Page 146 of Dream Reaper

“Hey, Da,” he said with a weak grin. “I’m so hungry I could eat a cow. No, I could eat a whole herd of cows.”

Nervous laughter rippled around the room, Finnr falling back into a chair with a strangled sob. He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Glamren patted him roughly on the shoulder while everyone else crowded closer to the boy.

“There, there,” Glamren said gruffly. “Don’t carry on like that. The worst is over now.”

But Finnr carried on anyway, and Ava knew that the worst was yet to come. For tomorrow they would pick up the pieces of their lives and carry on without a wife and a mother.

“It’s so good to see you awake,” Ava said, drawing nearer and brushing Roar’s hair away from his forehead. “You’ve been asleep for a couple of days, little friend.”

He absorbed this information without blinking an eye. “No wonder I’m so hungry. Did you defeat the shadow monster? Was there lots of hacking and stabbing, and did you pull off his legs and⁠—”

“It’s good and dead, Roar,” Jerrid interrupted with a grin. “I’ll give you a play-by-play once you’re feeling a little better.”

“Aw, tell me now!” the boy cried, struggling to sit up but falling back as his face lost all color. “Whoa. The bed is spinning. This is a strange bed!”

Finnr reached across the bed to clutch the boy’s hand, tears in his eyes.

Persis yanked open the curtain to the cubicle beside them and guided the prince so that he could sink down onto the empty cot. His body trembled with exhaustion, dark circles hugging his eyes, which reminded Ava, painfully, of how close to death he’d been only a week earlier.

The prince and princess pressed their foreheads together and began to whisper furiously back and forth. Ava averted her gaze to give them privacy.

When Persis finally turned back to face them, her gaze froze on Ava and Jerrid for a moment, as if she had noticed Jerrid’s unusual attire for the first time. Her eyes flickered up and down and then lingered on the hand Ava pressed against the dragon rider’s chest.

A knowing smile lifted the corners of her lips, but she turned away without comment. Heat burned Ava’s cheeks, but she didn’t pull away from Jerrid. The cat was out of the bag, and she truly didn’t care who knew about them.

When his arm snaked around her waist, she leaned closer against him.

Persis drifted around the bed and settled a hand on Finnr’s shoulder, more at home in this infirmary than she was on the throne. “We need to talk about your son.”

Finnr lifted his head and met her gaze, his smile tremulous and still tinged with fear.

“Haryk found damage to his thoughts,” Persis explained in a low voice. “Things are broken inside him, but we don’t know how bad it is. He might heal completely. He might have lost some memories. He might…he might be a little different now.”

Ava winced and glanced up at Jerrid.

“I can’t say anything for certain,” Persis continued in her gentle, matter-of-fact tone, “because the mind is a tricky thing, and Haryk isn’t trained to use sand magic. You need to prepare yourself that things might be different.”

Finnr nodded, turning toward the bed. “But…he’s okay, right, lass?”

Persis patted his shoulder. “I think he will be. But I recommend you stay at the palace for a while so that I can keep an eye on him. Just to be safe.”

Ava exhaled a long, slow breath and pressed her cheek against Jerrid’s chest. He rubbed her back and kissed the top of her head.

“Well, I’d best get this strapping young boy some food,” Glamren said, pushing between Ava and Jerrid with a smirk so that she could get back to the center of the room.

Ava and Jerrid eased away from the cubicle to give Finnr time alone with his son, moving instead to stand beneath one of the high, arched windows. Sunlight washed over them, warming her skin. She tipped her face upward and inhaled deeply. Exhaustion clawed at her bones, but contentment flooded through her body.

Roar was okay.

And she was home.

Jerrid’s fingers ran down her arm, from elbow to wrist. “I have been thinking about something.”

His low whisper caused her to snap her eyes open so that she could peer up into his face. “Yes?”

“I don’t suppose there is a magistrate handy,” he murmured, his gaze roaming over her features, a wry smile tugging at the left corner of his lips.

Her mouth went dry, her tongue thick and heavy. “A m-magistrate?”