Page 68 of Where Broken Wings Fly

“Days. Four, I think. I don’t know…” He began mumbling, and I picked up only a few words. “I don’t even know what day it is.”

I frowned at him in response, hoping he understood what I wanted to say. Either he did and refused to comment on it, or he was oblivious.

I began waving my arms wildly at him, earning me a curious stare.

“Pen.” I coughed. “Paper.”

“Quill, ink, and stripped bark will have to do,” he grumbled as he fled the room.

I was left staring at the ceiling once more, feeling increasingly more haunted by the fact I had wasted four days lying in a bed. Four days of the thirty I had been given.

When Raegan re-entered the room, a pooling of light followed him from the many fireflies in the hallway. It allowed me the briefest of proper glimpses at him, at how truly unkempt he looked.

He tossed me the quill, ink, and stripped bark.

In straggly writing, mostly because my hands were burning, I wrote out my words:

Let me attend the meeting tomorrow.

When I turned it around to show him, he scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You can hardly move.”

Scowling, I wrote more.

Bring me a healer and fix that, then.

As his eyes skimmed the words, the corners of his lips dared to stretch into a grin. “Not only do you not listen to a single thing I tell you, you also have the audacity to demand things of me?”

Raegan! I wrote.

He rolled his eyes a second time. “You’ve had a healer in here everyday. They’re trying their best. A few more days and you’ll be okay.”

Then drag me into that meeting if you must. I want to be there.

This time, as he read my words, his face shifted. He slumped down onto the end of my bed, his eyes narrowing as he looked at me.

“You truly care about our people, don’t you?”

Yes. I wrote and underlined six times.

“Why?”

Can’t we have this conversation any other time?

“Glad to see you have not lost any of your charm.” He smirked, but the normal gleam to his eyes was noticeably absent. “Killian wishes to see you.”

I grinned at him as I got to work with my quill, hoping he could detect the sarcasm through the slanted words.

Do I look as bad as I feel?

“Worse, even.” He laughed. “But I can’t be here tonight and I asked him if he would take over—” He cut his words short before the meaning sunk in behind them.

I swore that all I could hear was snoring. That was you?

It was a gentle prod, a layered question that I hoped he couldn’t detect.

“I don’t snore,” he huffed.

So not you then.