Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DARBY
“You can both stop hovering. You’re worse than a couple of mother hens.
” Darby winced as she touched the lump on the back of her head, feeling for any additional damage or swelling.
She pulled her fingers away, checking them to ensure that the bleeding had finally stopped.
Her eyes struggled to focus on her fingers so close to her face, and the effort made her stomach roll.
She gripped the edge of the bed she sat on to steady herself.
“When you stop looking so pale that you might fall over at any moment, we’ll stop hovering,” Henry countered. “I told Fitz we should have taken you to the hospital.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital. It’s just a knock on the head.” She mentally ran through her list of symptoms. “Maybe a concussion. I’ll be fine.”
“Just a knock on the head?” Henry looked at her in disbelief. “There was enough blood on that floor that I was certain for a moment that you were dead.”
She shrugged. “Head wounds bleed a lot. It tends to look a lot scarier than it actually is.”
Fitz silently handed her a glass of water and she took a long, slow sip. She avoided meeting his eyes, still unsure where things stood between them after their argument at the hospital.
Henry wasn’t done. “How could you know how scary it was? You were unconscious for all of it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe just my years of practice in the medical field.” Darby drawled as she touched her head again and tried to reach for her magic, but was rewarded with a hundred tiny needles in her temples instead. She sucked in a sharp breath at the pain.
“What is it?” Henry was on his knees by her bed in an instant.
She shoved him away. “Nothing. I was just trying to see if I could use magic to speed up this process, but it looks like it’s just going to be sleep for now.”
“Are you sure?”
The worry evident in his eyes and face was enough to soften her irritation.
He was scared. Is scared. And he wouldn’t be this concerned if he didn’t care about me so much.
“I’m sure, Henry. I just need some sleep and a coffee in the morning, and I’ll be right as rain.” She tried to summon a reassuring smile.
“Did you see who it was?”
Fitz’s quiet voice caught her by surprise. She looked up to where he stood, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed in front of him. Their eyes met, and the haunted guilt in his expression nearly broke her.
What happened?
She tore her gaze away and blinked, trying to focus her mind on all the details she could recall.
“I didn’t. When I came home, the workshop was in shambles, like a tornado had blown through.
I remember being upset, then Raven started screeching, and then the next thing I remember is waking up here.
” She looked around her small apartment, struck by a sudden thought.
“Did the two of you really carry me all the way up here?”
“I don’t know whether to be hurt by your lack of faith in me or touched that you think you’re enough of a burden to be concerned about.” Fitz raised a single brow in challenge.
She breathed an inward sigh of relief at the return of his sense of humor.
Maybe everything will be okay between us again.
“You should know that your captain here is incredibly bossy in a crisis.” Henry was apparently now sufficiently convinced she wasn’t standing at death’s door, and he dropped into a large, cushioned chair.
Fitz shrugged unapologetically at him, apparently accepting both the charge and the claim of being hers. “I’ve spent nearly twenty years giving orders. It’s become second-nature now.”
“Good. Maybe Darby will actually listen to someone for once.”
“You and I both know that’s unlikely. Though, maybe if you held her coffee for ransom…”
“Would the two of you please stop conspiring against me?” A wave of exhaustion hit her, and she slowly eased herself onto her pillow. “Or at the very least, take your conspiring elsewhere.”
There was a rustling of feathers, and Raven landed on one of the bedposts at the foot of her bed. “Good Raven. Good night.”
She blinked. “Where did he come from?”
“He’s been in here the whole time,” Fitz answered. “He was apparently locked out of the workshop when your assailant left. He was the one who warned us that there was something wrong.”
Darby smiled, which turned into a yawn. “Good Raven.”
He bobbed his head. “Good Raven.”
Henry stood. “We’ll let you get some sleep.” He paused for a moment. “Maybe it was Deus who hit you on the head because he knew it would take a concussion to get you to actually sleep for once.”
Fitz snorted.
She gasped in fake offense. “Picking on the girl with the head injury? That’s a low blow, Henry. I expect extra chocolate in my mocha tomorrow for that.”
He crossed to her bedside, leaning over her and brushing her hair from her face with gentle fingers. “You would get that anyway. Sleep well, Darbs.” He gave her face one last searching glance, as if to convince himself that she really was fine, then squeezed her shoulder and straightened.
He passed Fitz on his way to the door, and some silent exchange that Darby couldn’t understand passed between the two of them. Fitz nodded tersely. “I’m staying.”
Henry closed the door quietly and his heavy footsteps on the stairs faded into the distance. Darby fought to keep her eyes open. “You don’t have to stay here. I’ll be fine.”
His voice was firm. “I’m staying.”
“Fitz, it’s just a concussion. I’ll get some sleep and be fine in the morning. You don’t—”
“I’m not leaving, Darby.” There was a pained, desperate edge to his voice that prompted her to open her eyes fully and look at him.
His jaw worked back and forth, and he swallowed thickly before continuing.
“If I hadn’t left you at the hospital, I would have been there to protect you. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry; it’s not your fault. Don’t let a misplaced sense of guilt keep you in that uncomfortable chair all night.”
He paused for a moment. “It’s not guilt that’s keeping me here. I want to know you’re safe. I don’t think you can imagine what it was like to see you like that. I thought…” He swallowed again, and his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I thought you were gone. I thought I lost you.”
“On the bright side, I wouldn’t have been around to ruin your life anymore.” Darby tried for humor, but the unresolved conflict between them made the joke fall flat.
Fitz’s voice was pained. “Don’t. I shouldn’t have said what I did. You saved me, and instead of focusing on the fact that I was given a second chance, I blamed you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry that all of this means you can’t continue to do the job that you love, and that your life will never be the same. But I’m not sorry that I kept you alive; I’m too selfish for that. I prefer my friends to be breathing.”
He chuckled, and the sound wrapped around her heart like a warm hug. “A rather low bar for friendship.”
“I have to take what I can get. I don’t know if you noticed, but people tend to keep their distance.” The drowsiness was making her loose-lipped, but she was too tired to care. “Henry and Raven are about the only two who actually like me.”
“Not true.”
“Merry doesn’t count. He’s like a puppy who loves everyone who looks in his direction.”
“I wasn’t talking about Merlin.”
Her eyelids drooped shut, and Darby had trouble discerning whether the words she heard were real or just a part of a dream. “Does that mean that you like me?”
“Of course I like you, Darby.”
“Even though I’m not soft and pretty like Lacey? She says I have man arms.”
“Considering the fact that without those arms, I would be dead right now, I happen to think quite highly of them.”
“That’s good. I like you, Fitz. I’m glad you’re my friend.” She giggled. “Did you know I held your hand before we were friends? Get it? Because I had to make it. I held your heart, too.”
His answer was just barely loud enough to hear as she drifted off.
“I think you still do.”