearly swallowed by the wood itself.

EVACUATION ROUTE →

The paint has faded. The arrow points nowhere anyone still goes.

I drag the limb just far enough aside, the sign scraping across cement, until the entrance into the multiuse building is clear again.

Once inside—suite 107—I fit the key into the lock that sticks before it gives, just like it always does.

The clinic is a narrow waiting area—one bench, a compact counter, and two doors set into thin walls that promise more privacy than they provide.

The bench is a scavenged bus seat bolted to the floor. Between the doors sits a sink that runs cold water, even in the height of summer. In each room, a locked cabinet of supplies I count at the beginning and end of every day, because the line between need and theft thins when people are desperate enough.

The exam tables are eclectic—salvaged doors laid flat across cinderblocks, padded with foam and wrapped in vinyl where duct tape patches old tears. Ugly as hell, but practical—easy to clean and dress with fresh sheets.

Most of my work is women and by midmorning I have seen three.

One is young, her belly just beginning to round beneath a coat that no longer closes. I listen to her heartbeat and the quieter, faster one beneath it. I tell her what foods she needs more of and which ones she should avoid, if she can afford to.

Another bleeds when she should not. When I’m finished examining her, I tell her she needs to come back in a week.

The third smells wrong before I ever touch her—an infection she waited too long to treat. I clean what I can, give her antibiotics, insist she finish them and return if things worsen.

I walk her to the door.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

I nod once, because motion is all I have to give her.

She slips back out into the street. The quiet that follows is not peace.

Through the window I hear someone cough, another laughing too loudly. A cart rattles past over broken pavement.

The city keeps breathing, and for a moment, I don’t move.

Then I catch my reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink.

Strands of hair have slipped free, softening the lines of me into something careless. I gather them back with practiced hands and retie them tight. Nothing loose near a patient—nothing that can fall where it shouldn’t.

My shirt has come untucked. I smooth it down and push it back into my trousers, pressing the fabric flat along my waist until it sits right.

Then I adjust the band I’m required to wear on my left upper arm when I’m operating as a healer. Dark red; deeper than crimson. Down the center runs the matte black midwife’s sigil, stitched clean and unmistakable. I correct its placement, straightening it so the symbol faces forward, visible without being theatrical.

When the knock comes, it isn’t the timid rap of a girl preparing to ask quiet questions. It isn’t the hurried rhythm of someone about to become a mother.

It’s a single strike—a beat—then two quick knocks follow.

I reach beneath the counter where I keep the only thing in this space that passes for a weapon—a heavy pair of shears meant for cloth and cord. They’re sharp enough that if someone insists, they’ll do what I need.

I open the door just enough to see who’s on the other side.

A man leans heavily with one arm draped over the shoulder of a boy I recognize from the neighborhood. A boy too thin, with eyes too old for his years. A runner—paid to carry messages and pretend he doesn’t hear what’s been delivered once spoken.

The man he supports is half-shadowed beneath a hood.

The boy braces under the weight as best he can, shoulders bowed, face flushed red with effort. The size difference explains the knock.

And then I feel it.

Lancing pain collides with the algia in me—my inheritance that speaks the language of pain—recognizing his as easily as a tongue finding a split lip. It wakes along every nerve of my intact body where his are damaged.

The sudden charge steals half a breath before I force myself steady.

Sweat tracks down his forehead and blood darkens the fabric at his side.

The boy swallows hard, eyes flicking to mine. “I knew… you’d help,” he manages.

For a moment, I don’t look at the stranger. I look at the boy.

“Who is he?”

The kid tries to shrug but can’t under the weight. “Don’t know.”

Of course he doesn’t.

A runner who hears everything and claims to hear nothing has carried a bleeding stranger to a midwife who practices beyond the limits of her badge. My brain tells me to shut the door, to protect the space and myself. My gut drags my attention back to the injured man—the color leached from his skin, the tightness around his mouth, the blood clotting stiff and dark into the fabric at his side.

He isn’t an adult by anything other than age—same as me. Eighteen—maybe nineteen—just old enough to be considered legal in every way that would ever count. Old enough to fight and bleed. Old enough for the law to call him responsible for choices that could have killed him.

But, not old enough to know better—especially with the privilege his blood is already confessing.

He is a stillblood.

It shows in the physiology of what leaks at his side.

This is not the bright red of pulseborn blood. It’s deeper—garnet with a blue-black undertone, darkening as it meets air. It doesn’t clot—it crystallizes, hardens, and seals. Hemalith.

Each movement fractures the surface and forces it to reform.

A stillblood’s strength lives in circulation. Lose too much, and it costs. Despite the loss, he doesn’t beg or posture. He leans against the runner, breath measured as if each one costs him something—and he pays without complaint.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” the runner rushes on. “I just—he really needs you.”

