Chapter 13 #2
“I am!” I bent my knee and wiggled my toes, and it took me too long to realize that they couldn’t see me wiggling my toes. “Oh. I’m fine. All healed.”
“You’re fine?”
“Yes.”
“How is that possible? You could barely walk when we went inside.”
“Uh… it was a baby salamander. Not as venomous as an adult.” I waved my hand lazily. “The toxin must have worn off.”
“In the five minutes we were gone?”
“Yep.” I laughed nervously. “It’s a miracle. Yay!”
“Zig is not in there,” Farrah blurted, cutting off whatever questioning by Aven was to follow. “He was there. But he left. He asked about an inn, though, and they directed him to one down the street.”
Aven slung my arm over their shoulders and pulled me from the wall. “Not just any inn, but the most expensive one in town.”
“Sounds just like Zig,” I said, holding on way too tightly to Aven’s shoulders.
Even after two near misses with death, Aven’s hair was somehow still glossy, and they smelled great, and they hadn’t even lost an earring in all of it.
Also, the longer tunic over the tighter trousers was such a good look on them.
Like a whole other vibe than what they showed at the castle.
They were unfairly pretty even after an altercation with fire salamanders and lugging my dead weight for several hours.
Okay. I didn’t know if it was the pain relief or the effects of whatever was in that elixir, or maybe it was the unrelenting exhaustion, but I was a little out of it.
Waxing poetic about Aven was one thing, but losing time was another.
Because one minute we were in front of the tavern, and the next we were in the lobby of the inn.
“Sister!” Zig yelled, tossing himself at me, almost taking both of us to the ground. Aven managed to catch us before we fell. “I thought the worst had happened and I would die of a broken heart before I actually died of a removed heart,” he said, ever dramatic.
“Brother,” I said evenly, though by the way Zig’s eyebrows twitched, I think I may have slurred it. “Glad to see you’re okay as well.”
He regarded me, his hand on his chin, then reached out and poked me in the cheek. “What happened to you?”
“Salamander toxin.” Aven tugged me upright as I wavered.
“Is he…,” Farrah started as she pointed at Zig, “always like this?”
“Yes. Humor is my coping mechanism,” Zig said with a grin. “Otherwise, I may have to actually face my mortality. And anyway, who are you?”
“This is Farrah,” Aven replied. They hauled me closer to their side again. “She helped us cross the river.”
“Oh!” Zig said. “The disembodied voice. Great. Okay. So I got us the most expensive room they had.”
“Let me guess. You used the money you just acquired in the tavern,” I said.
Zig scoffed. “No. I would never.” He jerked his thumb at Aven. “I used theirs. Consider it my fee for guiding Mouse here. And yes, all of our stuff is already safely stowed, and our three mounts are living it up in the stable. So let’s go.”
We followed Zig upstairs. He unlocked the door with a key and opened it with a flourish.
The inn’s most expensive room wasn’t much bigger than a regular room at an inn.
Except it had two beds instead of one, and two nightstands, and Zig had already lit a smattering of candles around.
He had even taken the liberty of rolling out my bedroll on the floor, the presumptuous jerk.
Okay. He was correct in that I would have offered to take the floor—Aven’s gold had paid for the room, so they deserved a bed, and Farrah had probably never slept on the floor in her whole life.
It only made sense. At least he’d given me one of the bed’s pillows; it was quite luxurious to have four feather pillows in one room. Maybe that was what made it expensive.
I unhooked myself from Aven and stumbled toward my bedroll, but Aven caught me by the elbow and guided me to the mattress. They gently pushed me, and my legs folded like cheap furniture beneath a giant.
“This is yours,” I said as soon as I plopped onto the sheets.
“You need it more.”
“I’m not taking your bed. You paid for the room.”
Aven pinched the bridge of their nose. “Ellinore, please don’t be stubborn. Just take it for the night. You can argue with me later.”
“Fine. I will take you up on both offers.” I flopped theatrically back onto the pillows, blinked at the ceiling, and then was out.
I woke up in the morning to the sun piercing through the window right into my face.
Despite that, I was the most comfortable I’d been in forever.
The mattress and the feather pillows felt like I was sleeping on a cloud.
I didn’t want to wake up, but if the sun was already that bright, I’d slept too long.
I squeezed my eyes shut, groaned, and rolled over, knocking right into a body.
I froze. Peeling one eye open, I let out a relieved breath to find Zig next to me, just as asleep as I’d been, face smushed into his pillow. Oh, thank the ancients it was him. And not…
I rolled again and peered toward the other bed. Farrah was spread over the whole mattress, one foot hanging off, her dark-brown hair all over the place. Which meant… I inched toward the edge and looked down. Aven slept on the floor, curled into a ball on their side, blanket tucked up to their chin.
Sitting up gingerly, I noticed my leg propped up on a pillow, my boots off, and the makeshift bandage that had been placed on my wound was missing.
I knew for certain I hadn’t removed my boots before falling asleep, and I surely didn’t take off the bandage, either.
I reached down and touched the place just below my knee that had torn open on the bridge, to find it completely healed.
“The wound is gone,” Aven said, scaring the daylights out of me.
I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming and waking the others. “Why did you do that?” I whispered back.
“Do what?” Their voice was raspy from sleep, and my gut lurched, which was not an entirely unpleasant feeling.
“Surprise me like that?” I cleared my throat. “I mean, come up behind a fierce fighter like me. If I had my sword, I could have skewered you.”
Aven shrugged. “I can think of worse ways to go.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I am.”
“Good.”
I waited for them to elaborate further, or question me about the disappearing wound, but they did neither. They merely went about gathering their things and getting ready for the day.
Zig snorted in his sleep, then rolled over to the other side, pulling all the sheets with him.
“I’m sorry if he kept you up,” I said to Aven.
“He didn’t. He actually didn’t come into the room until the small hours of the morning.”
“Yeah. He usually stays up most of the night. Then drags himself back in the morning to sleep for a few hours until he’s up and out again.”
“I can’t imagine,” Aven said, rubbing a hand down their face. “I dropped off right after you.”
My cheeks heated. “Well, it’s been a trying few days.”
“You might want to wake these two,” Aven said, pausing at the door. “We need to find the witness today, and I don’t know how long that will take.”
“Yeah. I will.”
The door opened and closed softly. I swung my legs over the side and stopped short when I realized that Aven had slept without a pillow.