Page 55 of Into the Isle

Chapter 17

Ravinica

WHEN I RETURNED TO the dorm, black-and-white hair was splayed on the front counter. It was late now, so no wonder Dagny had fallen asleep at her post. With my limping gait and heavy footfalls, the RA raised her face at the first step I took into the longhouse.

She had skittish senses, that one. She blinked her bleary eyes, a piece of paper comically stuck to her cheek as she raised her face. “There you are.”

I limped toward her.

“You look like shit.”

“Feel worse.” I stopped at the counter, bending to rest my forehead. Speaking to the floor, I said, “I’m guessing the mess hall is closed.”

“Afraid so.”

“Dammit.” My stomach growled in protest.

“Here. I snuck you this.”

My forehead lifted, hope lighting my face.

Dagny unraveled a closed napkin next to her on the counter. She shrugged. “It’s not much. Cold cuts and cheese. Two most important food groups, you ask me.”

I gawked. “What are you, a valkyrie sent to save me? Thank the gods for you, Dagny.” I ravenously reached out and took the napkin, then slammed the food faster than I’d ever eaten anything.

She chuckled, watching me eat at the counter. “Don’t forget to chew, woman, damn. And I thought I liked cheese.”

“I would eat a bull’s ballsack right now, Dag.”

She smiled. “I hear that’s a delicacy in some parts of the world.”

I snorted through a full mouth, feeling infinitely better after eating. Still dead tired, though. With a heavy sigh, I looked at the girl square in the face.

Her smile remained, and she pushed her glasses up her nose. “So, you going to tell me what happened to you out there? You dripped blood into my lobby, you know.” Her chin nudged past my shoulder.

I glanced back, seeing the thin trail I’d left in my wake. My calf was still gnarled. “Shit. I’m sorry, I can clean—”

“No, no, it’ll give me something to do for the next hour until I get off and can hit the hay. You just keep me company and speak.”

Over the next while, I sat on a comfy Ottoman while Dagny wiped up the blood and then mopped it. Before she did all that, she gave me a fresh rag to wrap around my calf.

I told her what happened to me in the woods, and how stupid I’d been to go through them in the first place. I explained how Sven Torfen and his familial gang ambushed me and was scared off by a menacing bear shifter. I also said I thought their motive was from an event on the Gray Wraith, when I’d seemingly offended Ulf Torfen.

“Those assholes don’t need a motive,” she said, finishing her mopping. She put the mop in the bucket, rolled it away, and poked her head out of the utility closet a few seconds later. “Grim Kollbjorn saved you, eh?”

I nodded.

“Careful with that one.”

I threw my arms wide, sitting up in the sofa. “Everyone keeps telling me to be careful around these men. First it was Arne, now Grim.”

“That’s because us second-years know more than you,” she said simply. “Arne Gornhodr is too pretty and slick for me, but I think he’s rather harmless.”

Didn’t look too harmless when he encrusted Ulf’s legs in ice and threatened to blow his shin bones through his kneecaps.

---