Chapter 23 Old Habits #2
“Did you treat Kaly after the attack on the city?”
“Your sister?” Balran threaded her fingers together and smiled in her comforting way. “She didn’t need my services, but I did read all of the injury reports from that night. Kalypso was in good shape. Her squad commander certainly wasn’t, but Ozirax would have been much worse if not for her.”
A jumble of emotion rose like a wave at the thought of her sister’s heroism again. Pride and love crashing into jealousy and fear, but before it could take her over, she rose above it and took a deep, grounding breath.
“Have you seen her?”
Kat blanched. “I’m not allowed…I don’t think.”
“Oh, those buffoons in the guard and their silly rules.” Balran waved a clawed hand through the air and Kat almost laughed—it seemed Balran had no respect for any of Heck’s institutions but the healers.
“Just go to the barracks and find her. What are they even going to do to stop you? Toss you in jail? That would look terrible, you’re so small. ”
Kat had never been called small before, but she winced at the thought of being human-handled by another strange demon. And there was the little fact that she might have been allowed right in and then what in the hells would she say?
“Is there anything else I can do for you? Any new ailments? Wounds? Exotic human diseases that need diagnosing?”
Kat shook her head, grateful for her health. For all Balran’s kindness, she was a little too curious at times.
Her gaze fell back on the sleeping pair, heart twisting at the thought of leaving one of her own alone. Even the large demon looked helpless, his tail laying alongside his leg but much shorter than she would have expected. She wished she could help but—malachite.
As if a drayk had just dropped a letter directly inside her mind, Kat’s brain filled with answers.
She spun for the door and threw it open, calling for Zaiya in a voice that startled the guards, but she was too eager to care, apologies lackluster as she tugged the purple demon into the infirmary room.
The hollows under Zaiya’s eyes were deep and much darker than her skin, her hair sticking up in the wrong places, and there was a constant pinch to her brow. This was…perhaps not a good idea, Kat suddenly thought, but she was already guiding Zaiya inside. “Do you know this demon?”
Her eyes narrowed like they were recognizing something as she paced between the beds and took more of him in, but then she shrugged.
The horrible feeling in the chamber sat even heavier on Kat’s chest. “Shit. I thought he was related to Elliran because he’s the color of malachite and so is she.”
“Not all green demons know each other.” Zaiya snorted, and Kat folded in on herself with embarrassment. “I mean, do you know this hu—”
Zaiya fell into stillness when her eyes met the human’s face. Balran took a step toward her, ready to tend, but Kat grabbed the demon woman’s arm to hold her back and observe. Something in the air shifted, and Zaiya’s hand reached out to the face that Kat had found eerily familiar.
“Elli?” she said weakly, voice breaking as she fell to her knees beside the bed.
Kat let Balran go then, and the healer rushed to the other demon, easing her back up and onto a stool.
Zaiya squeezed the human’s arm and nestled a hand into her hair as if searching for horns that weren’t there.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but they never left the face that Kat had known was familiar and yet so wrong.
“You know this human?” Balran asked, failing to hide her excitement as she flitted across the room to gather supplies.
“It’s Elli,” Zaiya said through hiccupping breaths, and she hovered her hand over the body’s exposed stomach and the markings there. “What did they do to you?”
Balran looked to Kat as if she might have the answer, and lucky for her, she did. “Elliran, the scribe who worked for the council and went missing.”
“That Elli?” Balran dropped the bottle she was holding but caught it with her tail before it crashed to the floor. “That’s not possible!”
Kat only gestured to the pair.
“No, no, this isn’t…it can’t be. Demons can wear other faces for a while, but that’s only an illusion.” Balran rubbed just under her curling horns. “This is not an illusion. I’ve cast everything I can think of and all the reversals. The magic for an illusion just isn’t here.”
“Wake her up!” Zaiya shouted, and even the bodies seemed to jolt at the anger in her plea.
“We will,” Kat said quickly, rushing to her side. She hesitated because she wasn’t sure she could do it, but then she placed a hand on Zaiya’s shoulder and squeezed.
Zaiya turned a tear-streaked, desperate face up to her. “I have to tell her I’m sorry.”
Kat bit back her own tears and nodded. “We’ll do everything we can to help her.
I promise.” The words came out without permission, but Kat knew she meant them because she had been determined to find Elliran to begin with.
Now that that was solved—a questionable plot point but one that would surely work out—she had a whole new dilemma.
Kat strut to the foot of the sleeping demon’s bed and rifled through the stack of parchment until she found the runes copied from their bodies.
“I’m taking this,” she told Balran with more authority than she knew she had.
“And do not, under any circumstances, let anyone from the scholar’s hall in here.
Well, unless it’s Azrion. He’s purple, and he’s a little pompous, but not really, and he walks like this”—she took a few steps with her arms folded over a puffed-up chest—“you’ll know him when you see him. ”
“Wha…” Balran’s mouth fell open, and Kat was sure she wasn’t used to be spoken to like this, especially not in her own infirmary.
But Kat channeled her sister. “Listen, Elli could still be in danger, so if you want to keep her safe—”
“Absolutely I do.” Balran said standing tall.
“I can explain everything about Tarzul to her,” Zaiya said. She had entwined her fingers with Elliran’s and was stroking her hair.
“We’ll know more if we can wake Elli up.” Kat stuffed the copy of the runes into her pocket and took a deep breath. “When we wake Elli up.”