[This post is from David O’Credne Miller’s point of view.]
The light was brighter when he opened his eyes and he mumbled a curse, shifting in the bed and immediately squeezing his eyes shut again. “Damn. Why’d you turn the lamp up?”
Then he heard Issy’s voice and realized that his eyes might have been closed a lot longer than then moment he’d intended. “He’s awake again.”
“Turn down the lamp,” he said, his voice rusty all over again. “It hurts.”
“Unsurprisingly,” the voice of the healer he’d met that morning said. “You know, none of you said what actually hit you.”
“I don’t know if you’d believe us if we told you,” Lilah said, a thread of bitterness in her voice. “No one ever really does.”
“You’ll find we’re a bit different from the usual isolated settlement here,” the healer said, a certain primness to her tone that David found oddly reassuring.
“Don’t antagonize her,” he said, shifting in the bed. Everything still hurt, but the edges seemed like they’d come off. Then Issy was there, her arm sliding beneath his shoulders to help him shift his position in the bed. “This is the place we’ve been looking for.” His hand shook a little as he rubbed his eyes, blinking through tears that came from the light. He looked across the room to the healer, who sat at a small table with Bryant not terribly far away.
“Is it?” Lilah glanced at him with a quirked brow. “How can you be sure this time?”
“I just know,” he said, wincing as he watched her share a look with Travis—full of the skepticism and hope he’d come to expect from his friends.
I never should have dragged any of them into this. This was my quest, not theirs. They didn’t have to come. I shouldn’t have let them.
I should have come alone.
