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Without a word, I twisted in the cot until my back was to him. My stomach clenched at the vulnerable position, but I breathed through it. I’d been alone with him for some time judging by the darkness of the sky. If he hadn’t hurt me yet, he probably wasn’t going to.

His hands were gentle and nimble, pulling my hair out of his way without snagging any of the strands. He pressed various points, sometimes that sparking sensation flowing from the touch. His examination hesitated over the mark left by Lillian’s Archmage guy.

“This is not something I would have left behind,” he said. The sparking sensation followed the path of his finger as he traced the mark along my scalp a second time. I shivered as the electric current settled into the base of my skull. “You were injured before what happened yesterday?”

Yesterday.

At least I had an idea of sorts about how long I’d been unconscious.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and pressed a hand to my chest, trying to calm my autonomic system before I could collapse into an anxiety attack.

“I was. I hit my head on some rocks when I touched the mirror with my sister.”

Reuben hummed a bit and then said something in those long syllables I didn’t understand.

“Is your head better?” he asked.

“Y-yes. I can’t hear my heart in my ears anymore, and I don’t want to sleep for hours.” His hands dropped from my head, and I quickly twisted so I could see him again. He kneeled in front of a trunk, the fire jar hanging from one corner of the open lid. I couldn’t remember seeing it before, though I must have, right? “I think I’m missing memories.”

He paused, glancing over his shoulder with a heavy frown. “How much do you believe might be missing?”

“Ummm…” I had no dang idea. “I remember being on the island, and my sister being chosen by someone named Jacob. And I remember Callum finding me after I’d fallen and bringing me back here. But I don’t remember getting here.” I waved a hand to explain where I was in this cot specifically. “Or how I got cleaned or anything. Or when this changed to red.” I held up the hand with the strange mark. At some point, it had morphed from light green to a deep maroon. “I think I remember people helping? And a beach, I’m pretty sure.”

Reuben pursed his lips as he narrowed his eyes, clearly considering something. Then he reached over to me, adjusting so he was a half-step closer, and ran his fingers along my temples and around my ears. His touch was softer than before, that sparking magic following in its wake. When he reached the translation tattoo, the magic flared white hot. I hissed in pain and ducked away from his touch.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t recognize this pattern.”

How was I supposed to respond to that? Just a casual, “Oh hey, I had no idea there were different ways for magical ink that lets me understand some of what you say to look. Could you maybe adjust it so it doesn’t look like a creepy-ass constellation? I love pine trees and roses,” didn’t really feel like something I could actually say.

I licked my lips. “There’s different patterns?”

He nodded as he returned to the trunk and sorted through items inside it. I kept my gaze averted, not wanting to pry.

“It depends on the mage that lays the spell,” he said. “Their power and what ingredients they used. The combination of both will affect the presentation of the tattoo. I’ve never seen that particular one before. You are from the Far Lands?”

Suddenly I understood why Sloane so quickly capitulated when that man had asked us on Magefall. There was no way I was just going to straight up admit I wasn’t from this planet at all.

“Y-yeah, we are.”

As long as a geography test wasn’t incoming, I might be able to get away with the lie until I could reconnect with Sloane and figure out just exactly what we were going to do.

He didn’t say anything in response, continuing to move things around in the trunk. I didn’t risk saying anything either, terrified of putting my foot in my mouth. The tent lightened in tiny increments until I could tell the walls and ceiling were a deep blue rather than black, and there was a second smaller cot across from mine. A memory of being carried in here bubbled to the surface of my mind, still mostly murky.

Finally, he stood from the trunk and rounded the end of my cot, a small basket full of items in his hand. He’d left the fire jar on the trunk. It was close enough I could feel the bit of heat it emitted.

“They will probably come back with time,” he said after a minute. “Your memories. Though perhaps they will not. Your head injury was extensive.”

Then he paused and focused on me again.

“May I evaluate your leg?”

This time I only nodded. He carefully perched on the edge of the cot and pulled back the blanket, uncovering my left leg up to mid-thigh. It was wrapped with beige bandaging, something like an emergency room might put together if they weren’t going to send you straight to surgery. I’d seen a couple of the students Sloane taught deal with something like that. He carefully unwrapped them, setting aside the ones that were unmarked and then dumping the bloodied ones into a bowl I hadn’t noticed on the floor.

It looked… better, all things considered. I couldn’t see bone anymore, at least. There were three long scabbed wounds, two running the length of my shin and the third cutting across it a few inches below my knee where the bone had broken. My ankle was still horrid, no structure where there had been before, and my foot didn’t respond to any kind of trying to move it. He pulled away the last bit of bandaging, revealing a long metal rod.

Holy crap. A bona fide splint.

He pressed his palms on either side of my knee, and the sparks returned. They felt different than before, almost like they were starting in one palm and ending in the other. His touch was soft but relentless, moving down my shin and onto my ankle. When I couldn’t move my foot at his request, his frown deepened, and the sparking sensation got worse until I gasped and whined.