Gervase hesitated no more than a moment. “All right,” he told Jack. “I promise. All of it.”
“Took you long enough,” she grumbled. “Fine. We’re reengaged.”
“Then I am yours, and you are mine,” Gervase said, “and nothing shall ever part us again.”
Her hand tightened around his. I’d have taken it for a sign of passion, if it hadn’t been accompanied by a sharp gasp while I finished off a stitch. Maybe it was romantic, even so. Certainly I’d have wanted Sam to be the one holding me if I lay bleeding.
“I love you,” Gervase proclaimed.
“I love you more,” Jack avowed.
“That is impossible. There can be no love that is greater than mine.”
“My loveisimpossible. Love you more than…greatest amount of love…one person could feel.” Her face was pale, and her eyes fluttered shut again. The pain and the blood loss were taking their toll, but she rallied enough to flash another grin at him. “I win.”
His answering smile looked somewhat worried. “You cheated.”
“You still. Lost.” Jack’s voice was a whisper, barely escaping her lips. “Suck on your loss. Loser.”
I tied off a final knot and might have collapsed on the ground myself if Sam hadn’t steadied me. “Done,” I said. “Get her feet elevated above her head. And keep her warm. We’ll need to monitor her lips and her fingernails. It’s a bad sign if they turn blueish. But if infection doesn’t set in—which is a big if, we need to watch for that carefully—then I think there’s a good chance that she, uh…” My voice trailed off. Now that my attention wasn’t entirely on my patient, I noticed there were a lot more people around us than when I had started. “I mean, that he…”
My family was there, of course, in front of a wet, sleeping dragon. Jonquil and Liam were looking at me with some concern—had they overheard my intention to defy my stepmother again?—while Calla’s gaze seemed focused on the way Sam’s arm was wrapped around my shoulders. Gnoflwhogir was prodding Angelique’s corpse with her foot. I’m not certain sheknew who Angelique was; stabbed bodies always attract my sister-in-law’s attention.
But the rest of the hunters had also crowded around us—the quick count I made showing all of them alive, astonishingly enough—along with a host of soldiers. The commoners and noblemen from inside the castle were standing at the back of the pack, straining to see what was going on. Everyone, it appeared, had poured out onto the remains of the bridge and gathered around our little group, talking in a great confusion of murmured conversations punctuated by shouts and questions. Everybody was speaking at once, about the king, about the hunter he was now holding in his arms, about Angelique’s body, about the dragon snoring tiny jets of fire, even aboutme.
While I tried to make sense of the cacophony, the lion limped forward, keeping his weight off a broken leg, muscling aside soldiers and huntsmen until he reached the king. His tawny fur was matted with blood.
Squinting nearsightedly, he glared at Jack, taking in everything revealed by the tunic I’d torn to shreds.
“Nowdo you believe this is a woman?” he asked Gervase.
A thousand rejoinders flitted across the king’s face in an instant. In the end, though, he simply said, “Yes, Lion. You were right all along.”
“Right about her, maybe,” Sam muttered under his breath. “Wrong about so much else, it’s impossible to keep track.”
If the lion heard this at all, he chose to ignore it. He huffed a hot breath over us and hobbled away with the expression of immense self-satisfaction that only a cat can ever truly achieve.
Part IX
After Happily Ever After
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Picking Up the Pieces
Once the confusion that followed the fight had subsided, the first thing I did was procure a change of clothes. Half of my garments were so tattered they fell to shreds as soon as I unlaced them. My good red cloak was in need of repair again, and my leggings had become so stiff with filth I had to cut and peel them off, like paring a fruit. At some point during the process, I fell asleep.
I stayed on at the castle in the wake of the great battle, tending to Jack and other patients. And fending off the chirurgeon, who remained adamant that bloodletting was the proper treatment for every ailment, including blood loss. I tried to be as good a doctor as my parents. And perhaps a little kinder to my patients than my mother might have been.
There were casualties among the knights and archers, but on the whole the defenders had gotten off rather lightly, all things considered. Each of the hunters had an unlikely story of a hairbreadth escape from death, stories that grew more unlikely witheach retelling. Jack had been the most severely wounded, although none of them had escaped unscathed.
Harry’s reaction to her leg getting eaten took me by surprise. I sought her out the day after the fight and asked if she wanted my help acquiring and fitting a prosthesis to replace the limb that had been devoured by a tree.
She shrugged. “No, thanks. I’m used to it. I’ll just wait until I grow another one.” And then she hopped away.
My family embarked for Skalla after only a short rest. Calla needed to resume whatever quest she had been on when my plea for help had interrupted her, and Jonquil had duties as well. Not to mention they needed to return the seven-league boots, which were out on the briefest of temporary loans.
While Jonquil prepared the dragon for flight, Calla gave me a hug, the chipmunk curled up on her shoulder taking the opportunity to nibble on my hair.