“I’ve got him,” I say, pulling the stranger’s arm from around the boy’s shoulders and shifting the weight onto myself.

The boy hesitates, eyes darting between us.

“Get out of here,” I snap.

Disappointment flashes across his face before he bolts. He’d expected a tip—payment for a service. If he’s desperate enough, he can track the stranger down later and try his luck. I’m not paying for work that’s about to cost me.

“It’s about five yards to the cot that holds your reservation.”

When he lifts his gaze, confirmation writes itself there. Double-star irises—the outward signature of a stillblood. He looks across the clinic’s narrow lobby toward the waiting rooms and hesitates a beat too long, measuring the distance. Deciding whether his body will cooperate.

Then we move.

My algia reacts sharp, stabbing into my side. My eyes widen before I can stop myself, and I drag in a breath as his injury resolves more clearly in me.

That’s when he tries to pull away, realizing how much weight he is putting on me. “I can—”

“No—you can’t.”

His mouth tightens.

“Chivalry can wait,” I tell him, shifting his weight back onto me and ignoring the flare along my ribs. “You’re bleeding.”

“That’s not… my main,” he grits out, jaw tightening, “problem.”

In his voice sits discipline—a steadiness that doesn’t belong in a neighborhood like this one.

I adjust my grip and force balance back where it belongs. “One step at a time.”

Jaw clenched, he takes one step. Then another. And on the third, his weight shifts wrong and his knees buckle.

I steady us as best I can.

Internally, I reach for the sharpest edge of his pain and siphon. It would be easier to let him keep it. But he won’t make it to the cot if I do. What I take yields almost instantly, thinning in him as it settles into me.

The echo becomes substance, settling over my body—a fraction of everything he feels, exactly where it is. As we move, he shifts without realizing he has, and his next breath he takes comes deeper and less guarded.

When we reach the cot, he lowers himself to sit, leaning back against the wall and closes his eyes—concealment over confession—as though shutting them might hide the fracture in his control.

“Name,” I say.

It takes him a moment to gather himself, to reassemble whatever discipline slipped with that breath.

Then he manages, “Why?”

“I need something to write on your chart,” I answer evenly. “So give me one you’ll remember.”

One eye opens. Barely. “One… I’ll remember?”

“In case this gets worse in a few days and you have to come back.”

“You want a fake name?”

I lift a shoulder in a small shrug. “People like you don’t want to be identified, and I’m not going to hassle you about it. Either way, you’re a patient.”

There’s a pause before, “People like me?”

“Stillbloods.”

His mouth opens—whether to deny it or challenge it, I don’t know, because I raise a hand before he can speak.

“Look, I’m not stupid, and I’m willing to help you. You just have to cooperate.” My tone stays even. “I don’t care who you are. What I do care about is that you walk out of here alive, because I’m not fond of disposing of bodies.”

I hold his gaze long enough to make the point land. “Answer the important questions truthfully.”

“Asher,” he groans.

On instinct, one brow lifts. “Asher?” I repeat.

He nods.

“You really want to stick with that?”

“Yeah.”

Asher. The king’s nephew—positioned for eventual ascension should a few inconvenient circumstances align. Choosing to carry the name is asking for danger. Maybe that’s why he sits on my table broken and bleeding. The successor to the throne. Heir to the realm. He would have no reason to be in the Undercut.

“Bold choice, Mr. Hawthorne,” I add quietly.

“It’s Nyxaris,” he corrects through his teeth.

My pen hovers.

“Hawthorne,” I repeat.

The name Nyxaris does not belong in places like this. Hawthorne does.

“Asher…” Through gritted teeth: “Nyxaris.”

My pen moves anyway, granting him the name I chose regardless of his insistence.

“Shirt off. I need to see the damage.”

He starts to move, fingers hooking into the fabric to pull it over his head—and then stops.

What he feels drags across my own ribs in echo and I have to close my eyes and breathe.

When I open them again—only a beat later—he’s caught there, half out of the tunic, half restrained by it. Breath shallow. Angry. As if his body has betrayed him and he refuses to forgive it. But his eyes are fixed on me. Focused and intent. Like he’s trying to read me the way I read him.

He saw the flicker. The recoil. The way it landed in me.

A stupid mistake, and I know it.

“Move slowly,” I repeat, steadier this time, then turn away from him.

He exhales through his nose and forces himself to continue.

After what sounds like a struggle, the shirt drops to the floor in a heap. Blood embedded in the fabric—broken and remade with each shift of his body. A pulseborn would still be bleeding. A Stillblood’s body had already begun building its own imperfect repair.

My attention settles on the wound.

“How long ago did this happen?” I ask.

His jaw flexes. “An hour… maybe.”

“How?”

“I fell.”

I glance at him. “From a mountain?”

“Sure.”

His eyes flicker, meeting mine, and there is something in them like restrained amusement. “You said to answer the important questions truthfully. The how and where aren’t.”

