The Healer - Part 2
Pairing: Eris Vanserra x Healer f!reader
POV: Eris and the reader
Summary: Eris found his mate, a healer from the Night Court. She is all he was raised to distrust: soft-spoken, loyal, and a Night Court fae. He isn’t the monster she expected. There is silence where she braced for rage, gentleness where she feared cruelty. She doesn’t understand what it means to be his mate, only that the bond aches, her thoughts drift to him, and her soul craves him.
Warnings: mentions of blood and battlefield aftermath, hypervigilance, insomnia, emotional detachment, references to physical injuries and past violence, mating bond dynamics, emotional intensity, internalised resistance, power imbalance.
Strong emotional themes: trauma, vulnerability and reluctant intimacy (not sexual)
Word count: 2,264
Part 1 | Masterlist | Part 3
Eris woke to movement, deliberate, quiet, not meant to wake him, but the warmth beside him faded, and the mattress rose as weight left it.
His eyes snapped open.
She was dressing. The Night Court healer, his mate, stood a few paces away, sliding into freshly laundered robes.
Her hands trembled slightly as she tied the sash at her waist.
She ran shaking fingers through her hair, and her breath caught when she noticed him watching from the bed.
Eris sat up, the blanket pooling at his hips, heat rolling off his bare skin. Sometime in the night, he had shed his shirt, burning too hot beside her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not quite meeting his gaze.
His brow furrowed. “Why are you sorry?”
“I woke you.”
“You could stab me and I wouldn’t expect an apology,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep and irony. He rose, pulling a shirt over his head.
“Are you leaving?” he asked, moving toward his desk. Three fresh pages of the dead waited for him there, names inked in blood and duty.
“I need to assess the wounded for transport,” she said, her voice quiet, clipped.
Her eyes tracked him, then lingered too long on the long, angry wound stretching from his cheek to his collarbone.
“Your wound is irritated.”
Her tone shifted, clinical, but laced with something else. Concern, maybe.
She approached slowly, as if he were something dangerous. Eris stayed still, watching her through narrowed eyes as she reached for him.
He bent slightly, letting her examine the wound.
Her fingers trembled against his jaw.
When her magic touched him, cool and silver, so unlike the fire-forged spells of Autumn, it stole the breath from his lungs.
It slid through his skin like silk.
Like moonlight.
It bloomed beneath the surface, coiling gently around torn tissue, quieting the pain.
The mating bond responded, sang.
Pulled taut.
He hated it. He wanted it. Her hands. Her magic. Her.
When she stepped back, too soon, something inside him ached. Wanted her to stay. Wanted more.
“You should apply a cooling balm, something with honey, chamomile or lavender,” she said, eyes averted. “Your court’s healers will have something suitable.”
He straightened. “I will.”
“I should go.”
The words struck him like an arrow. Something inside him recoiled. The chain of the bond wrapped tightly around his ribs.
“Your name?” he asked. Not a command, a plea.
She hesitated. “Y/N.”
He repeated it, quietly. The syllables curled on his tongue like smoke. It tasted like fate.
“I need to go,” she said again, more gently this time.
Eris hesitated. “You could come back to Autumn with me.”
She tilted her head, blinking as if confused by the offer.
“No. My home is the Night Court,” she said, like it was a fact, and it was. The Night Court was her home, no matter his feelings about it.
“But you’re my mate.”
“I’m a fae with a job—a home. A family,” she said sharply. “I’m not only your mate.”
It stung, but more than that, her words acknowledged the bond. She had accepted it, at least on some level.
That alone was enough to make something in him stir, something dangerously close to hope.
He swallowed the grin threatening his face and simply nodded. “Of course. You have work to tend to.”
She looked briefly startled by his calm. Like she’d expected a fight, but she only nodded once and turned to leave.
At the tent’s entrance, she paused.
She glanced back at him, still slightly dishevelled, his hair mussed, skin littered with bruises, new and old scars and cuts.
“I’ll be safe leaving your camp?” she asked.
The question stung more than it should have.
What did she think he’d do?
What did she think his people would do?
What stories had she been told?
Aloud, he said, “No one will touch you. You know the way back to the healer’s tents?”
