Page 7 of The Infirmary for Dragon Burns and Midair Mishaps

“What?” she grumbled.

“For starters,” I said, “you need stitches before you bleed out. And secondly, why are you not even remotely concerned about infection? This wound is filthy. Do you want to contract some form of dragon lurgy? Is that how you want to leave this world?”

“It’s fine,” she muttered. “I get nipped all the time.”

“I doubt this badly,” I said. “Or else you’d already be dead.” There was nothing in my contract about dealing with cocky dragon wranglers who were probably taking unnecessary risks with their lives. If I’d wanted to deal with that, I could have just stayed back at the academy. But now that I’d found the injury, I couldn’t just ignore it. “Nisse!” I called. “I’m going to need some yarrow to clot this bleed.”

She rushed down the hall, bottles in one arm, her mortar and pestle in the other. “Coming right up.”

“Hold still,” I told the wrangler as Matty uncorked a fresh bottle of antiseptic for me. I poured it over the wound.

“Ow!” the wrangler hissed. “You didn’t even warn me!”

“What did you expect?” I shot back. “That it was going to tickle?”

She scowled at me, and it was somehow grumpier than before. “Your bedside manner leaves something to be desired.”

“Well, your sense of self-preservation leaves something to be desired, Miss Dragon Wrangler.”

“It’s Frixsar,” she said.

I glanced up into those gray eyes, like the moon on a clear night. “What?”

“Vaela Frixsar,” she said between her teeth as I jammed the poultice of yarrow into the wound to help form a clot. She jerked.

“Miss Frixsar⁠—”

She grunted. “Vaela is fine.”

“Maybe I should just call you a fool for taking unnecessary risks,” I said, waiting for the yarrow to work so I could throw in a couple of stitches. Once that was done, I wrapped a healing poultice against the wound with a clean bandage to hold it in place, crisscrossing the linen between her thin fingers. “You should know better than to leave a puncture wound to fester. How did you even end up with a puncture wound in the first place? Were you not wearing your gloves?”

“I might have left them in my saddlebag,” she muttered.

I leaned closer, making my point. “Sorry. What was that?”

“They were in my saddlebag!” she snapped.

“And what good are they in your saddlebag? What good is safety gear if you’re not going to wear it?” I threw my hands up in disbelief. Dealing with dragons was extremely dangerous, and the safety gear was already subpar. But what little protection it did offer was null and void if she refused to use it. “You’re reckless.”

“I don’t need a lesson in wrangling from a burn nurse,” she growled.

“Clearly, you do.” My thoughts flashed back twelve years, to a sky full of fire, to the howl of heated wind, but I beat the memories back, locking them into the box they’d escaped from.

That stormy look returned. “Why don’t you do what you do best and put bandages on things?”

“Gladly,” I said. “Keep that bandage on overnight. You’ll need to return tomorrow for another round of cleaning.”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

“Tomorrow,” I said, yanking the bandage extra tight. She grimaced. “Or else you’ll have more than just gangrene to worry about.”

She huffed a laugh of disbelief. “Is that a threat?”

“Yes,” I said pointedly. “To both life and limb.”

“Fine,” she grumbled.

“Great.”