Page 47 of The Infirmary for Dragon Burns and Midair Mishaps

As her story spun out in my mind, I thought of losing my own mother. I’d only been a baby, of course. But was that how my father had felt—trembling and unsteady, coming apart at the seams? When he looked at me, was I the grief that ate at him?

“She left one night,” Eden said. “And I haven’t seen her since. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. If she ran off with some wealthy traveler who could feed her habits. If she succumbed to the grief in some alleyway. I waited as long as I could for her to return, but when I got hungry enough, I left camp.”

“Where did you go?” I asked, hating the thought of her out there alone in Cai’amar.

“I moved around and worked odd jobs like I told you. Dishwashing. Laundering.”

“Brushed up on your smithing?” I teased.

That got the ghost of a smile out of her. “Yes.”

“So how’d you end up working as a burn nurse again?”

“I was passing through a town one day and there was an accident with a wagon and a wild dragon. There were a lot of injuries to contend with. Gunther was the healer in charge at the time—this was before he’d settled in Ember Ridge. I stopped to help, and I guess he liked what he saw in me. I was still young, but he was impressed with my knowledge and my skill and offered to start a proper nursing apprenticeship.”

“Gunther’s a good man,” I said, voice thick.

“I think he saw how sad I was,” Eden said, “and took a chance on me, giving me the stability I’d been yearning for. After the apprenticeship, he wrote me an amazing letter of recommendation that got me hired as a nurse at the rider academy. He supported me when I had no one else in the world, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.” Her smile was soft, her words sweet but laced with old melancholy.

“I’m glad you two found each other.”

“Me too.” Her eyebrows pinched together. “I always say that my mother made me good at tending burns, but Gunther made me great.”

“She’d be proud of you,” I told her. I didn’t know a thing about Eden’s mother besides what she’d told me, but there was no doubt in my mind that any parent would be happy to boast about all she’d accomplished.

“I hope so,” Eden said, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. “Sometimes I think about her and wonder if she would go back and choose to live a different life if she could. One without my father.”

“You mean fall for a different man?” I asked, running my hands over my knees. “I don’t know if love works like that.”

Eden looked slightly puzzled. “All I know is that loving my father ruined my mother. That love ultimately took two lives and stole both parents from me. Was that worth it?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I didn’t know what else to say.

She shrugged. “It’s the curse of loving a dragon rider.” Her lips twitched. “I suppose that’s why all the drinking songs warn of it.”

“Drinking songs are mostly silliness,” I said.

“And yet sometimes there are truths hidden in those rhyming words. Wisdom that shouldn’t be ignored.” She cleared her throat. “To love a dragon rider is to lose them.”

“Not every rider ends up with the same fate,” I said, voice rough. I didn’t know why my chest ached so badly.

“The last thing I promised my mother was to never fall for someone like that.” Eden frowned down at her sketch. “She made me swear it one night. I was barely awake. Now I wonder if it had been her strange way of saying goodbye.” She shook her head. “Anyway, hopefully that answered your question.”

I leaned against the back of the rocking chair, my body feeling heavy. “I do understand, you know. Doing something because there’s nothing you’re better at. After my accident, my father tried to push me into academic pursuits. He said there was no place for me on a dragon. I was destined for some desk job in the capital. But I knew how rubbish I’d be at that.”

“How did it happen?” Eden asked. She glanced up suddenly. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I don’t mean to pry.”

“But you mean to pry a little,” I teased.

She lifted her fingers in a measure. “Only a little.”

I closed my eyes, taking myself back there. “I was nine years old and fancied myself a horse trainer. I was out one day, messing around with one of the horses, practicing my tricks.”

“As one does,” Eden said.

The memory turned spotty. “From what I remember, my leg got tangled in the reins, the horse reared, and I tumbled off. The shock and adrenaline gratefully blacked out the worst of it. But Trystan tells me the break was so bad, my leg so twisted, that there was no saving it. The healer was worried about infection, so my father made the tough call to amputate.”

“Do you resent him for it?”