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“Do I want to know which you are, Hayes?” Amara murmured, and Luna broke into giggles.
“I can tell you all about that if you want to know,” Luna said.
Amara stepped closer to her with a broad grin, but Hayes cleared his throat loudly.
“There’s no time for such things now. There are people waiting for us.”
All three of us laughed at that blatant attempt at distraction, but his words still caught my attention. I glanced at Amara, and she nodded confirmation of the question in my eyes.
Whisking Ember off the bed, I declared myself ready to depart, ignoring the knowing look in Amara’s eye.
As we left the hospital—which really was eerily similar to the ones in Caltor and Ostaria—I directed a question at Hayes.
“What about Master Clay? I saw him at the square as well. Is he one of the ones waiting for us?”
“He should be, although he’s been busier than the rest of us in the aftermath of the storm.”
I directed a questioning look at Amara, who explained.
“Given the scale of the disaster, the injured humans got all the initial attention from the healers, regardless of their specialization. But now that the hospital is cleared, the animal healers have been in great demand. Sadly, many animals were also injured during the storm.”
Her words made me look up into the clear sky. Surely Phoenix had been safe in the stables where I’d left him and wasn’t one of the casualties?
Before I had time to ask, a speck appeared in the now cloudless blue, growing larger rapidly. A blur descended toward us, pulling up at the last minute to reveal a bird twice the length of my hand with a blue-gray back and an underside speckled orange and black. Phoenix.
I flicked my hair off my shoulder just in time for him to execute a neat landing.
“Other than hunting flights, he’s been waiting near the hospital,” Amara said. “I think he was keeping watch for you to emerge.”
“Thank you, kind sir.” I ran a finger along the feathers of his underside.
“Even I wasn’t able to lure him back to our lodgings,” a cheerful voice said from the other side of the street.
We all smiled at Clay’s arrival, although I noticed the expression was more strained on Hayes than the rest of us.
“You’re finished for now?” Amara asked Clay, her expression concerned. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“Yes, far too much, in fact,” he assured her with a wide smile. “Everyone I visited plied me with food. I’ve been treated like a king.”
“I should hope so, given you’ve been working for free for days,” Luna said. “At least we ran out of patients yesterday when the local healers kicked us out of the hospital, saying they could handle the remaining injured themselves.”
“How could I deny my help, given how the injuries came about?” Clay gestured for me to mount four shallow steps to the front door of an elegant, narrow home.
I blinked at it in surprise, pausing long enough that the rest of the group stopped as well.
“This is an inn?” I asked doubtfully.
“We have proper lodgings this time,” Luna exclaimed in glee. “Apparently no one wanted to see the heroes of the disaster forced into ordinary inn rooms.”
I groaned. “Please tell me you’re talking about yourselves.”
“Of course not,” she said, her grin turning wicked. “I only healed a very average number of people in the square.”
I groaned again but let her push me up the stairs and through the door. She guided me immediately left, through an internal doorway and into a large, bright sitting room furnished in light wood and elegant brocade.
A tall figure turned from the mantelpiece at our entrance, his eyes fixing on me. I stilled, and Nik and I regarded each other in silence for several seconds before he moved, striding across the room to meet me in the middle.
“You’re fully healed?”
