He was tall, almost as tall as Caelan, with dark hair and the expression of a man who had been dragged out of bed for a task he considered beneath him. He was carrying a medical bag and was wearing what looked like a very expensive suit.
“Aedan.” Caelan stepped aside to let him in. “Thank you for coming.”
“I was in the area,” Aedan said flatly. It was the most obvious lie I’d ever heard. This man was absolutely not “in the area.” This man was probably on the other side of the city, or the country, or possibly the planet, and got summoned here by the sheer force of Caelan’s panic.
“This is unnecessary,” I croaked from the bed, clutching a tissue. “I have a regular cold.”
Aedan’s eyebrow twitched but he said nothing.
“She has a fever,” Caelan said, hovering. “And her breathing sounds wrong. And she keeps coughing. She didn’t dry her hair last night and...”
“Caelan.” Aedan’s voice was long-suffering. “Let me examine the patient.”
They were clearly friends, I realized as I watched them interact. There was an ease underneath Aedan’s irritation, a familiarityin the way Caelan ignored his complaints. Aedan called Caelan a word in a language I didn’t recognize. It sounded like an insult. Caelan just grinned.
“We’re from the same country,” Caelan explained when he caught my confused look.
That made sense. They had the same energy. The same otherworldly quality I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Aedan examined me with efficient, clinical precision. Temperature, blood pressure, listening to my lungs, checking my throat. His hands were cold. His bedside manner was nonexistent.
“Say ‘ah,’” he instructed.
“Ah.”
“Again.”
“Ah.”
“Hmm.” He peered into my ears, shone a light into my eyes, pressed on my lymph nodes. Every motion was economical, practiced. This man had clearly done this many times before.
“Deep breath.”
I breathed deeply. My lungs protested with a rattling cough.
Caelan made a distressed noise. “That sounds bad. That sounds very bad. Is that bad?”
“It’s congestion,” Aedan said without looking at him. “Deep breath again.”
I breathed again. More rattling. Aedan nodded, apparently satisfied.
“It’s a cold,” he announced finally.
“I told you,” I said, turning to look pointedly at Caelan.
“A minor upper respiratory infection. Rest, fluids, time.” He was already packing up his bag. “She’ll be fine in a few days.”
“Are you sure?” Caelan asked. “Shouldn’t she have medicine? Tests? What about a specialist? I could contact the healers back home, or...”
“It’s a cold, Caelan.” Aedan’s tone suggested he’d said tired of his bullshit. “Humansget them. They survive. It’s not the plague.”
An expression crossed Caelan’s face at that, an emotion I couldn’t read.
“Right,” he said. “Of course. Humans get them.”
“Frequently, in fact.” Aedan snapped his bag closed. “Their immune systems are... different. Fragile. But resilient in their own way.”
“Fragile?” I repeated. “Excuse me?”