“I think so.”
She reached for the canvas flap, peeking through. The morning light filtered in warm orange, dawn was just breaking, and the camp was beginning to stir.
“Okay,” she said softly. Hesitation lingered in her voice. She didn’t look back again. Just mumbled a quiet goodbye and slipped out.
The flap closed behind her, slow and silent.
Just like that, it was as if she’d never been there.
No, only memories, and the dead remained. That’s all that was left in his tent now:
Tangled sheets.
The scent of a Night Court fae.
His mate.
Reader POV –
The canvas flaps closed behind her with a whisper, but she heard it like a door slamming shut.
For a moment, she just stood there, eyes scanning the waking camp, as though someone might emerge from the shadows to drag her back.
She wasn’t truly afraid of him, but she was scared of his name.
Of what it carried.
Power. Politics. History.
Eris Vanserra was not a male she should have touched, let alone allowed to touch her soul.
The dawn was sharp and quiet, the air cool against the heat she carried from his tent. Being near him was like standing too close to a flame, dangerous, intimate, consuming.
Even now, her skin hummed faintly from his warmth, from the memory of his body beside hers.
Autumn’s camp was quieter than expected.
Still. Tense.
She caught the glance of a soldier near the fire, but they barely acknowledged her.
No one stopped her, just as he’d promised.
Still, her fingers trembled as she pulled her robes tighter around herself. Her sleeves smelled like smoke.
Like him.
It felt absurd, how easily she had left that tent, how little resistance he had given.
He hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t demanded anything and hadn’t pressed. Just asked for her name and let her go.
God, she shouldn’t have given it.
He had said it like it meant something.
Her pace quickened.
She shouldn’t have gone with him.
Shouldn’t have healed him.
Shouldn’t have felt guilty when watching him sleep with his head bowed over a list of the dead.
There had been something devastating about the way he clutched that quill, like the weight of it was too much.
Yet, she had felt safe in that tent. That part, she hated most of all.
Even now, the bond lingered at the edge of her awareness, tight, quiet, waiting. It was like a string wound around her chest, not pulling but present.
She glanced back once. The tent had vanished behind rows of canvas, swallowed by the mist.
Her chest ached.
He hadn’t asked her to stay. He hadn’t told her to go.
He’d just let her.
She should have been relieved.
Instead, she felt haunted.
Inside the healer’s tents, the scent of blood was thick, metallic, and sour. It turned her stomach.
The night-shift healer passed her a quick report, half-asleep, fingers shaking, their skin waxy from too little rest.
She offered a soft word of thanks, hoping they’d manage food and sleep before they crumpled under the weight of it all.
She had also planned to collapse the night before. Instead, she found herself in his tent, washed, fed, and warm.
Her job was simple, on paper: triage, assess, stabilise, prepare for transport.
It demanded focus, accuracy, and mercifully, no time to think.
Her magic moved quietly, with instinctive precision.
A bandage tightened. A pulse steadied. A bone was set. Bleeding slowed.
Her fingers didn’t falter, not even as her body screamed from lack of rest.
Not even after a night spent wrapped around a male born of fire, fury, and unbearable gentleness.
She didn’t let herself remember the way his breath had ghosted across her skin. The warmth of his palm against her ribs. The steady press of his brow into the hollow of her neck, as if she were a sanctuary.
She didn’t allow herself to feel the bond as it stirred beneath her magic, tightening and alive.
She couldn’t afford to dwell on it.
There were too many in pain, too many dying, and too few left to help.
A male with a shattered femur. A female pierced by ash arrows. A child, barely past their first century, gasping for breath through blood and fever.
One by one, she moved between them, did what she could, and assigned the rest.
She told herself she was fine.
Even when her hands began to tremble.
Even when her magic began to flicker, it was dim and uneven.
Even when the ghost of him echoed low in her bones, like a war drum beating in the distance.
Time passed slowly and in a haze.
Three more died before she stepped outside the tents. One Illyrian soldier had begged her to stop trying, his wings severed at the root, his mind already gone.
The sky had shifted. Grey clouds, heavy and low, rolled overhead. The trees stood still.
