Chapter 22
Delia
The Healer’s Pavilion, The Ember Vein Mining Camp
Evonne Withers does not look like any healer I’ve ever met.
She’s older—silver streaking through thick flame colored hair braided and pinned at the nape of her neck.
Her skin is dark gray, like many of the people here. She has glowing tattoos, brands maybe? They look like runes and geometrical designs, I don’t really understand, but they are beautiful.
Lines bracket her mouth and eyes, but they look earned, not worn. Her hands are big and capable, ink stains along the fingers from whatever she was writing before we walked in.
She smiles when she sees us, but it’s Thorne she bows to first.
“My Lord. My Lady.” Her voice is warm, steady. “Welcome.”
Thorne gives the formal greeting, makes his very dramatic do not die while I’m gone speech, then after some while, he turns to me.
“Stay until I return for you,” he says, that Demon-king gravity threaded through every word.
“Of course,” I promise.
Then, softer, because I can’t help myself, “And Thorne?”
“Yes, Shula?”
“Be careful.”
He leans down. I kiss the corner of his mouth. It’s quick, almost chaste.
It wrecks me.
And from the way his eyes flare and his hand tightens once on mine before he lets go, it wrecks him too.
Then he bows, and he’s gone, the tent flap falling closed behind him, and the world suddenly feels quieter.
Smaller. Lonelier. But also, it’s charged with anticipation because I know—I know—he is coming back for me.
Evonne watches me with the kind of look I recognize from old nurses and doctors I’ve worked with in the past—measuring, curious, not unkind.
“Well,” she says, clapping her hands once. “Shall we?”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and nod.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s.”
She gestures me deeper into the pavilion.
It’s not what I expect.
No curtained rows of beds. No beeping machines.
Instead, gleaming stone counters, racks of glass vials etched with sigils, shelves of neatly labeled jars filled with powders, dried plants, and crystals that pulse faintly with inner light.
A series of low cots line one wall, each with folded blankets and small hovering orbs of warm light above them.
The air smells like herbs and smoke and something bright—ozone, maybe.
It’s clean. Shockingly clean for a mining camp.
“This is incredible, Healer Withers,” I murmur.
Evonne smiles. “We do what we can with what the land gives us, and we cleanse with fire. Please, call me Evonne, Lady Delia.”
“Oh. Just Delia, please. Lady makes me sound like I should be wearing a ballgown and judging people’s table manners.”
Her eyes twinkle. “Very well, Delia. Then you must also do me the courtesy of dropping my title. Evonne will suffice.”
“Deal,” I say, feeling a small bubble of relief. “And, well, Thorne said you prepared some things to show me?”
“I did.” She nods and moves toward a central table. “He told me you served as a healer of sorts in your old world. I would like to hear it from you, in your own words.”
I blink.
Right.
Me.
Okay. Talk, Delia.
“I was—am—an EMT,” I say, stepping closer.
“Emergency Medical Technician. I used to ride in an ambulance—like a chariot just for transporting the sick to healers. We’d respond to 911 calls—emergencies, people in car accidents, heart attacks, overdoses, fires…
anything immediate. We stabilize them on scene and transport them to the hospital. ”
Evonne’s brows rise. “You treat them at the place of injury? Before bringing them to a proper healer?”
“Yeah. We’re like, um, battlefield triage, but for city life not war. First on scene, last to leave. We can’t do everything, but we can do enough to keep someone alive long enough to reach full treatment.”
She goes still for a heartbeat.
Then another.
Her gaze drifts to the tent flap facing the direction of the mine.
“I cannot tell you how many times I have thought,” she says slowly, “if only there were more healers trained, I would not see so many fatalities. By the time they bring the injured from the lower tunnels up here, the damage is often… very far gone.”
My chest tightens. I know that tone.
That quiet, weary frustration.
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “I have an idea.”
Evonne looks back at me, eyes sharpening.
“Go on.”
“What if you didn’t have to wait for them to drag the wounded all the way up here?” I ask, my brain kicking into gear, the familiar hum of problem-solving buzzing under my skin. “What if we started an emergency response unit right here in the camp?”
She tilts her head. “An emergency response unit?”
“Yeah. You already have structure. Shifts. Foremen. Runners.” I gesture vaguely toward the Vein’s direction.
“What if we train some of the miners—or guards—to be, essentially, your on-site EMTs? Basic trauma care. Bleeding control. Stabilization. Then they call for you or another healer to meet them halfway, instead of hauling half-dead bodies up all those dangerous shafts and tunnels.”
Evonne’s lips part.
I keep going because the more I talk, the more it clicks into place.
“Think about it,” I say, pacing a small circle.
“You teach them how to assess. Is the person breathing, bleeding, conscious? Teach them how to splint a leg or staunch bleeding with what they’ve got on hand.
How to keep a spine aligned. How to recognize when someone’s slipping into shock and what to do about it. ”
“We have tonics that slow bleeding,” she murmurs, already thinking. “And salves that numb pain and slow infection. But many who bring the injured are too panicked or untrained to apply them correctly. Or they use them on the wrong wound.”
