Page 123 of Elven Shadow

She couldn’t let herself think that way. This wasn’t the first time Rebecca had faced a personal appointment with death, though damn if this one didn’t feel a lot more urgent than all the others. And terribly timed.

As soon as they stumbled together across the threshold of the open infirmary door, Rebecca practically threw herself away from the old healer to stumble toward the closest bed. It was little more than a thin cot on wheels and certainly wasn’t sturdy enough to hold Rebecca’s entire weight collapsing against it.

Which she learned only after collapsing against the bed and sending the thing crashing into the wall and two wheeled carts shoved against each other on the other side of it.

Metal instruments, glass vials and jars, and a clay pot of some kind of salve clanked and jingled against each other while she scrambled to right herself on the bed.

Her legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore, the infirmary bed on wheels wouldn’t fucking hold still, and if she’d seen herself dancing with the bed and Zida’s supplies like this, bumbling around like a useless moron, she would’ve called for someone to come put this poor creature out of her misery for good.

Fortunately, that was against the healer’s oath.

She hoped.

At the sound of all the commotion, Zida whirled around to face her from the other side of the room and let out the closest thing to a shriek that had ever emerged from the old daraku’s mouth. “What in the blue eye of Akskashirim do you think you’re doing?”

Rebecca finally got the bed steadied against the wall—simply because she’d pinned it there with her full weight—and sighed. “I toldyou I needed a bed.”

“But I didn’t say shit about needing to redecorate. Hold still.”

Before what little remained of Rebecca’s strength failed her completely, Zida was at her side, holding the bed steady with one hand as she offered the elf support up onto the laughably thin mattress with the other.

“I’ll say it again, elf. I’ve got more of those vials, and until I can figure out what happened to you and how to fix it, that might be our best.”

“No.” Rebecca grunted, got herself mostly situated in a lopsided position on the bed with her back propped against the elevated head of the mattress, and thumped her head back against it, barely feeling the hardness of the thin mattress. “Just give me a minute. I just need…some rest. Then I’ll be fine.”

Zida folded her arms and clicked her tongue. “Are you always this impossible?”

“Only when I’m dying.” She’d meant it as a joke, a way to lighten the urgent mood a little, but another coughing fit overtook her. When it lasted longer than it should have, that only made the gravity of this whole situation that much more apparent.

For all she knew, she really could have been dying right now.

Too bad she hadn’t thought to look into Zida’s track record of fatal casualties versus successfully healed patientsbeforefinding herself in an infirmary bed. Even still, there were few other places she would rather be right now. Anywhere else she could have gotten the kind of medical attention she needed would require revealing who she was.

Luckily, Shade prided itself on giving its members the benefit of the doubt once they passed The Striving initiation, wiping the slate clean for everyone who stepped through the compound’s front doors and swore their oath to the cause. Meaning Zida wouldn’t ask any more questions than necessary to do her job.

“All right. Let’s take a look at you, then.” Zida shuffled toward the bed again, clicking her tongue. “I know that changeling’s blade came down on you at least once, but it takes a little longer to find all the little cuts and nicks after a brawl like that.”

Her clawed hands clamped down around Rebecca’s left wrist, then the healer gaped at both the knife wound and the darkening handprint on Rebecca’s forearm—which had now become an alarming shade of dark gray that matched the cold steel of the bedframe. “What the hell isthis?”

“That thing…outside,” Rebecca panted with a weak nod toward the hallway, “touched me.”

“And left this behind?”

“Well it’s not a tattoo, Zida.”

“You’re hilarious.” The healer’s dark, beady eyes flickered up toward Rebecca’s face, then she sucked in a sharp, hissing breath with an added gurgle courtesy of the daraku’s lack of teeth.

Rebecca expected the treatment any second now, but when Zida merely stood there, staring at Rebecca’s arm as if all her training and centuries of working with who know how many magical patients had fled her brain to leave her nothing more than an empty shell, what little hope Rebecca had clung to faded.

“What?” she asked with a grunt.

Zida’s mouth opened and closed a few times without sound, then she smacked her lips and released Rebecca’s arm. “If that dagger was poisoned, I need to figure out what the changeling dipped it in. Nothing I immediately recognize, which is…rare. But I’ll figure it out.”

“And then you can fix it, right?”

“I haven’t been doing this for ninety percent of my life just by guessing, elf,” the healer snapped. “I’ll have someone bring up the dagger. Something tells me we don’t have a whole lot of time for sitting around and waiting. You stay right there. I may have something in the back that’ll do the trick. At least until I figure out exactly what he used.”

“Don’t worry,” Rebecca muttered as the healer shuffled away. “I’m not going anywhere.”

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