She sensed it, the tug, gentle and low.
The bond was awake and aware.
She turned before he could call her name.
Eris stood a few steps away, dressed in Autumn Court reds and golds. He looked every inch the heir, handsome, powerful, untouchable.
“I didn’t expect you here,” she said.
“I didn’t expect to find you elbow-deep in triage,” he replied.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you. I have work to do.”
“I can see that.”
A wide, stretching pause.
“Why did you come?” she asked, exhaustion creeping in.
“Because I needed to know you were all right,” he said quietly.
“I’m not yours to worry over.”
“You’re my mate,” he said softly, like the words hurt to speak.
She flinched.
“Do you need anything?” he asked. “Food? Clean clothes?”
She noticed the tension in his shoulders and the twitch of his fingers—the faint glaze in his eyes.
The bond throbbed between them.
Slow. Steady. Unwavering.
“Eris…” she whispered.
He looked at her as if it pained him to hear his name from her mouth.
“I’m okay,” she lied. “You should go. You have duties.”
He nodded slowly, gathering himself. “I do.”
But then his voice shifted, lower, rougher, cracking just slightly.
“But knowing you’re here, worn thin, buried in blood and grief... it makes it hard to think of anything else.”
She opened her mouth, but he held up a hand before she could remind him of who she was or what she had to be.
“I know what you are. A healer. Night Court.” He swallowed. “But you’re also mine. And I can’t pretend that means nothing.”
She felt the tears burning behind her eyes.
“What if I want it to mean nothing?” she asked, voice splintering.
He hesitated. A beat. Another.
He spoke softly, “Then I’ll walk away. I won’t force it. I won’t become someone you fear.”
Something inside her shattered.
She looked toward the tents, toward the wounded. Toward anything that wasn’t him.
“I have to get the wounded home.”
“I know.”
She didn’t answer; she only turned and walked away. He didn’t follow, but she felt his warmth against her spine, a tether she hadn’t severed.
She returned inside.
By dusk, she was unravelling.
Her magic thinned with every life she tried to save. Her hands had been cleaned over a dozen times, yet she still felt the blood caught in the beds of her nails, soaked into her skin, staining something deeper.
Her limbs were heavy, her breath too shallow.
Every sound, the clang of steel, the murmurs of pain, the wind brushing through canvas, felt too sharp.
She moved toward the healers’ bathing tents on instinct more than will.
One more step.
One more hour.
Then, maybe, she could rest, finalise everything here and head home to Velaris.
“Y/N—” His voice caught her like a hook behind the ribs. “I just came to say goodbye.”
She turned before she even processed the words.
Eris stood a few steps away, his long coat swaying softly in the breeze, hair tousled as if he’d been dragging his hands through it all day.
His expression, too calm, too silent, veiled something deeper. Something breaking.
The edges of her vision dimmed.
Her knees gave out.
Eris moved before she hit the ground.
“You’re burnt out,” he said firmly, catching her as she collapsed into him.
“I’m fine,” she spat, though her voice cracked on the lie.
Still, she raised a shaking hand to wipe her face before the tears could fall, but she didn’t pull away.
Her head rested against his chest, as if she just needed… something.
A breath of stillness.
A place to fall apart.
Eris didn’t speak. Didn’t press. He simply held her.
She folded inward, the weight of grief and exhaustion hollowing her out.
Too many lives lost. Too many wounds she couldn’t close. Her body had given all it could.
His coat darkened beneath her, damp with tears, blood and sweat. Her fingers curled weakly into the fabric of his chest.
Not to hold him. Just to remind herself, he was real.
He was warm. Steady. A quiet flame in the chaos.
And he said nothing. Didn’t tell her to rest. Didn’t ask her to let go. He just stood with her, unmoving.
A wall of strength against the storm, she hadn’t realised she’d become.
Her magic sparked once, dimly, against his skin, like a fading ember.
The bond, soft and subtle, stirred within her.
Not urgent. Not demanding.
Just… present.
A steady hum in the hollow of her chest.
She wasn’t sure how long they stood there like that.
Only that she could, and Eris would take whatever she would give him.
Part 1 | Masterlist | Part 3
