Page 130 of Elven Shadow

“Like I should’ve been unconscious another day or two,” Rebecca quipped.

The old woman’s beady black eyes flicked up toward her patient’s face, though her expression gave away nothing of her thoughts or emotions. It usually didn’t.

Which was only part of why Rebecca had made it a point to stay away from Shade’s healer as much as possible.

Clearly, that plan had also failed.

Zida scurried around the bed, whisking the sheets away from one of Rebecca’s legs, then the other, then off her lap and tsking to herself. Then shesnatched up Rebecca’s wounded arm in both claw-like hands and raised it to her mouth like she was about to take a giant bite out of an even more gigantic cob of corn.

Rebecca tried to pull away, but the healer’s grip was too strong. “What are you—”

Zida inhaled deeply through her nose, all but pressing it against the bandages wrapped around the homunculus wound, though she clearly took pains not to touch any visible traces of the death magic that had remained in her patient’s physical body.

Her nostrils flared, making the rest of her already wrinkled face pucker even further before she tossed Rebecca’s arm back like a piece of rotten meat. “Just as I feared.”

“Oh come on.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Can’t anyone just tell it to me straight from the get-go? I might be physically out of commission, but my brain still works just fine.”

Zida’s beady eyes glinted in the overhead light. She looked Rebecca over from head to toe and back again. “Not necessarily. But there’s really no way to testthatat the moment, is there?”

The old woman had to be talking about something else, Rebecca was sure of it. She just didn’t know what yet.

“But I work with what I’ve got,” Zida added. “And no, bitching about it never solved anyone’s problems. Don’t move.”

She spun smartly away from the bed and headed toward the cabinets holding a bevy of glass vials of various colors filled with who knew how many different substances.

Don’t move? Where was she going to go? Two feet across the room…on wheels?

The infirmary filled with clinking of glass, wood, and a collection of metal instruments while the healer searched for undisclosed materials.

Then the healer’s last inference finally hit her.

Rebecca had been out cold for the last two days, lying in this infirmary bed with no one else but Zida for company. The healer had certainly used that time wisely and efficiently. She’d stripped off Rebecca’s jacket, which had given her plenty of opportunity to more closely inspect her patient in the process from top to bottom. Maybe even from the inside out.

A truly skilled healer worked with the energetic and the physical, and Zida had brought her reputation for being one of the best with her when she’d joined Shade’s ranks far before Rebecca’s time.

So how much of her unconscious patient had the old daraku seen?

Rebecca had been trained just as fervently in the practices of hiding her darkest magic—her most identifying Bloodshadow power—from most methods of discovery. Of course, it was hard to implement that training when she was in a short-lived coma of her own making.

Then her gaze fell on her jacket lying in a pile in her lap.

There was an even greater possibility of Zida having gone through Rebecca’s personal effects once she’d removed this jacket, and it would have been incredibly stupid to assume the old woman hadn’t found the small wooden box protecting what amounted to Rebecca’s most precious, most valuable belonging in both worlds.

Had the healer been particularly nosy, or had she merely stuck to her duties to focus on Rebecca’s injuries?

If Zida had found the box and opened it… Well, she was an old-timer straight from Xahar’áhsh too, just like Rebecca. The woman certainly would have recognized the pendant inside that box as a clan insignia, even if she couldn’t pin down specifically which clan.

The Bloodshadow Elves weren’t commonly known nearly as well as some of the other clans, but there was always a chance someone would eventually recognize her for what she was. Especially if they looked inside that box.

There was no way to tell what Zida had done with Rebecca’s possessions or how much new knowledge and awareness of her patient she’d gleaned over the last two days. That had been a massively stupid oversight on Rebecca’s part, but at least she stillhadher possessions.

The box with the pendant of her clan insignia remained in one jacket pocket, and after one more quick double-check, she confirmed the hex doll remained snugly nestled in the other.

So far, though, the healer hadn’t given any indication that she suspected any more of Rebecca than the old bird usually showed anyone on a regular basis.

She might have discovered Rebecca’s identity, or at the very least that Shade’s single resident elf wasn’t who she’d made herself out to be.

As long as Zida didn’t bring it up to Rebecca or anyone else, Rebecca could keep her mouth shut too. Until Zida gave her a reason to believe otherwise, and it would just have to be good enough.

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