“Exactly,” I say, snapping my fingers. “So we make kits. Small ones. Belt pouches with your most important tonics and tools, clearly marked. We drill them on usage. You create a simple system—three steps, four max. Nothing complicated. In an emergency, people forget anything more.”
Evonne’s expression shifts from surprise to something like hope.
“Lady—Delia,” she corrects herself with a small smile. “You may not understand what you are suggesting.”
“Try me.”
She gestures around us.
“This camp serves the Vein. The miners and their families. The sentries. The forge-runners. If we had such an… emergency unit… in each major shaft, the time between injury and treatment could be cut in half, perhaps more.”
“Exactly.” My heart is racing now, but in a good way. “This is what we do back home. We figured out that waiting for people to come to the hospital was killing them. So we took the hospital to them. Or at least the first ten minutes of it.”
Evonne exhales slowly, as if something inside her just eases.
Evonne listens, lips pressed thin, eyes distant like she’s seeing every patient she’s ever lost.
“I have wished for more hands for years,” she admits finally. “More fully trained healers. But all of our acolytes must be sent to the sanctums in the Tidal Lands or the Rooted Marches. We do not have the resources to keep many here permanently.”
She sighs, glancing toward the entrance. “And most of the able-bodied men are already in the mines. We cannot spare them easily. Every set of hands is counted three times before a shift is assigned.”
“Okay, but, what about the women? Do they mine?” I ask.
“No, females are not allowed to mine,” she shakes her head.
“Then, surely there are some who could be trained? Who might actually be interested?” I ask.
Evonne blinks, like the thought hadn’t fully landed before.
“Well, these are working folk,” she says slowly. “The women usually tend the homes. Keep the fires, mend the clothing, cook, teach their daughters to do the same.” Her mouth twists, wry.
“But you’re a healer?” I ask, clearly confused.
“Yes, well, that is simply how it has always been. I am the exception, not the rule.”
“Why not ask, then?” I press gently. “Why not see if there are some who might like jobs outside the home? Or even just training? Part-time response teams, Healer’s assistants, something.”
She goes very still.
Then she huffs out a soft, incredulous laugh.
“Gods, I’ve been so foolish,” she says. “And perhaps a little proud. I have been thinking only in terms of ‘healers’ and ‘miners’ and ‘wives’ and ‘children.’ Boxes.” Her eyes brighten.
“But you are right. There is no reason some cannot learn the basics. They know the mines. They know the dangers. They would be highly motivated to protect their own.”
“Good.” I lean forward, energy buzzing through me. And I see it echoing in her.
“We start small. One shift. One crew. Maybe a couple of women who want to do more, a few younger miners who are quick on their feet. We test what works. Change what doesn’t. And every time someone survives who wouldn’t have before? You write down what helped, and we double down on it.”
Evonne studies me for a long, long moment, like she’s weighing my soul along with my words.
“You speak of this with such certainty,” she says.
I shrug, but my throat feels tight.
“Because I’ve seen it work. On my world. With my people. We’re not magical like you, but we’re stubborn and resourceful. And we learned the hard way that minutes matter. Seconds matter.”
I gesture between us, between her shelves of potions and my scribbled notes.
“I can’t change the SoulTakers or this war or the nightmares in the tunnels—but this? This I can help with.”
Something in me settles as I say it.
Like for the first time since I got dragged through fire into this impossible realm, I’m not just being thrust into it.
I’m becoming a part of it.
Like a puzzle piece sliding into place.
Maybe Nightfall is brutal and terrifying and deadly.
But maybe there’s a space for me in it.
Evonne nods once. Decisive.
“Lady—Delia. I think you might be on to something.”
She moves with sudden purpose, crossing to a nearby shelf and pulling down a stack of thin slate tablets and a pot of inky liquid that glimmers faintly crimson.
“Come,” she says, already clearing a table. “We will start by listing the most common injuries the miners bring in. Then we sort them by urgency. You will tell me how your EMTs triage. I will tell you what our draughts can and cannot do.”
I grin.
“Deal. But fair warning, I’m gonna be annoying about systemizing it. Color codes, symbols, all of it.”
Evonne barks out a laugh.
“Good. The men down there are more likely to listen if it is simple enough to follow while half-asleep.”
We sit at the table, shoulder to shoulder—her sketching out crude diagrams of mine levels and shafts, me drawing little stick-figure miners and scribbling notes about airway, breathing, circulation.
Outside, I can hear the muffled rumble of shift changes, the distant clank of ore cars, the faint neigh-roar of a Fire Mustang.
Inside, there is ink and slate and the smell of herbs.
And possibility.
For the first time since I got here, I feel grounded—like I can finally stand on my own feet.
Useful.
Not just a magical battery or a political bride—but Delia Esposito, EMT, who knows how to build something that saves lives out of nothing but protocols and stubbornness.
“Alright,” I say, tapping the slate with the side of my stylus. “Step one: we find some students. Step two: we teach them how to recognize when someone’s airway is compromised. Start there and we can build everything else on top.”
Evonne nods, eyes gleaming. “Then let us begin.”
And as we bend over our work, the strange, smoky world of Nightfall spins on outside—while, in the belly of the earth, somewhere deep and hot and dangerous, the man I’m falling in love with is fighting for that world’s future.
I suppose the least I can do is fight for it up here.