Stuart scrubs a hand down his grizzled chin, his late-day stubble rasping. The light through my window is thinning, and Stuart is always clean-shaven in the morning.
“It must be near dinnertime. You two should eat and rest.” They both look like they need it.
Stuart’s face brightens at the idea of dinner.
“We’ll let you rest too.” Sybil stands, pulling a somewhat creaky Stuart up with her. “But I’ll order your meat soup and come back with it after dinner.”
The words meat soup make me shudder. Turning my instinctual grimace into a syrupy smile, I say, “Sounds divine.”
Sybil laughs. “Now I know you’re fine.”
“Sarcasm as proof of health?” I ask, grinning.
“It’s a good start.” Her eyes tell me how pleased she is.
I keep mine wide open until she leaves, still holding hands with Stuart. I know if I blink, I’ll see her death, and that’s more than I can handle right now.
I ask Fyrestar exactly what happened after I lost consciousness next to Rim on the battlefield.
“Everyone fought like it was the end of the world. They tore through the vampires and, at the last second, stopped killing to take a few prisoners.”
“The vampires weren’t attacking in any normal way. Did that at least help?” One of the last things I remember seeing was them fighting each other to get to me.
Fyrestar clicks his beak in confirmation. “They were chaotic and reckless and definitely not working as a team.”
“You didn’t get hurt?” I ask warily.
He shrugs his wings. “Besides the heart failure you and Rim gave me, not really.”
My face crumples. Tears spill from my eyes. There’s no real reason for it except for too much emotion and real fear still lurking so heavily in my chest that it presses on every heartbeat. “Could Rim fly home?”
Rim lifts his head for the first time in several minutes. “Kellan carried me.”
My heart turns over hard. “I thought you were asleep.”
“Sleepy.” He tucks his beak back under his wing, adding a muffled, “Not sleeping.”
“Me either,” Sol chirps groggily. She won’t be left out, even of the who’s-sleeping-or-not conversation.
I keep my arms around them both, my eyes on Fyrestar. “How did I get home? I couldn’t ride you.”
“Bale.”
Heat floods me, making the glowing phoenixes on either side suddenly feel excessively warm. My mind jumps back to the battle and Bale crashing down next to me, his eyes firelit and savage. He bit into that vampire drinking from my chest like she was a raw steak. He took a sword in the chest for me.
A little to the left, a little deeper…That blow could’ve killed him.
A heavy swallow works its way down my throat. “Bale doesn’t carry anyone.”
“He carried you.”
“How? I was unconscious.”
“In his talons.”
I stare at Fyrestar. “Well, that news must’ve made the rounds inside the mountain already.” What would the inhabitants of Drayke Mountain make of it? What did I make of it?
And how like me to be unconscious during something I would really have liked to remember.
