Kinked

“Shut up,” Quentin grumbled.

As some kind of crisis of expression bolted over Pia’s face, he pulled a corner of the sail over his and Aryal’s heads.

TWENTY-ONE

After taking in the mess strewn all over the beach, everyone leaped into action. Something happened to Galya’s body and detached head. Someday Aryal meant to ask what they did with it, although they probably just did the predictable, boring thing and buried her somewhere. All she knew was that the witch’s remains disappeared.

Others collected Quentin’s supply sack, their borrowed Elven weapons, the empty healing potion vials and the brandy bottle, and folded up the sail they had used for shelter, while Pia and Alex, who was the most accomplished field medic in the sentinels, examined Quentin and tried to examine her.

“Don’t touch me,” Aryal told them hoarsely. They both hesitated, clearly unwilling to listen when she was so injured.

“Do as she says,” Quentin snapped at them. “She needs to see a specialist as quickly as we can get her to one, not another round of blanket healing.”

His tone was so harsh that both Pia and Alex recoiled. Pia’s expression was tight and closed off with some kind of suppressed emotion as she handed Liam over to Eva. Aryal watched dully as Pia talked with Quentin in a low voice. Then, still talking, they both walked away.

When they returned several minutes later, Quentin was healed. Completely.

During the confrontation two months ago in January, Dragos had been hurt badly—worse than Aryal had ever seen or believed was possible—yet somehow after Pia had reached him, he had risen to his feet, apparently unscathed.

So Pia had done whatever magic hoodoo she knew how to do on Quentin. Aryal was glad for that. It was one less thing to worry about.

Quentin was not unscathed. He carried scars on his chest and shoulder, neck, and along the ridge of his cheekbone and on the brow on one side of his face. She wondered if it was because his wounds were magical in nature, or because he had gone some time and had been partially healed by the time Pia got to him. In the end, the reason didn’t matter. He was better, and part of the tight, worried coil inside of her eased.

As soon as Quentin had mentioned a specialist, Dragos strode over quickly to kneel beside Aryal where she huddled and hugged her good knee. She had cut off the longbow splint but didn’t want to strain her leg, which she kept straight.

Dragos put a hand on her shoulder and asked his question with a look.

She couldn’t say the words out loud. She told him telepathically, My wings are pretty fucked up.

Dragos’s gold eyes widened in sharp concern. His Power speared through her in a quick, comprehensive scan. Then he shapeshifted into the dragon so abruptly that everybody else had to scramble out of the way.

“We’re leaving now,” he said to Pia. “We need to get Aryal to a hospital as quickly as possible. Quentin’s right, she needs surgery. The broken bones in her wings weren’t set properly, and they are already fusing together. Any healing right now might make the damage permanent.” He turned to the others. “Stay only long enough to finish cleaning up and do a sweep for more looters, then come home.”

Pia, Liam, Eva and Quentin climbed onto the dragon. Aryal couldn’t sit astride because of her bad leg, so she sat sideways while Quentin’s arms settled around her firmly. Dragos wrapped them in his Power to protect them from the harsh, chill winds in the upper air and he flew with such speed, she watched the route she and Quentin had taken to the shore scroll backward like a movie on rewind.

There was the side street where the shadow wolves had crippled her.

There was the house with the silent, still nursery.

There was the long meadow, rippling like another sea, and the forest, and a quick glimpse of the riverbed that had shrunk to the size of a creek, and last, the Guardian’s house set high in the cliff by the crossover passageway.

It was almost like watching the recent events of her life come undone, except that what had happened in Numenlaur, for good or for ill, had marked her indelibly.

Dragos didn’t slow as they hit the passageway. Instead he speeded up. Aryal’s heart thumped as she remembered how the canyon narrowed at ground level, but thirty feet in the air, the dragon merely banked his wings and used his momentum to shoot through the opening with so little room to spare, she could have reached out with one hand to touch the canyon walls on either side of them.

Immediately past the bottleneck, he snapped his wings out and they completed the crossover passageway without ever having touched earth.

On the other side, the Bohemian Forest looked chill and pale in comparison to the summer heat they had just left. She caught a glimpse of a hastily erected encampment for a much larger group than four inexperienced Elves. The new High Lord Ferion had learned a hard lesson. Unfortunately it was one that had cost the Elves yet another life.

“How much time has passed on this side of the passageway?” Quentin asked.

Pia answered him. “Almost two weeks.”

Time had passed more quickly than it had in Numenlaur.

“Plze will have the closest hospital,” Dragos said. The dragon’s deep voice vibrated through his body. “We’ll go there.”

“No,” Aryal said. Everyone riding on Dragos’s back turned to look at her. She shook her head at them. She said, “I want to go home to Wyr doctors.”

Nobody tried to argue with that. She knew if they were in her shoes, they would want to go home too.

Dragos said, “Then I’ll bargain with one of the Djinn for transport to New York.”

“Don’t bother,” she said dully. “While I appreciate the effort, it’s not worth any possible danger that might come from a bargain with the Djinn. I’ve already healed so much from the first time we were attacked, some of the damage has already solidified.”

He spread his wings and glided a moment, his body language clearly speaking of his reluctance as he thought about that. Everyone else remained silent, waiting, while Quentin’s arms tightened around her to the point of pain.

Then Dragos flew for the airport at Plze, where the corporate jet sat on standby. They boarded the plane rapidly with a minimum of fuss. Moments later, the plane taxied onto a runway and took off. When a ruler of one of the largest Elder demesnes on Earth was in the middle of an emergency, he could slash through a lot of red tape.

As soon as the plane reached a high enough altitude, both Dragos and Quentin started making phone calls. Aryal lay on one of the couches, eyes closed against a pounding headache, as she listened to snatches of their conversations.

… notify the hospital of our arrival. We’ll be there in eight and a half hours, max …

… call Dr. Shaw, and have her assemble a surgical team …

… book an operating room and have it on standby …

“I don’t care if operating rooms are limited,” snarled Dragos. “This is one of my sentinels we’re talking about. We will get there just as soon as we can, and you will hold that room ready and available for when we arrive, or I will tear through your hospital from the inside out. Got it?”

Coming from Dragos, that was not an idle threat. Apparently the administrator on the other end of the line understood, because that was the end of that exchange.

For the rest of the flight Aryal dozed. When she did wake up, Quentin urged her to drink lots of water, so she did. Occasionally she caught glimpses of Pia, holding Liam and staring at her intently. Weirdly enough, the baby seemed to stare at her too, his soft, miniature Buddha’s face scrunched up and pensive.

But that couldn’t be right. Pain and tiredness must be making Aryal hallucinate. Liam was only a few weeks