The room showed itself in painfully bright flashes as he struggled to open his eyes. It was pain that woke him for good—not the pain of his injuries, but of Jillian squeezing his hand with near bone-breaking tightness in her excitement at seeing him start to stir.
She filled up his vision. Her face was shock-white from worry, making her hair seem redder than ever.
“Theo? You’re awake?”
“I’m awake. You’re safe?”
“We both are.” She cupped his cheek. “You’re getting warm again. I was so scared.”
“Where are we?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve redecorated since your last days here,” the familiar voice from before said. “It makes sense for you not to recognize it, though I hope you’ll still know me.”
As much as he could, he turned his head. He knew her at once. She was older, yes, and he would guess the years had not been easy ones—she had more crow’s feet than laugh-lines—and she had a new streak of pearly white in her hair, but he knew her. How could he not? She had been a second mother to him.
“Dr. Mendoza!”
She smiled. She had a wide, friendly smile that she used only rarely. “Hello, Theo. It’s good to see you again.” In Old Draconian, she added, “Gold returned, however briefly, is always a delight.”
“To come home again to treasure is something one never forgets,” Theo replied.
He had long ago learned the affectionate, respectful way for dragons to greet each other when reunited after a long absence. Foolishly, he only now realized that those manners existed because those situations arose. He hadn’t betrayed himself or his people by leaving. It might not have been the custom of Riell, but the possibility of it was in their very oldest tongue.
Emily Post didn’t advise people on how to deal with etiquette issues that didn’t exist, after all.
And it was wonderful to see her again. Dr. Sonia Mendoza had removed Theo’s tonsils and appendix, set his broken arm, and treated him for a nasty case of childhood flu. Throughout it all, she had been calm, soothing, and funny. More importantly, she had been the one to sit him down when he’d been in his “reckless” teenage years and tell him matter-of-factly that he would only be unhappy if he didn’t work out what was driving him mad and do what it took to be sane.
“I left the valley to go into the world,” she’d said. “Why do you think I’m a doctor and not just a healer? There’s nothing wrong with being a healer, and our traditions of medicine are as old as those of Hippocrates, but I wanted to learn something else, so I did. It took me years and a hell of a lot of money, but I did.”
“And then you came back,” Theo had said.
She’d thwacked him gently on the head with his own medical file. “Because I wanted to, Theo St. Vincent, not because I had to. If you want to see something of the rest of the world, go out and do it. Only please, as a favor to me, do it without going to so many waterparks. The bacteria in those places is astonishing. I don’t want one of my patients exposed to it.”
Now Theo ignored his pain to smile at her. “I saw the world.”
“I can see that,” Dr. Mendoza said. She turned to Jillian and said, “You can go on
and pour a drink for him if you like, Jillian. Glasses are in the cabinet.”
Jillian let go of him reluctantly. It made his hand feel cold. He resisted the childish urge to tell her to hurry back, but all the same, he couldn’t wait until they were touching again.
Luckily, evidently Dr. Mendoza kept her office arranged so that the liquor cabinet wasn’t too far from the examination room. Theo thought the American Medical Association would have some questions about that—if, that was, they could ever have gotten into Riell in the first place.
“Thank you,” Dr. Mendoza said. She sipped the dragonfire and regarded Theo with benevolent skepticism. “Theo, everything seems to be on the mend for right now. Your mate acted with admirable quickness getting you here, from what I understand. And I’m impressed you stayed conscious long enough to open her eyes to the valley.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” Theo said.
“Open my eyes to the valley?” Jillian said, frowning. “You mean let me see the road through the woods? No, he was already out by then. I just guessed my way through it.”
Dr. Mendoza surveyed her for a moment and then said, “I like you, I think. A practical solution to a practical problem is not something most people come up with when faced with something seemingly supernatural. I can see why you make a good match for our dreamer over here.”
“I’m practical,” Theo protested.
“You’re too sweet to be practical,” Dr. Mendoza said. “Even as a boy, you were always convinced you could get me to save some wounded bird. It was very endearing, but ‘practical’ isn’t the first word that comes to mind.”
“That’s adorable,” Jillian said.
“You’re impractical too, then,” Theo said. “You can’t tell me you don’t love wounded birds.”