“And if I need to give you a tetanus shot?”

“I’m good.”

“If you develop an infection?”

“I’ll cross that bridge if I need to. Right now, I just need some stitches so the Hemalith can do its job.”

“The hemalith is the only reason you’re conscious right now.”

I watch the rise and fall of his chest. Shallow. Guarded. Sweat beads at his temples.

“What’s your essience?”

Essience. The inherited manifestation of a Stillblood’s bloodline.

Some are common.

Others are exceedingly rare.

He blinks. “I’m a Nyxaris.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You expect me to believe that? To write that down in an Undercut clinic that is intended for women.”

“I won’t,” he breathes in sharp through his teeth, “have you arrested.”

I shake my head and murmur, “Reassuring.”

“I’m a shadow walker,” he groans.

The Nyxaris manifestation—exclusive to the royal bloodline.

There are only three left; the king, his brother, and the heir apparent.

Still irritated he’s clinging to the lie.

“Any loss of control?”

For a moment, I meet his eyes.

His pupils are blown wide, but the double starburst pattern is unmistakable. Two flares in each eye—one amber, one deeper bronze—radiating outward in sharp spokes.

Intentional. Structured. Inherited.

Identifiable as a fingerprint, if you have the right access.

“No.”

The gash along his right side is deep enough to gape when he inhales. Not clean—torn, likely metal. Bruising blooms around it, dark and swelling.

“This is going to hurt,” I tell him.

The only problem with Stillblood physiology is that the body begins repairing damage long before it’s finished suffering it. The fractured bone is already trying to knit while the wound along his side tears the Hemalith with every breath he takes.

He lets his head rest against the wall and closes his eyes. “I’ll survive.”

I wash my hands in the cold sink. Soap, rinse, repeat, and finally dry. Two pairs of gloves. I don’t know what’s inside the wound, and I’m not gambling on stillblood blood mixing with mine. The last time that happened, I lost three weeks to fever and nausea while my body tried to reject what it didn’t recognize.

Their blood mixes with another’s and treats it like infection. It fights. If there’s enough of it, it wins—which means a painful death.

“Breathe. Slow and steady.”

He does what I’ve instructed to the best of his ability.

I press along the rib line, my fingers following an invisible path beneath skin and muscle.

He jerks before he can stop himself, a sharp hiss breaking free as the fracture answers my touch.

I adjust my pressure. Slower. Deliberate. “At least one fracture.” I map the damage with my fingers. “Maybe two. Probably a bruised bone.”

His jaw tightens.

I reach for the rolling tray, pulling it closer. Metal wheels complain against the concrete. The instruments are laid out where they always are—everything aligned within reach. Because I never warn anyone, I squirt the antiseptic straight onto the wound.

It hisses against his torn skin, foaming white as it finds what I could already see.

“Fuck,” he chokes.

There’s no point in apologizing. I’m not sorry for what this costs him. And I learned a long time ago that warning people only makes it last longer.

As the wound foams clean, I thread a needle.

The needle hesitates in my grip. Not from uncertainty but from the awareness that I’m about to feel this twice. I push through anyway. His breathing begins to stutter when I press the divided skin together.

He forces himself to breathe.

In.

Out.

Then the tremor starts, first in his fingertips.

The first puncture forces his body to react and the sound that tears from him is raw—stripped of discipline, stripped of control. Instinctively he presses his spine rigid against the wall, as if posture alone can contain it.

Please pass out—I beg it for his sake.

Each puncture reverberates through my own nerves.

Pass out.

It turns into a prayer.

I stitch, and because I know he isn’t in his right mind, I brace my shoulder against his sternum. It’s as much an anchor as it’s a defense—to keep hands that don’t intend harm from causing it anyway.

“I’ve got you,” I say quietly, before I can stop myself.

Each pass of the needle blurs into the next until the thread catches.

I feel it in my side—like a hangnail pulled too deep.

Please.

I shouldn’t close my eyes, but I do. The suture has snagged in his flesh, deep inside the wound I’m trying to close. I’m going to have to tug. And I’m going to feel it, because I’ve been siphoning the excess from him—drawing it into myself so he doesn’t drown in it.

It’s a favor. A grace. Something I can offer to people too stubborn to heed my silent prayers.

I take a breath.

One. Two. Three.

I open my eyes and pull, sharp and quick.

A clean electric shock snaps through my muscles, locking them tight. For half a second, the room tilts and I lose the boundary between us.

Then everything dulls.

Through hazy eyes, I glance up to find him finally surrendering. He’s unconscious.

The flare remains in me, lighter now—manageable. I hold what I can and let his mind sink fully under. His breathing deepens, steadies, and eventually I tie the final stitch.

I dress the wound.

There’s nothing to be done for fractured ribs but let time pass.

He sleeps, and I let him.