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25
Rowan
My chest feltas if it were being stabbed by tiny pins and needles, and everything around me seemed hazy. Somebody hovered to my side. “Mercy?” I said softly.
“No, dear.” My vision cleared a little, and the nurse’s face came into view. She was in her late forties and definitely not the woman I was looking for.
“Over here,” came a voice from near the curtain. I whipped my head around so fast that the dull pain at the back spread into a pounding headache.
I winced and fell back against the pillows. Bandages were wrapped around my arms and torso. An IV drip was pushed into a vein on my right wrist, and monitoring equipment next to me gave off a quiet but persistent beep.
“Easy, dear,” the nurse cooed. “You don’t want to strain yourself.”
Mercy hurried into view, her eyes wide with worry and her forehead furrowed. “Rowan, are you okay?” There was a smudge of grit on her cheek, a healing scrape on her chin, and strands of hair had come loose from her ponytail. She looked as if she’d walked through hell to get here.
“I’ve felt better,” I managed. My voice came out creaky.
“Be glad you’re feeling anything at all,” the nurse announced. “You’ve been off in your own little world for almost three days.”
Three days? I stared at her as she stepped aside to detach my IV, but my attention was caught by Wylder, Gideon, and Kaige coming up beside Mercy to circle my bed. I didn’t mind. They made for a welcome sight, one that sent a rush of relief through me.
“You’re all still okay,” I rasped, my voice getting a little stronger and my mind a little less dazed as I regained my focus. “How is— Is everything—?” I didn’t know how to ask the questions I wanted to with the nurse here in the room.
Mercy squeezed my hand. “We’re still working on it, but we’re almost there. You don’t need to worry about that right now.” She blinked hard. “I’m just glad to hear your voice.”
Seeing her fighting tears, I knew without her saying it that she’d been afraid I was going to die. I had a vague memory of thinking the same thing myself when I’d been slumped in the warehouse with flames rising around me and pain radiating from the places where the bullets had hit me.
But somehow I was still here. That was some kind of miracle, wasn’t it?
“How do you feel?” Gideon asked.
“Like a truck ran over me,” I said. “Or maybe two.”
“Wow, Rowan is cracking jokes,” Kaige teased. “I think you should check for a concussion, nurse.”
The nurse frowned at him, but Kaige only chuckled.
“Don’t mind him,” Mercy said. “That’s just how we are.”
That was right. We were a team.
Which brought to mind another question. “How—how did we get out of the fire?”
Mercy smiled bright but tightly. “You talked me through my panic, and I dragged you out of the building.”
“But you—you were shot too.” I remembered that clearly: the jolt of panic that’d struck me when I’d watched her fall.
“One way or another, we were both getting out of there,” Mercy said stubbornly, and I caught a glimpse of the girl I’d seen that night. She was my fierce angel, my savior. “Besides you’re the one who saved me first.”
“You both got out, and that’s all I could have asked for,” Wylder said with typical assurance, but his gaze held mine for a few beats longer than usual. “I expect you to put as much effort into healing up as you give to all your other work.”
My lips twitched with a smile. “Aye, aye, boss.”
The nurse motioned to the bunch of them. “You’ve said your hellos. You can’t all stay in here at once. The patient needs room to breathe.”
“Right, right,” Kaige said. He gently tapped his knuckles to my shoulder. “You’re tougher than me now, Finlay. No more showing off, all right.”
I snorted, and he grinned before following the nurse out of the room.
