“Well,” she says, clapping her hands once. “Shall we?”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and nod.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s.”
She gestures me deeper into the pavilion.
It’s not what I expect.
No curtained rows of beds. No beeping machines.
Instead, gleaming stone counters, racks of glass vials etched with sigils, shelves of neatly labeled jars filled with powders, dried plants, and crystals that pulse faintly with inner light.
A series of low cots line one wall, each with folded blankets and small hovering orbs of warm light above them.
The air smells like herbs and smoke and something bright—ozone, maybe.
It’s clean. Shockingly clean for a mining camp.
“This is incredible, Healer Withers,” I murmur.
Evonne smiles. “We do what we can with what the land gives us, and we cleanse with fire. Please, call me Evonne, Lady Delia.”
“Oh. Just Delia, please. Lady makes me sound like I should be wearing a ballgown and judging people’s table manners.”
Her eyes twinkle. “Very well, Delia. Then you must also do me the courtesy of dropping my title. Evonne will suffice.”
“Deal,” I say, feeling a small bubble of relief. “And, well, Thorne said you prepared some things to show me?”
“I did.” She nods and moves toward a central table. “He told me you served as a healer of sorts in your old world. I would like to hear it from you, in your own words.”
I blink.
Right.
Me.
Okay. Talk, Delia.
“I was—am—an EMT,” I say, stepping closer. “Emergency Medical Technician. I used to ride in an ambulance—like a chariot just for transporting the sick to healers. We’d respond to 911 calls—emergencies, people in car accidents, heart attacks, overdoses, fires… anything immediate. We stabilize them on scene and transport them to the hospital.”
Evonne’s brows rise. “You treat them at the place of injury? Before bringing them to a proper healer?”
“Yeah. We’re like, um, battlefield triage, but for city life not war. First on scene, last to leave. We can’t do everything, but we can do enough to keep someone alive long enough to reach full treatment.”
She goes still for a heartbeat.
Then another.
Her gaze drifts to the tent flap facing the direction of the mine.
“I cannot tell you how many times I have thought,” she says slowly, “if only there were more healers trained, I would not see so many fatalities. By the time they bring the injured from the lower tunnels up here, the damage is often… very far gone.”
My chest tightens. I know that tone.
That quiet, weary frustration.
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “I have an idea.”
