Page 73 of Fly to Fury
There was a long pause, then Dacha’s voice, low and threaded with something Fieran didn’t have the energy to decipher. “Alive. Your friends visited earlier.”
Fieran tried to get his mouth and tongue to form a reply, but he couldn’t manage it.
Somewhere, distantly, a door opened and shut. Then more people filled the room, sensed rather than seen as Fieran couldn’t seem to peel his eyes open just then.
A hand rested on his chest, and healing magic flowed into him. For a moment, his magic crackled to meet it, and Fieran’s mind and body felt torn as he struggled against his own magic’s natural reaction.
More healing magic poured through him in a soothing wave, and he could finally relax enough to draw in a decent breath. The crackle of his magic subsided deep within him again, no longer fighting the healer.
When Fieran got his eyes open, he found a female elf healer bending over him. She had her own eyes still closed as if to better concentrate on whatever she was seeing with her magic.
She’d pulled the blanket down to his waist, giving him his first look at the blue-black bruising covering nearly his entire chest. Starting at his waist, he seemed to be splinted and bandaged, keeping his back and hips in line. Perhaps his legs were splinted too, given their heaviness.
Behind the healer, a male human orderly in the basic green scrubs waited with a case in his hands.
Dacha had returned to his seat beside Fieran while UncleWeylind remained in the doorway, not adding another person to the already crowded room.
After a moment, the elf healer gave a nod, opened her eyes, and withdrew her hand. She turned to the orderly. “He will need another dose of morphine as well. The magic of the ancient kings destroys the healing magic too quickly otherwise.”
The orderly nodded and began preparing the needle and dose as the healer gave instructions.
Fieran swung his gaze away from them to the wall next to him, finally registering all the pictures tacked there. He wasn’t in the main hospital as he might have expected. No, he recognized his brother’s artwork. He was in Dacha’s quarters, though he had no memory of being moved there from what he assumed was the field hospital below the bluff.
He kept his gaze fixed on Tryndar’s innocent drawings as the elf healer administered the morphine into the vein in his arm.
Once that was done, the female healer poked at a few spots along Fieran’s chest, then peeled back the bandages to check the wounds beneath. She kept nodding, as if satisfied, before she changed the bandages. She reached over him and picked up his arm, the one wrapped in a splint. “Wiggle your fingers.”
Fieran stared at the hand. It took him a moment to remember which hand was which, but he finally moved those fingers.
“Good.” She set the hand down. Then she reached over and lifted the blanket over his feet. “Wiggle your right foot.”
Which foot was his right foot again? He had to think an even longer moment before he moved his foot back and forth.
“Now the left foot.”
Since he’d already figured out the right foot, the left foot was easier. He couldn’t move the rest of his legs—more because of some kind of constricting wrapping pinning them in place—but he could move his feet.
“Very good.” The healer set the blanket back into place as the orderly behind her scratched notes on a clipboard. When the healer turned, she glanced between Dacha and Fieran. “Despite the extent of his injuries, he appears to be healing quite well. I do not see any reason to think he should experience anything less than a full recovery.”
Dacha released a sigh, the set of his shoulders easing.
Fieran relaxed against the pillow, relief flooding him. He’d been too out of it to even consider the danger of never walking again—never flying again. “How bad?” When the healer glanced at him, he struggled to get more words past his dry mouth and strangely thick tongue. “How bad are my injuries?”
He needed to know what he faced. He would walk again. He would recover. But he knew how deeply he hurt. Even elven magic couldn’t banish this in a single day.
“Two fractured legs, several broken ribs, a fractured pelvis, and a fractured arm. A small spinal fracture, but that has not damaged your spinal cord. Bruised internal organs. A punctured lung, which we repaired in the initial healing. Not to mention several wounds from shrapnel, which we removed.” The healer’s catalogue of his injuries was spoken rather briskly, as if reciting from a list. “Both you and your father experienced what seemed to be a mild exposure to that chemical the enemy unleashed, and we were able to heal the damage in both of you.”
Dacha’s shoulders tensed, then hunched, as the list went on.
Fieran swallowed. How had he survived all that?
If he’d been fully human, he wouldn’t have. As much as he always felt too human, it seemed in this case, he’d been too much of an elf to die.
“But as I said, you should make a full recovery.” The healer tilted her head toward the orderly and the clipboard. “I believe you will be stable enough to move in a day or two, and we will send you to Aldon to finish your healing.”
Home to Aldon. Home to Mama, Louise, Ellie, and Tryndar. Home to the refuge of Treehaven.
As much as something in Fieran longed to go home—to get one of his mama’s hugs and see his siblings—leaving would mean leaving Pip. Merrik. The flyboys. The whole squadron. Leaving would put them even more at risk now that Mongavaria had that foreign magic on their aeroplanes and that chemical they’d unleashed.
