Page 11 of Cursed Shadows 5

“The one who brought me here,” I start, turning my cheek to the doorway, “was he kicked out?”

Dare.

The faint memory of him catching me before I fell, his arms hooked around me, and the mocking glint of his voice at my ear.

“No visits, only injured,” she murmurs. “He not wait.”

“He didn’t wait?”

She shakes her head, then gestures to the door with a jerk of the chin. “He push in.”

Oh. He didn’t wait in the queue.

I almost smile.

I can just imagine it.

Dare shoving through the protests of healers, pushing aside an injured meant for this very bed, depositing me here, but trying to snag a fresh pastry and getting walloped with the rolling pin on his way out.

That is very Dare.

“Too many injured,” she adds, and throws a dark look at me. “Not beds enough.”

I arch a brow.

That look… It almost seemed toblameme.

Coming from a dokkalf, it’s a surprising moment, my startled gaze, her judgemental one. But she breaks it like a flimsy twig as she hits my side, a sharp gesture to roll over.

Healers are so rarely kind.

I grunt androllllllonto my front, the slowest, achiest movement to ever groan through me.

The healer loses patience—with a sharp tut—then shoves me onto my belly.

She starts work on my back.

My face is smushed in sheepskin.

We don’t speak more.

I stare at a blur of fleece—and I don’t let my mind scramble and unravel. I don’t worry about the injured around me, the wounded and the dead of the Sacrament, who made it and who didn’t.

I let myself find a beat of peace.

No visitors. Only wounded.

No one to rush to my side and grab at me and ask me all sorts of questions I don’t have the energy to answer.

I just melt into the sheepskin.

Even once the healer is done, and she tugs my sweater down, and I flop onto my side to curl up and find a moment’s rest, I hope no one sneaks into the bakery to find me.

The only visitor I would accept is Eamon—and only if he simply sat here in silence, holding my hand.

Something I never did think would ever happen, that I would be too exhausted even to have Eamon at my bedside.

But I am exhausted.

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