Page 76 of Fly to Fury
She cried silently as she stumbled down the stairs.
The Half-Breed Squadron would never be the same again.
“Your friends are here.”
Dacha’s words and gentle shake to his shoulder brought Fieran out of the light doze he’d fallen into after the nurses had come by to see to his needs and wrestle him into a shapeless hospital gown. A rather exhausting and humiliating experience.
He blinked his eyes open as Pip stepped into the room, her arms hugged to her stomach, her face drawn.
He had some vague sense that she’d visited before. But it might have been a drug-induced dream. Most of yesterday was shattered pieces of things that might have been memories or might have been hallucinations. He couldn’t be sure.
“Hey.” He smiled, hoping the expression reassured her. It didn’t feel quite right with the way the bruises puffed his face.
She worked up something like a smile, though her eyes flicked from him to Dacha sitting in the chair beside him.
It was an act of courage on Pip’s part to visit Fieran with his dacha sitting right there. Fieran had better distract her before she froze up completely.
“Dacha, do you have that shrapnel piece I wanted?” Fieran thought he’d asked for one somewhere during that half-remembered healing in the field hospital.
Dacha reached down and picked up something off the floor. He handed it to Fieran, his eyebrows raised as if he wondered why Fieran would want a piece of the shrapnel that had nearly killed him.
Fieran took the piece, which was about ten inches long and appeared to be some part of the metal of the engine mount. Thankfully, someone had cleaned up the blood and gore so it was bare metal. This would have really been an odd gesture if it had still been coated in his blood.
He held it up as if presenting it to Pip, trying to keep his tone as light as possible. “I brought your aeroplane back in one piece.” As in, it was the only piece left.
Dacha’s eyebrows rose farther, as if he found Fieran’s romantic gestures highly suspect. Then again, Dacha had no way of knowing there was anything at all romantic going onbetween Fieran and Pip, so maybe that was judgment on Fieran’s friendship gestures.
Though there was that vague wisp of a memory amid all the fog…
Pip rolled her eyes, some of the tension easing from her shoulders. “You know that wasn’t what I meant.” Yet she reached out and took the shrapnel.
Fieran shrugged, then winced as he remembered that moving hurt. He dropped his hand back to the blanket.
The smile dropped from Pip’s face as she glanced at the open doorway, focusing on something or someone Fieran couldn’t see. “The others are here as well. Are you up for seeing everyone?”
He nodded. Of course he was up for it, even if he was grateful they’d sent Pip in first. Although, what that gesture said, he didn’t want to examine too closely just yet. “Send them in.”
Pretty Face strode inside first, missing his characteristic smirk. He was followed by a hunched Lije, a limping Stickyfingers, and a shuffling Tiny. Aylia and Lt. Rothilion halted in the doorway.
And that was it. No one else stepped inside.
Fieran’s stomach sank, a sudden and sure panic filling him. “Where’s Merrik?”
His friends glanced among themselves, then at Dacha. As if everyone wanted someone else to tell him. But none of them offered reassurance. Instead, their faces twisted in nearly identical expressions of pain.
“No.No.Where is he?” Fieran’s magic burst around his fingers, burning a hole in the blanket and sending shafts of pain through him as the magic ate away at the numbing healing magic.
“Easy, sason.” Dacha placed his hand over Fieran’s, hismagic keeping Fieran’s contained before it lashed out further. “He is alive.”
Alive. But if he was alive, then where was he? He’d be here if he was all right.
“He was guarding where you fell.” Lije spoke up, his voice rough. “Three Mongavarian flyers would have strafed you while you were down. But Merrik kept them away.”
No. Fieran was shaking his head, still unable to reel his magic back.
“We couldn’t get there in time. We tried. But we just couldn’t.” Pretty Face clenched his fists at his sides, not meeting Fieran’s gaze. “They shot up his aeroplane pretty badly. He limped it back to the airfield but then…”
“He crashed.” Pip eased a step forward, a tear trickling down her cheek. “His dacha and I got him out, but…but…”
