“Better?” Vida asked. I nodded. “Good. Now, you were pretty banged up. I fixed the leg first, but it’ll need time to set—walking on a bad break can lame a person for life. The shoulder will be sore for a bit. The lacerations—well, you know from before. I can heal them, but if I do they’re more likely to scar. I closed up a few that were bleeding badly, but I think you should let the ones on your face heal by themselves.”
I nodded again. Scion, I’d walked away from that fall with nothing more than a broken leg and a few scratches?
“And …” Vida threw a glance at Dowser. He nodded, grave, and she turned back to me. “When you destroyed that last crystal soldat, you were caught in the explosion. Some of the shards— Well, you’d better see for yourself.”
She handed me a mirror. Dull dread was a stone in my stomach, but the pain potion made my thoughts slow. I lifted the mirror. At first, I didn’t see anything. Then the low light glinted off my neck, where a spray of tiny diamond shards shone like mythic stars. My hand flew up. Raised fragments sparked a jagged pattern down one cheek, over my jaw, and along my neck toward my collarbone. Prickles of bright pain told me more were hidden below the sleeves of my nightgown.
“Your armor protected you from the worst of it.” Vida looked unhappy. “I tried to remove them while you slept, but they self-cauterized when they embedded in your skin. Pulling them out might bemorepainful than just leaving them.”
I turned my head, slowly. The splinters glittered viciously, turning the low red light to droplets of blood spattering my throat. I looked …savage.
“Let’s worry about it later,” I murmured. “Thank you, for everything.”
Vida nodded, but she looked rattled.
“I need to rest, and so do you.” She turned a pointed gaze to the rest of the room. “Ten minutes, and don’t crowd her or upset her. Understand?”
Murmurs of assent followed her out. Eyes turned to me, and I cringed my way into something resembling a seated position. I didn’t want to face my friends lying on my back. I focused my swimming vision on each of them in turn. They all wore matching expressions of worry. All except Sunder, who had his arm braced against the doorjamb and his gaze on the floor.
“What happened? After.”
“Gavin caught you when you fell from the dais,” Oleander offered, with an expression that indicated she wouldn’t have been such a gracious loser. “He helped carry you out.”
Sunder looked like he wanted to be sick.
“Thanks.” I nodded at Gavin, who shoved his hands in his pockets and looked like he wished he were somewhere else. Beside him, Luca put a hand on his shoulder. “But you don’t have to stay, you know.”
Gavin looked relieved. But instead of sprinting from the room like I might have done, he came around the bed, clasped my hand gently, and shook it.
“Congratulations,” he whispered. “You deserved it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn’t seem facetious.
Luca tipped me a salute. “Remind me never to get between you and a mirror.”
They slipped from the room, leaving me alone with a group of people who looked like they might just kill me for almost dying. For a long, excruciating moment, silence rang louder than words.
“I’ll go first,” Sunder growled. He kept his gaze glued to the floor, but I saw a vein pulse at his temple. He clenched a fist. “Of all the stupid, reckless, insane,irresponsible—”
“You could have died, Mirage,” Lullaby cut in, her musical voice harsh. “Even after you escaped the crystal warriors, a shard of broken mirror glass could easily have nicked an artery, or the impact of the fall could have broken your back.”
“We’d all really prefer if you pursued your obvious death wish in private,” added Oleander.
Dowser came and sank onto the edge of the bed. He took one of my hands, frail-looking against his much larger grip.
“This Ordeal was hard for all of us to watch, Mirage,” he sighed. “None of us wants to see you injured or killed in your pursuit of the Amber Throne.”
“That’s not fair,” I hissed, up through the numb flatlands of the pain potion. I wished I hadn’t taken it—I could barely string a thought together. “This isn’t the first time my life has been in danger. I’ve seen battle. I’ve faced assassination—by blade and poison alike. That never made you caution me from this path before. If anything, you just urged me on. How is this different?”
“Because you threw yourself in front of it like a madwoman!” Sunder burst out. Anguish and lingering terror lurked behind the ice-bright edge of fever. “What were you trying to prove, out there? That you were brave? That you were invincible? That you were willing to die for a throne?”
“Sunder—”
“Scion, Mirage, I begged you to forfeit the second Ordeal. I don’t know how else to tell you that—”
He broke off with a muffled cry. He turned on his heel and slammed his fist into the wall. Plaster flaked away like bloodstained snow. Beside him, Oleander put her hand on his shoulder.
“The point, Mirage,” Dowser continued, removing his spectacles, “is that it’s time to reconsider. The Ordeals of the Sun Heir have tested you to the brink of death. When I spoke to Arsenault, he implied they only grow more difficult. We cannot let you face the third Ordeal.”
