Page 138 of House of Ashes
The prickling feeling was an almost physical itch now.
I forced myself to look away from Rhylan and scan the inn’s lower floor: no one seemed out of place. The patients were in too much pain to give a damn about us, the healers were too exhausted to care, and the Bloodless moving between them all, hauling loads of bloody bandages, dirty linens, and food back and forth, were too overworked to give us more than second’s notice.
Elinor was across the room, helping tend a wounded dragon, and I thought I saw a glimpse of Mykah’s violet wyvern through the window, but that was all.
But the feeling that we were playing with fire on dangerous ground wouldn’t leave me.
This was an unwise conversation. An unwise time to make promises, no matter how much I meant them, and wanted to hear them returned in kind.
The itch wouldn’t leave my skin, and we both needed to shut the hell up and act like normal mates. The sooner Rhylan healed, the sooner we could return to the safety of Jhazra Eyrie…and we could ponder Gaelin’s ominous warning in relative safety.
I brought Rhylan’s hand to my mouth, gently kissing his torn knuckles.
“I accept your promise,” I told him. “Now, are you going to eat your soup, or are you going to make me force-feed you?”
Chapter
Thirty
His eyes were fluttering shut before he’d finished the soup. I put it aside, cupping his face gently, watching as he descended back into a healing sleep. I pulled a thin blanket over him, tucking it in at the sides.
The knot in my chest made it hard to breathe, but it wasn’t from the terror that haunted me in the night.
No…this was something else. Something I couldn’t acknowledge.
Gaelin’s warning echoed in my mind as I brought the bowl back to the kitchens, my nerves frayed at the idea of leaving Rhylan alone, asleep and defenseless, even for a few minutes. What—who—did he suspect?
Why give us the warning at all, without a hint as to what he’d meant by it?
I knew we’d already made dangerous missteps here. As soon as Rhylan was able to stand without collapsing, I’d urge him to get us out of here as soon as possible, even if I had to ask a wyvern-rider to ferry me back to Jhazra.
Stepping through a doorway on my return to Rhylan, my mind in a haze, I almost ran right into Elinor.
She was still clean and tidy, her leathers as white as the day they’d been made. Plaits were pinned in a crown around her head, not a hair out of place.
I simply blinked at her for a moment, wondering how she could look so pristine in this hellhole of the injured and dying, when everyone else was covered in blood and soot.
“Hands are needed over in the bookshop,” she told me. Diamond drops winked in her earlobes as she glanced around the room, taking in the dragons and Bloodless strewn over makeshift cots. Her nose wrinkled slightly as a man coughed up blood into a battered bowl. “They brought the wounded there. The healers’ own hands are full. I’ll keep watch here if you’d like to go help.”
I stared at her a little harder. Taking in the snowy whiteness of leather, the tidy hair…
“You go help them,” I finally said. “Gods know if you can manage to stay clean in this mess, you can manage a few bandages.”
Elinor reared back as though I’d slapped her, and I pushed past her to the inn’s main room.
Rhylan was right where I’d left him, untouched. I bristled at the thought that Elinor thought her hands were too good to dirty…but I couldn’t just sit over my dragon, brooding and fretful, doing nothing to help.
I found Cryla in a far corner, picking my way over cots and pallets to where she knelt next to a Bloodless man whose pallet had been pushed under a dining table. His left arm ended in a freshly-bandaged stump.
She sat back on her haunches, swiping hair out of her face. “He’ll survive, probably. They don’t swear like that when they’re knocking on Nakasha’s Gates.”
I helped her to her feet, and the healer put her hands in the small of her back, stretching backwards with a slight groan.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
Cryla looked me up and down slowly, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you know any of the healing arts?”
“No, but I’m sure I can figure out how to apply salve and wrap a bandage.”