He dropped his hand. “I apologize. I see now how stupid I was. I thought I’d prepared for every situation, but I hadn’t considered one expensive elaborate trap for us.”
A trap. It had been a trap.
We weren’t hunting the Black Mage. He was hunting us.
Chapter Twenty
I woke to someone poking me in the arm. Without the strength to defend myself I went with, “Ouch.”
“Ms. Salix, you’re awake.” Said the person poking me in the arm. “Good. Don’t mind me. I was just giving you a steroid cocktail to speed your healing.”
Despite the beating I took, I didn’t feel half bad. “What time is it? How long have I been out?”
An older man with salt and paper hair and a slightly rounded belly, stood beside the bed. His hands were weathered and his suit impeccable. “I’m Dr. Martin, the master’s personal physician. He had me waiting when you both arrived. You’ve been asleep for about two days.”
The ceiling looked familiar. Oh, they’d put me back in the same room at Fin’s mansion that I’d been using before. Strange how things were different: a distinct before and after.
“Am I going to live, doc?”
He helped me sit up and then fussed at my pillows and blankets until they supported me at every angle. “You had a few fractures and a lot of bruising, but you’ll be all right in a couple of weeks. You must continue the steroids until they run out.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. We’d just met, but he had a calming air about him.
He bustled around the room gathering his equipment, then silently slipped out the door. My stomach let out a long gurgle in the empty room.
I took stock of my pain: a dull throb up and down my right side and in both shoulders. The doc hadn’t told me to stay in bed, so I tossed back the covers and slowly twisted to the side of the bed.
Being short, I would have to hop down a foot to reach the floor. I doubted the doc, or my body, would appreciate the jump. My belly rumbled again.
Food.
“Need some help?” a voice said from the doorway.
Fin, looking incredibly hot in a suit, stood in the doorway.
“How are you feeling?” he asked and then entered the room to take the chair beside my bed.
I dragged the sheets down to cover my bare knees. The hospital gown rode high on my thighs, and I didn’t want him looking at my naked knees.
“I feel all right. I’m hungry, though. I was about to get up to get something to eat.”
He hit a few buttons on the phone I hadn’t noticed clutched in his hands. Bruises colored his skin purple and yellow across the ridges of his knuckles.
“Holly is going to send someone up with a tray. Get back under the covers and rest. It’s the only thing you need to focus on right now.”
I snorted but did as he directed. He had enough self-preservation not to comment on it.
“Says the man who doesn’t have to worry about paying bills and working for a living.”
“I pay my bills.”
I pulled the covers up over my breasts and lay back into the fluffy pillow pile with a sigh. “I bet you have someone named Stanley or Andrew who pays your bills.”
His lush lips turned up in a saucy grin.
“Actually, her name is Valerie, but I get your meaning.” He cleared his throat in the universal we-need-to-talk way. “There is something I need to tell you. While I want to bring down the Black Mage for his murder of my people, I have more selfish motivations. Five years ago, my sister disappeared. All the evidence pointed me to the Black Mage and his operation. Since then I’ve made it my mission to find him, but most of all, to find my sister.”
Apparently, we were having a hospital bed moment. Why did people feel the need to share deep, dark secrets when someone was ill? Either way, I needed delicacy here.